How to Choose a Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS) – The New Stack

Choosing a database is a long-term commitment, whether it’s for an application or a data warehouse project.

The database is the foundation of your application and provides secure storage and access to all your information. And without data, you don’t have much of an application.

This article focuses on operational databases designed primarily for application or microservices development. Even with this segmentation, there are still hundreds of database options on the market. If you’re considering Database-as-a-Service, that limits your options, as not all vendors offer their products as a fully managed service.

Depending on which database you choose, it’s either easier or more difficult to build different features into the app and evolve it over time. Some databases offer very specific functionality, while others are more comprehensive and flexible.

Cloud providers such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure offer a variety of DBaaS offerings, each focused on specific capabilities. Sometimes this choice can be more confusing than helpful. The good news is that choice means more opportunities for you to find a great DBaaS.

DBaaS Criteria

Many cloud databases on the market offer common features, all of which differ in some way. Here are some areas to consider in your search.

data structure

Relational database management systems (RDBMS) were developed to store data very efficiently, at the expense of a fixed and predefined structure. While efficiency has its advantages, of course, in a modern agile development model where applications and microservices change very rapidly, this rigidity is often a negative aspect.

Being forced to change the database schema every time app requirements change costs time in development. NoSQL databases do not enforce this limitation, giving developers more flexibility to build products faster. Additionally, the best NoSQL databases support transactions while maintaining overall flexibility.

query pattern

The most common query language for all types of databases is Structured Query Language (SQL). It has been used for decades due to the influence of relational databases and the usefulness of the language itself. It is easy to read/understand and powerful in its flexibility.

However, there are other ways to retrieve data, e.g. B. Key-value retrieval for easier and often faster data retrieval. Fuzzy searches, also known as full-text searches, can be a very useful database feature that provides search capabilities for users in applications.

Another option that is gaining popularity is GraphQL, which works with highly connected datasets. Depending on the combination of needs (current and future), make sure your DBaaS covers your query needs. It should also come with a Software Development Kit (SDK) for various popular programming languages.

consistency

The popularity of relational databases is partly due to their support for ACID properties. ACID stands for atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability and ensures the protection and accuracy of data transactions. With modern applications, there was a growing need for speed without the need for transactions, and NoSQL databases abandoned ACID in favor of eventual consistency.

Today, many NoSQL databases offer some sort of mix of Strong Consistency (ACID) and Eventual Consistency, giving developers more flexibility in building their applications. Therefore, it is important to understand the spectrum of your needs in terms of ACID requirements and how this aligns with a particular provider.

Deployment Options

With DBaaS there is much less work to deploy compared to a self-managed system. It should provide the database and any resources needed to support it, and the service should be able to scale with minimal downtime. Because of this, you need to think about your choice of cloud providers, regions, and configuration options for availability requirements.

What other options does the database platform offer as the development schedule continues? Is there a downloadable version that a minimally usable product can be built on top of? What if you need to shift gears and deploy on-premises? Knowing all the options in advance can save you a huge misstep in the future.

Maturity

As already mentioned, there are a variety of databases on the market. Some of them will rise and fall in popularity; Picking one might work in the short term, but it can burn you in the long run. Sometimes choosing a more mature product can bring many benefits that you may not need or realize in advance, but you will be thankful for later. A mature product often offers better stability, support and flexibility.

High Availability and Disaster Recovery

Who wants their database to go down? Nobody of course. Depending on how complex your data requirements are in terms of number of users, data volume, regions to be covered, etc., you need to understand how your DBaaS handles high availability and disaster recovery. Some are better than others in terms of core architecture and disaster recovery options. And often there are additional costs to ensure you have the guaranteed uptime you need.

scalability

Easy and automated scaling is something all DBaaS offerings should do, but there are different ways they work. Some DBaaS solutions scale in a serverless, pay-per-use, auto-scaling model. This can make life easier, but it can also be expensive when things grow far beyond expectations. Provisioned models also offer flexible scaling with a bit more work, but include additional control over things like CPU cores, memory, storage capacity, and more. All of these features should never require changes to the application.

Mobile and Edge Capabilities

Does your DBaaS need to sync data to a mobile or edge app? How is data synchronization handled? Does the mobile app need to run without a network connection? These are the kind of questions to think about when considering a mobile embeddable database that can help your app go offline first.

security

Security is a constant struggle between companies and hackers. Make sure your DBaaS provider provides sophisticated, multi-layered security technologies and 24/7 monitoring. Systems should include things like private networks and encryption while data is both at rest and in transit. DBaaS providers often provide detailed white papers on their Trust Center websites.

Costs

Cost is always a factor when choosing a database. While some DBaaS offer a very basic free tier, this would not be enough for a real application. So you need to think about the total cost of ownership (TCO) and how to balance that against the requirements for read/write performance, overall capabilities, and the total number of users that can be supported as the system scales.

Conclusion

There are many factors to consider when choosing a DBaaS such as speed, flexibility, time to market and cost to ensure it meets your application needs. Choosing the right cloud database platform is not easy. To support critical applications, many organizations choose Couchbase to improve resiliency, performance, and stability while reducing risk, data overload, and total cost of ownership. That’s why 30% of the Fortune 100 use the Couchbase database platform to manage critical data.

Try Couchbase today with our free trial.

Featured image via Pixabay.