Wazzup Pilipinas!
When it comes to technology, trends come and go faster than we can think of it, but it is found that many concepts in terms of database management may stay longer in power, which has the ability to impact business organizations and integrate them. All the database admins and organizations want to stay updated with the latest or upcoming trends in database management to take the best advantage of it at the first point for better management of their business.
The top 2019 database trends can be listed as:
Databases which bridge between SQL and NoSQL
Cloud Databases and Platform as a Service (PaaS)
More focus on Security
Automation of database management
Lets review these in detail first.
Bridging the gap between SQL and NoSQL
As can see, the trend in database administration now is more versatility. Database solutions dont restrict to a single database, but instead of it, the overall structure bridge SQL and NoSQL by offer the best of both worlds.
Cloud databases / PaaS (Platform as a Service)
Developers are now largely pushing their enterprises into the cloud and weigh their trade-offs with private and public clouds. They know how to effectively migrate to cloud services and coordinate with them based on their existing infrastructure. In terms of database administration also, the cloud offers many opportunities and benefits. Shifting to the cloud doesn't need to compromise on the organizational priorities. Instead, it is all about adding more products and services for the overall growth of the organization and to meet the business goals.
More security oriented
Data security is not a new trend, but increasing events of database breaches further reiterates the need for more secured database administration measures. For this, businesses tend to work hand-in-hand with the IT security partners in order to ensure that all your enterprise information is kept safe. Database administrators need to work closely with the security team in order to reduce the internal weaknesses of an organization which make your business data vulnerable.
Automation
Another emerging trend in terms of database management is the process of automation. Automation makes database administration much simpler in terms of patching, provisioning, upgrades, maintenance, updates, and also in terms of smoothing the project workflow. In fact, as RemoteDBA.com points out, for the time being, automation trends seem to have confined usefulness as the database management still requires a fair human intervention to succeed.
An expert Q&A on database management trends
Q: Given the enterprises are becoming more and more budget conscious, how security can be of concern over the cost?
One major threat raised by the majority of the database administrator in terms of operational data management is the risk involved. On choosing a vendor, from the entire SME to corporate, the primary concern is about the reliability of the vendors. Security capabilities of the provider are critical in terms of making a choice.
We now read stories about firms who suffered financial losses due to their database being compromised, which not only end up in the business loss but also impair their reputation and reliability. Compared to the downsides of data infiltration, the cost of data security is fully worth, and any savings one may gain from choosing the cheapest solution may ultimately end up in additional cost in terms of security breaches.
However, with the increasing demand, the database cloud costs are largely getting standardized across the global market, even though the server-less mode of delivery as offered by FaunaDB Cloud, etc. are disrupting it. The major database vendors now differentiate their solutions based on their capacity to mitigate risk, availability, consistency, security, productivity, and durability.
Q: More people prefer open source data solutions. So, what are the benefits of it?
The shift in open source database management model is so intriguing to the businesses. As adoption is now moving aggressively on to the cloud, the old model of service and support is diminishing now. In this case, also, it is more about risks. Users now don't tend to choose a database which will need support. They are looking for databases which work without fail all the times at any environment. These are called self-managing systems which are just coming up in the cloud, which delivers a "no-ops" experience than the existing DevOps model.
Customers tend to go for open source databases as they dont largely trust the vendors and off-the-shelf solutions to meet their unique requirements. In this model, they have the choice to manage their database in depth and also fix the issues all by themselves to avoid any sort of lock-in periods. Nobody wants a database company or the cloud providers to get involved in the database business.
Q: Even though it has significant benefits, why many of those stay away from open source data stores?
Even though it offers significant benefits, many of the products out there are still not so good, especially in terms of enterprise risk management and integration needs. The products which are existing for long and already matured are primarily based on the legacy architectures, which may create some operational overhead to the administrators on migration. The most advanced ones made for the multi-cloud environment are much immature now. In case of mission-critical workloads, the customers may have to work with trustworthy vendors irrespective of a licensing model.
One unique way to work on this issue is by using managed cloud services. It will leave the operational overhead to the vendor instead of making it the customer's burden. Those systems which still remain proprietary as AWS will further modify open-source products which they build upon so that the customer is locked into the code and the infrastructure. Databases based on public cloud are mainframe model, and AWS is said to be the new Oracle in DBA.
As we can see, the major differences between the conventional and cloud-based databases primarily come down to the risk vs. overhead. Corporate of the coming years are least interested in things which impact the correctness in terms of data recovery and transactions. They have a focus on productivity and enterprises are largely willing to invest more in terms of getting new features and reducing the risk down the scale.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
