A database is an organized collection of structured information or data stored electronically in a computer system. Databases are essential for efficiently managing, storing, and retrieving large amounts of information, and allow users and applications to access data quickly and securely. They are widely used in a variety of fields, including business, education, healthcare, and government, to manage everything from customer information to financial records.
Databases are typically managed by database management systems (DBMS), software tools that allow users to interact with the database, perform queries, update records and ensure the integrity and security of the data. Popular DBMSs include MySQL, PostgreSQL and Microsoft SQL Server.
What is MySQL?
MySQL is a widely used and very popular relational database management system (RDBMS), free and open source, ideal for small and large applications. It is very fast, reliable, scalable and easy to use across platforms, complies with the ANSI SQL standard, was first released in 1995 and is developed, distributed and supported by the Oracle Corporation. It was subsequently named after the daughter of co-founder Monty Widenius: MySQL. Huge websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Airbnb, Booking.com, Uber, GitHub and YouTube as well as content management systems such as WordPress, Drupal, Joomla!, Contao and a very large number of web developers around the world use MySQL.
What is PostgreSQL?
PostgreSQL is a free open source database system, a back-end database for dynamic websites and web applications and supports the most important programming languages such as Python, Java, C/C++, C#, Node.js, Go, Ruby, Perl and Tcl. PostgreSQL also supports basically all functions that other database management systems support. PostgreSQL was developed at the Berkeley Computer Science Department of the University of California.
It began in 1986 as a project with the goal of creating a database system with the minimal features needed to support multiple data types.
Initially, PostgreSQL ran on UNIX platforms, but it can now run on various platforms, including Windows and macOS.
What is MongoDB?
MongoDB is a document database. It stores data in a type of JSON format called BSON. A record in MongoDB is a document - a data structure that consists of key-value pairs and is similar to the structure of JSON* objects. It can be installed locally or hosted in the cloud.
SQL vs Document Databases
SQL databases are considered relational databases. They store related data in separate tables. When data is needed, it is queried from several tables in order to merge the data again.
MongoDB is a document database that is often referred to as a non-relational database. This does not mean that relational data cannot be stored in document databases. It means that relational data is stored differently. A better way to refer to it is a non-tabular database.
MongoDB stores data in flexible documents. Instead of having multiple tables, you can simply keep all related data together. This allows you to read your data very quickly.
You can still have multiple groups of data. In MongoDB, these are called collections instead of tables.
Local vs. cloud database
MongoDB can be installed locally, so you can host your own MongoDB server on your hardware. This requires you to manage your server, upgrades and other maintenance. However, it is possible to use MongoDB Atlas, a cloud database platform. This is much easier than hosting your own local database.
What is AWS (Amazon Web Services)?
AWS is a Cloud computing-platform. The first product (S3) was released in 2006. Since then, AWS has grown significantly in terms of both size and product range. It is still the largest cloud provider in the world today. AWS expertise is popular in the job market; you can do most things in the AWS cloud and it enjoys great community support.
* JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a language-independent, lightweight format for storing and transporting data that is often used when data is sent from a server to a website.
The JSON syntax is derived from the JavaScript object notation syntax, but the JSON format is text-only. Code to read and generate JSON data can be written in any programming language.