Technology keeps evolving with time, and the same is true for databases. First came the traditional databases, where the users had to set up the database server and manage it themselves. Then came managed databases, where the cloud providers manage the servers, but the users can still configure and tune the behavior of the database. Then came serverless databases, where the cloud providers control most of the server management tasks and the database can be auto-scaled. Here, the user can access the database through an interface and focus on their own code without worrying about database management tasks.
However, there are several serverless databases out there from which businesses can choose, and these databases provide multiple features. This makes it harder for businesses to compare each one of them and select the most optimal one based on their requirements. This article discusses what a serverless database is, its various features, and the top 7 serverless databases that users can use in 2024. Let’s get started.
What is a serverless database?
A database using the concept of serverless computing is called a serverless database. What is serverless computing? Basically, “serverless” means that the application is deployed on the server, but the developers who deploy it do not need to manage it. In other words, complex tasks such as database maintenance, scaling, data backup, and security are managed by the service provider.
Moreover, a serverless database can scale automatically based on demand and optimize computing costs as customers pay only for the resources used.
Features of a serverless database
In order to know more about a serverless database, we need to go through some of its features, such as:
- Fully managed service: From tasks like database maintenance, storage, scaling, security, and data monitoring to performance optimization and service failures, all are handled by the vendor. Therefore, customers can focus on their own work without worrying about the database.
- Instant access to data: Users can access their data at any time, as a serverless database quickly spins up the resources in no time. Similarly, creating a new database cluster is a matter of a few seconds to a few minutes. Overall, the latency is reduced as data can be easily accessed with functions.
- High on-demand scalability: In the event of a spike in demand, a serverless database can automatically scale up. If the demand becomes low, computing resources are allocated and the database scales down, which saves resources and thereby reduces costs.
- Optimized costs: By using a consumption-based model for billing customers, a serverless database reduces costs to a high degree, as the customers only pay for the resources that they use. It is worth mentioning that the users already save a lot as they don’t pay for the servers, data centers, network, etc.
Top 7 Serverless Databases to Use in 2024
There are a bunch of serverless databases that a customer can choose from but here is a list of 7 best serverless databases.
1. Fauna
Fauna is a relational database, and with the help of its document-relational model, it can be used as a NoSQL database combined with some of the functionalities present in relational databases, such as relations, joins, and foreign keys. It is fast, consistent, and reliable.
Features of Fauna
- Easy access to the database: Users can access the Fauna database through drivers in languages such as Go, JavaScript, Python, etc. The same task can be achieved by using the GraphQL API. Moreover, users can interact with the database through Fauna’s own query language called FQL (Fauna query language), which can execute complex business logic. This makes this serverless database very flexible.
- Ease of development: Fauna provides a web shell, which is a web IDE where users can write queries to manipulate data. It also has an extension for Visual Studio Code where users can run FQL queries inside the code editor, and it has been downloaded by more than 5000 users.
- High data security: With attribute-based access control (ABAC), Fauna allows users to establish a strategy for managing identity-based operations. It is an authorization model that protects data and other IT resources from unauthorized users. ABAC extends role-based access control (RBAC), where permissions can be assigned to users based on their roles.
2. PlanetScale
PlanetScale is a MySQL database that supports globally distributed apps with read-only regions. This database does not compromise on scalability, reliability, or performance. Therefore, it brings solid developer experience. It also allows horizontal sharding and schema changes that are non-blocking.
Features of PlanetScale
- Version control of the database: Just like how code can be kept in different branches, PlanetScale provides the feature of branching a user’s database. This enables high productivity, as developers can work on different versions of the database simultaneously. Moreover, developers can merge databases without any downtime.
- Reduced load on a database: PlanetScale offers horizontal scaling via sharding that reduces the overall load on a database. This process is hard to manage, so PlanetScale has kept most of the logic of sharding out of the application.
- CLI and API for interaction: pscale CLI offers developers the ability to perform almost any operation that is possible on the dashboard of PlanetScale. That includes commands for backups, branding, and requests for deployment. Developers can also interact with PlanetScale using the API for faster development workflows.
3. MongoDB Atlas
MongoDB Atlas is a NoSQL database on the cloud that can be hosted on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure and is available in over 90 regions around the world. The users can use the Atlas Data API to perform find operations and multi-stage aggregations on the data. The Data API can be used from any platform that supports HTTPS, such as web browsers and mobile applications.
Features of MongoDB Atlas
- Seamless integration with popular tools: MongoDB Atlas provides integration with popular serverless tools such as AWS Lambda, Azure functions, Google Cloud Run, Prisma, and application platforms like Vercel and Netlify.
- End-to-end security: With MongoDB Atlas, there is no compromise on data security as it offers built-in security controls for all the data, including authentication, authorization, auditing, data encryption, network security, and data sovereignty.
- Top-notch performance: With built-in best practices, MongoDB Atlas automates critical operations to ensure that the database keeps working properly. As the workload of the application evolves with time, users can get on-demand index and schema design advice. In this database, code can run in response to data changes automatically.
4. Amazon Aurora Serverless
Amazon Aurora Serverless is a serverless configuration of Amazon Aurora, the popular relational database that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. According to Amazon, this serverless database can save up to one-tenth of the cost as compared to commercial databases.
Features of Aurora Serverless
- High scalability and performance: Aurora Serverless can scale to thousands of data transactions in a fraction of a second. It can scale up and down depending on the unpredictable workload. This is useful for businesses containing an application that is used infrequently or a service that has fluctuating activity.
- Fast recovery and high availability: It provides all the Amazon Aurora features, such as multi-AZ deployments, a global database, and read replicas. These features ensure that the service remains highly available. This is pretty helpful for those enterprises that have to manage a lot of applications.
- Cost-effective: Serverless databases are cost-effective in general, but with Aurora Serverless, customers can split databases into multiple instances of Aurora. Based on need, the service can adjust its capacity instantly, without any disruption. This helps reduce costs. This is beneficial for projects that require a high number of read/write transactions.
5. Cloud Firestore
Cloud Firestore by Google is a NoSQL cloud database that offers offline support for web and mobile development. Moreover, it offers seamless integration with Cloud Functions and other Firebase and Google Cloud products.
Features of Firestore
- Offline support: One of the biggest problems any user can face is what happens to the data if the device goes offline. Firestore has got it covered because it caches the data of the application. This means that even if the device goes offline, the user can still manipulate the data. When power comes back, Firestore synchronizes the local changes back to Cloud Firestore.
- High performance, scalability, and reliability: According to Firestore, it has a typical response time of less than or equal to just 30 ms. This low-latency solution is a regional and multi-regional serverless database, as it is spread across several data centers around the globe. This solidifies its capability to scale enormously. In numbers, it can scale up to approximately 1 million concurrent connections and 10,000 writes per second.
- Firebase and Google Cloud integration: Because Firestore comes from the family of Google, it provides seamless integration with Firebase products such as Firebase Authentication to enhance the security of the database. Users can also quickly set up Firebase notifications to notify users based on their application needs. Along with this, it integrates with Google Cloud products to enhance the development experience.
6. ScyllaDB
ScyllaDB is a scalable NoSQL database that can run on Google Cloud or AWS. It is written in C++, accelerates development, and simplifies administration. This serverless database is capable of over 1 million operations per server.
Features of ScyllaDB
- Low latency and high performance: Compared to other NoSQL serverless databases, ScyllaDB offers higher throughput and lower latency, and it is less costly too. ScyallaDB’s latency is around one-third of that of Amazon DynamoDB. ScyllaDB offers higher performance using fewer nodes compared to AstraDB.
- High availability: ScyllaDB has no single point of failure and is fault-tolerant. To prevent any data loss and ensure that the application is available at all times to the user, the data is replicated across multiple nodes in milliseconds, and that too automatically.
7. SurrealDB
SurrealDB is a MySQL serverless database that combines the database layer, querying layer, API, and security into just one platform. It uses SurrealQL, an advanced query language that can query over time-series and connected graph data.
Features of SurrealDB
- SurrealQL, to work with SurrealDB: Like SQL, SurrealQL is a database query language that comes with some improvements. It is designed to interact with SurrealDB seamlessly. It supports advanced querying such as filtering, sorting, etc., and performance optimization to minimize the usage of the resources.
- Seamless connectivity: SurrealDB provides CRUD support over REST and JSON-RPC querying over WebSockets. SurrealDB will have support for GraphQL in the future. This database can be compatible with any tech stack. It includes SDKs for JavaScript, Rust, Node.js, Python, Java, etc.
- Robust architecture and platform: SurrealDB supports multi-reader, single-writer querying, and data analysis because it can be configured to run in a single-node memory-only runtime. The platform supports multi-tenancy data separation, schema-less or schema-full models, and multi-table and multi-row transactions.
Conclusion
In this article, we looked at some of the best serverless databases in the world and what some of their features are. It is important to note that businesses or developers should not pick the most popular database or the database that has the most number of features. They should only pick the database that meets their business requirements.
