What Do DB‑Engines Trends Reveal About the Future of Databases?

DB‑Engines Ranking and Trend Analysis

DB‑Engines ranks database popularity using keyword mentions, Google Trends, Stack Overflow activity, job postings and Twitter. February 2017 data show Oracle, MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server and PostgreSQL as the top four. PostgreSQL’s score is 3‑4× lower than the leader but its growth accelerated after the 9.3 release (2013). MySQL’s score is rising, driven by performance improvements, JSON functions, the X‑plugin document store, Group Replication and the MyRocks storage engine.

RDBMS Highlights

Oracle 12c Release 2 – Exadata and SuperCluster editions released; MOS document 742060.1 confirms Linux and Solaris binaries available 15 Mar 2017.

MySQL 5.7.17 Group Replication – Released 26 Dec 2016. Benchmarks show higher throughput than Galera, approaching asynchronous‑synchronous performance. Backup and client‑side tooling still lag.

Microsoft SQL Server 2016 Linux edition – Launched 1 Dec 2016; global market‑share increase of 76.89 % from Jan 2016 to Jan 2017.

PostgreSQL 10.0 (planned) – 9.6 introduced parallel query, block‑level indexing and synchronous replication; 10.0 will add further scalability features.

IBM DB2 LUW 11.1 Mod 1 Fix Pack 1 – Improves columnar storage performance and workload‑management.

Greenplum – Patch releases 4.3.11.1‑4.3.11.3 and Gemfire‑Greenplum connector (see http://ggc.docs.pivotal.io/) enable OLTP‑OLAP integration.

MariaDB ColumnStore – Distributed columnar engine built on MariaDB 10.1, compatible with standard MySQL tools; supports parallel analytics without requiring Hadoop.

NoSQL Highlights

MongoDB 3.4 – Passed the Jepsen distributed‑system tests (consistency under network partitions, clock skew). Versions 3.4.1 and development 3.5.1 also pass.

Redis – CSRF vulnerability fixed in 3.2.7 (pull request https://github.com/antirez/redis/pull/3802/files); roadmap for 4.2 published (

https://gist.github.com/antirez/a3787d538eec3db381a41654e214b31d

).

Apache HBase 1.3.0 – Released 17 Jan 2017; implements Google Bigtable, uses HDFS for storage and Zookeeper for coordination; >1 700 issues fixed.

Apache Geode 1.1.0 – 252 bug fixes; JSON formatter enhanced; native C/C++ client added.

ClickHouse – Open‑source columnar analytics DB from Yandex; handles billions of events daily with sub‑second SQL query latency.

NewSQL Highlights

TiDB RC2 – Distributed NewSQL compatible with MySQL syntax, built on Google Spanner/F1 concepts; uses RocksDB for storage and TiKV for distributed KV layer. RC2 scheduled for release end of month. Documentation: https://github.com/pingcap/docs-cn.

RethinkDB – After bankruptcy, source code transferred to CNCF and relicensed to Apache 2.0; development continues under Linux Foundation stewardship.

Big‑Data Ecosystem Highlights

Apache Hadoop 3.0.0 Alpha 2 – Released 20 Jan 2017; minor bug fixes and feature refinements.

GPText – Pivotal’s full‑text search and analysis engine for Greenplum; provides millisecond‑level responses for unstructured data.

Apache HAWQ 2.1.1.0 – Enterprise release with query optimizer, resource manager and PXF enhancements; see release notes

https://issues.apache.org/jira/secure/ReleaseNote.jspa?projectId=12318826&version=12338900

.

Domestic Database Overview

GBase UP – Integrated MPP, OLTP and Hadoop capabilities; supports OLAP, OLTP and NoSQL workloads via a unified platform.

SequoiaDB 2.6 Community Edition – Distributed database with Spark integration, multi‑dimensional partitioning and standard SQL support.

DM V7.1.5.145 – Java‑VM‑based DBMS with cross‑platform support; latest public release.

OceanBase 1.0 – Cloud‑native distributed relational DB, MySQL‑compatible; deployed in high‑throughput payment systems (e.g., Ant Financial). Invitation testing available via Alibaba Cloud.