What the Q1 2019 DB‑Engines Ranking Reveals About Oracle, MySQL and Emerging Databases

DB‑Engines released its April 2019 ranking for the first quarter of the year, and the top five databases all recorded score increases while the overall order remained unchanged.

Oracle +0.80 pts vs Mar, ‑9.85 pts YoY
MySQL +16.89 pts vs Mar, 64.8 pts behind Oracle
SQL Server +12.11 pts vs Mar, ‑35.55 pts YoY
PostgreSQL +8.91 pts vs Mar, +83.25 pts YoY
MongoDB +0.64 pts vs Mar, +60.57 pts YoY

Oracle’s modest gain is attributed to its Autonomous Database, which Larry Ellison says now serves nearly 1,000 customers and added about 4,000 trial users in the latest fiscal quarter.

Despite widespread reports of layoffs and a rocky cloud‑transition, Oracle’s Q3 revenue fell only 1 % year‑over‑year to $96 billion, beating market expectations. Cloud Services & License Support revenue rose 1 % to $6.7 billion, while Cloud License & On‑Premise License revenue fell 4 % to $1.3 billion; hardware and services revenues also declined.

These figures illustrate Oracle’s strategic shift from a database‑centric business to a broader cloud infrastructure focus, emphasizing OCI (Oracle Cloud Infrastructure) and the so‑called “Gen 2 Cloud.” The internal database development team is no longer the company’s largest R&D group.

MySQL, now an Oracle‑owned open‑source database, remains the most popular open‑source option, reinforcing Oracle’s influence in the database market.

Beyond Oracle, the “four little dragons” of open‑source databases—PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis and Elasticsearch—are gaining momentum in the cloud era. PostgreSQL and MongoDB show strong upward trends, while Redis and Elasticsearch dominate niche segments.

MongoDB’s market valuation has recently reached $8 billion, reflecting high investor expectations for emerging database platforms.

Overall, the ranking and accompanying analysis suggest a continuing diversification of the database landscape, with traditional vendors adapting to cloud strategies and open‑source solutions capturing increasing market share.