Why Wanli Database Became the Dark Horse Leader in China’s Critical‑Application Market

Report methodology and evaluation criteria

The CCID "14th Five‑Year Plan" key‑application database market research report uses a four‑quadrant competitive model. Vendors are evaluated on two dimensions:

Technical advancement – product architecture, technology roadmap, service ecosystem, and real‑world application cases.

Product security – corporate equity structure, security‑level certifications, and customer type.

Only commercial database products (no community‑edition releases) are considered, and the focus is on the critical‑application sector (finance, energy, telecom, public‑service information systems, etc.).

Key technical challenges for critical‑application databases

Two major challenges drive the evaluation:

Support for cloud‑era requirements – cloud databases decouple storage and compute, providing near‑infinite scalability, high elasticity, strong consistency, and multi‑model data processing.

Handling massive data growth – distributed databases must offer resource‑pooling, logical isolation, elastic scaling, HTAP (Hybrid Transaction/Analytical Processing) capabilities, multi‑tenant management, high availability, and compatibility with diverse data types.

Wanli Database background

Wanli Database was founded on 24 October 2000, making it one of the earliest Chinese developers of distributed databases. It remains an independent, “clean‑background” company with no foreign ownership or ties to any specific cloud provider, which enhances its neutrality for multi‑cloud deployments.

Product security certifications

Wanli’s flagship product has passed the following national security‑level certifications:

People’s Bank of China security‑level test

China Electronics Technology Group (CETC) security‑level test

China Software Testing Center security‑level test

These certifications demonstrate compliance with both national and industry security standards, a prerequisite for deployment in finance, telecom, and energy sectors.

Major deployments and joint‑development projects

2019 – Joint R&D with State Grid on the “Si Ji You Rong” (思极有容) database.

2020 – Co‑development with China Unicom on the uniBase data‑intelligence platform.

2020 – License‑based OLTP project with China Mobile, winning a national‑level innovation bid.

All three cases involve large‑scale, mission‑critical workloads, confirming Wanli’s ability to meet stringent performance and security requirements.

GreatDB architecture

GreatDB, the core product, implements a native distributed architecture with the following technical features:

Majority‑consensus protocol combined with data redundancy for high reliability.

Two‑phase commit (2PC) coordinated by a Distributed Transaction Manager (DTM) to guarantee ACID‑compliant distributed transactions.

Component‑level on‑demand scalability – compute, storage, and transaction processing nodes can be added independently.

Support for HTAP workloads, multi‑tenant isolation, and automatic failover to achieve high availability.

Optimized for Chinese enterprise requirements such as compliance with domestic hardware, operating systems, and regulatory standards.

Technology roadmap and MySQL lineage

GreatDB follows a MySQL‑centric technology roadmap. The core engineering team originates from the former MySQL China R&D and service centers and has contributed to:

MySQL replication mechanisms.

MySQL NDB Cluster development.

Bug fixes and performance patches.

Chinese documentation and localization.

This deep MySQL expertise underpins the product’s compatibility with MySQL client ecosystems while allowing independent innovation.

Open‑source community – GreatSQL

In 2021 Wanli open‑sourced its accumulated technology as the GreatSQL community (hosted on Gitee). The project was recognized as Gitee’s “most valuable open‑source project” in the same year, indicating active community engagement and a commitment to an independent MySQL‑based ecosystem.

Service model and reliability tooling

Wanli emphasizes test‑driven professional support. It has built a chaos‑testing framework called DBomb that can reproduce complex distributed‑system failures, enabling rapid root‑cause analysis and remediation. The company also offers joint‑development and consulting services tailored to large‑scale customers, differentiating it from pure license‑only vendors.

Summary of competitive strengths

Wanli Database’s placement in the leader quadrant is supported by:

More than 16 years of R&D experience in distributed databases.

Native distributed architecture with majority‑consensus, data redundancy, and 2PC + DTM for ACID transactions.

Strong security certifications required for critical‑application sectors.

Successful large‑scale deployments in finance, telecom, and energy.

Deep MySQL technical heritage and active open‑source community (GreatSQL).

Neutral, independent ownership that facilitates multi‑cloud and sovereign‑technology strategies.

Professional service capabilities, including the DBomb chaos‑testing tool.