Most Popular Databases In The World (2023)

Introduction

There are hundreds of databases and dozens of types of databases. Each database type was designed for a specific purpose. Do you wonder which database is the most popular database in the world? Is it MySQL or SQL Server, or Oracle? Do you wonder which database types are the most in-demand today? The following table lists the world's most popular databases with their rankings. A higher score means a higher order.

The most popular database in the world is Oracle, according to DB-Engine ranking. Oracle is followed by MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MongoDB in the ranking.

The following table lists the world’s most popular databases and their rankings.

	Database	Rank
1	Oracle	1268.84
2	MySQL	1154.27
3	Microsoft SQL Server	1040.26
4	PostgreSQL	466.11
5	MongoDB	387.18
6	IBM Db2	179.85
7	Redis	149.01
8	Elasticsearch	143.44
9	Microsoft Access	141.62
10	SQLite	126.8
11	Cassandra	122.98
12	Splunk	81.43
13	MariaDB	78.82
14	Teradata	76.19
15	Hive	69.91
16	Solr	61.48
17	HBase	60.39
18	FileMaker	57.15
19	SAP HANA	56.64
20	Amazon DynamoDB	55.09
21	SAP Adaptive Server	55.04
22	Neo4j	46.8
23	Couchbase	34.59
24	Memcached	29.54
25	Microsoft Azure SQL Database	27.2

The DB Engines score is calculated based on the following factors.

1. Number of results in Google, Bing, and Yandex search engines
2. Frequency of searches in Google Trends
3. Frequency of technical discussions on the well-known IT-related Q&A sites Stack Overflow and DBA Stack Exchange
4. The number of job offers on Indeed and Simply Hired.
5. A number of profiles in professional networks, including LinkedIn and Upwork.
6. Mentions in Twitter tweets.

1. Oracle

Oracle database, developed by Oracle Corporation, is the most popular relational database system (RDBMS). Not only Oracle is an RDBMS but also provides functionality for Cloud, Document Store, Graph DBMS, Key-value storage, BLOG, and PDF Storage. Recently. Oracle just announced an autonomous feature that allows databases to be intelligent and self-managed.

The current version of Oracle Database is 21c.

Oracle database is a relational database (RDBMS). Relational databases store data in a tabular form of rows and columns. Column of a database table represents the attributes of an entity and rows of a table store records. An RDBMS that implements object-oriented features such as user-defined types, inheritance, and polymorphism is called an object-relational database management system (ORDBMS). Oracle Database has extended the relational model to an object-relational model, making it possible to store complex business models in a relational database.

One characteristic of an RDBMS is the independence of physical data storage from logical data structures. In Oracle Database, a database schema is a collection of logical data structures or schema objects. A database user owns a database schema, which has the same name as the user name. Schema objects are user-created structures that directly refer to the data in the database. The database supports many types of schema objects, the most important of which are tables and indexes. A schema object is one type of database object. Some database objects, such as profiles and roles, do not reside in schemas.

Oracle database is available for local installation as well as a cloud service on Oracle Cloud.

2. MySQL

MySQL is the world’s most popular database that is open source and free. MySQL was acquired by Oracle as a part of Sun Microsystems' acquisition in 2009.

In MySQL, the SQL part of “MySQL” stands for “Structured Query Language”. SQL is the most common standardized language used to access databases. Depending on your programming environment, you might enter SQL directly (for example, to generate reports), embed SQL statements into code written in another language, or use a language-specific API that hides the SQL syntax.

Key properties of MySQL.

• MySQL is a database management system.
• MySQL databases are relational.
• MySQL software is Open Source.
• The MySQL Database Server is very fast, reliable, scalable, and easy to use.
• MySQL Server works in client/server or embedded systems.

While Oracle and SQL Server dominate the enterprise world, the adoption of MySQL is growing in large enterprises. MySQL is the most popular database among startups and open-source stacks. If you count number of the applications (not revenue), MySQL is the most popular and adopted database among all. 

3. SQL Server

SQL Server database developed by Microsoft is one of the most popular databases in the world. Initially launched in 1989 and written in C, C++, SQL Server is now widely used among major companies. SQL Server is also a part of Microsoft’s Azure cloud as Azure SQL Server. The current version of SQL Server is SQL Server 2019.

Similar to Oracle and MySQL, SQL Server is also a relational database management system (RDBMS).

Some popular SQL Server editions are.

Azure SQL Database is the cloud-based version of Microsoft SQL Server, presented as a platform as a service offering on Microsoft Azure.

Compact (SQL CE), the compact edition, is an embedded database engine. Unlike the other editions of SQL Server, the SQL CE engine is based on SQL Mobile (initially designed for use with hand-held devices) and does not share the same binaries. Due to its small size (1 MB DLL footprint), it has a markedly reduced feature set compared to the other editions. For example, it supports a subset of the standard data types and does not support stored procedures Views, or multiple-statement batches (among other limitations). It is limited to a 4 GB maximum database size and cannot be run as a Windows service, Compact Edition must be hosted by the application using it. The 3.5 version includes support for ADO.NET Synchronization Services. SQL CE does not support ODBC connectivity, unlike SQL Server proper.

The current version of SQL Server is SQL Server 2022. SQL Server is available on Azure, Edge, and on-premises to deploy and use.

SQL Server Enterprise Edition is the main database most companies buy that comes with every product feature. SQL Server Developer Edition includes the same features as SQL Server Enterprise Edition but is limited to one license only that is used for development purposes by software developers. 

4.PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an open-source relational database that is gaining popularity in recent years, PostgreSQL is an object-relational database management system and can be installed on any popular operating system, including Windows, Unix, and Linux. PostgreSQL is also available on most of the public clouds, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

The key features of PostgreSQL are

• Open-source and platform independent
• Types that are user-defined
• Inheritance of the table
• Sophisticated mechanism of locking
• Referential honesty of the international main
• Views, regulations
• sub-queries
• Transactions Nested (savepoints)
• Regulation of multi-version concurrency (MVCC)
• Replication asynchronous

Continue reading more about What is PostgreSQL.

5. MongoDB

MongoDB is another popular NoSQL document DB. Key features of MongoDB are:

• MongoDB supports JSON data models with dynamic schemas.
• In MongoDB, we can perform a search on any field or any range query and also can use a regular expression for searching the data
• MongoDB supports secondary indexes, which allow us to search a variety of data in a very small time span. It also provides us with different types of indexes like unique indexes, compound indexes, geospatial indexes, etc.
• MongoDB supports an aggregation pipeline which helps us to build complex aggregations to optimize the database
• MongoDB supports Master-Slave replication
• MongoDB supports automatic load-balancing features.
• MongoDB supports auto-sharding for horizontal scaling.
• MongoDB can store any type of file, which can be any size, without affecting our stack
• MongoDB basically uses JavaScript objects in place of the procedure.
• MongoDB supports special collection types like TTL (Time-To-Live) for data storage which expires at a certain time.

Continue reading. What is MongoDB

Summary

There are hundreds of database management systems in the market, but a few stand out among all due to their features, longevity, and the companies and support behind it. While SQL Server and Oracle are a product of Microsoft and Oracle, MySQL is an open-source DBMS. In this post, we saw a list of the most popular databases in the world.

Here are some more articles that you may be interested in.

1. What Are Different Types of Database Management Systems
2. What are Hierarchical Databases
3. What are Relational Databases
4. What are Graph Databases
5. What are Network Databases
6. What are Document Databases
7. What are NoSQL Databases
8. What are Column Store Databases
9. What is SQL
10. What are the Most Popular Databases in the World