9 Best Serverless Databases For Modern Applications

Serverless Database was specifically designed to handle unpredictable workloads that can change quickly. As a result, many organizations have embraced Serverless Architecture to build modern event-driven architectures. This has seen an increase in popularity within the ecosystem of serverless technologies.

Introduction to Serverless Database

Serverless Computing requires a Serverless Database. These databases are specifically designed to handle unpredictable workloads that can change quickly. What’s more? This database can be created by choosing the instance size. This works well when there is a predictable workload, request rate, and processing requirements. It can be difficult to arrange the right amount of capacity in cases where the workload is unpredictable and there is a high volume of requests for just a few minutes each week or one day. However, it might not be the best option to pay for it on an ongoing basis. This is where the serverless database comes into play.

Serverless Database Features

Here are the main features of Serverless Databases:

Real-time Access: Access to your data is available at a fine level. It automatically indexes the data and makes them immediately available. This allows you to query, read, update, and add items to your serverless database in a constant manner. What’s more? You will be able to access it instantly via functions.

Infinite Scalability: You can scale up or down serverless databases anytime. They start up and shut down according to the application’s needs. It will scale the computing units (ACUs in the case of Aurora Serverless) to handle your queries, reading, and writing to the same cluster of data. This automation will allow you to run all of your functions simultaneously and ensure that your data remains consistent.

High Security: Modern applications can be exposed to malicious and untrusted audiences on a global scale. It ensures that every application interacting with the same database passes the same access control protocol. It reduces the attack surface, which is a crucial risk to businesses.

Availability: The serverless database provides you with the ability to reduce latency. This approach allows data from event-driven functions to be read right by the user.

Schemaless: Schemaless allows you to handle all data outputs from your functions. It is easy to integrate the serverless database with your functions using this “handle everything” approach. This is a unique feature in Serverless databases.

Now let’s explore some best serverless databases for modern applications.

Fauna

Fauna is a distributed, serverless database. Fauna offers extreme flexibility. You can adjust several parameters to meet the needs of your project. Fauna can be used as a key-value, graph, document-based, or traditional relational database. You can either create a schema or let the data loose. It’s extremely versatile. Fauna can be run in the cloud, on-premises, or embedded within our application. It also offers the most popular deployment options like machine images or docker images. This application can run at very high speeds and performs well with ACID transactions.

Bit.io

bit.io allows you to quickly and easily set up a PostgreSQL Database. Drag and drop files to load data into a PostgreSQL Database. You can also enter a URL for a file, send data from R or Python, or use any other Postgres/HTTP client. The in-browser SQL editor allows you to work with the data using any of your favorite data analysis tools, including SQL clients, R and Python notebooks, command line, and many more. bit.io provides a fully-featured PostgreSQL database. It can be used quickly and with virtually no configuration. It also integrates with a growing number of data tools. bit.io will work with any tool that supports PostgreSQL.

Upstash

Upstash, a Serverless memory cloud database created by Upstash Inc (a California-based company). It can be used as a caching layer or as a database. It doesn’t require you to manage clusters or database servers. It is completely serverless. That’s why Serverless technologies such as Upstash are so useful. Upstash doesn’t charge anything if you don’t use it. Upstash can be used for Redis-popular use cases like:

General caching Session caching Leaderboards Queues Usage metering (counting) Filtering content

Features

Designed for Serverless Pay as you go Low latency Storage that is durable and fast

Xata

Xata, a serverless database, has powerful search and analytics built in. Xata uses a relational database model with a strict schema (schema) and supports JSON-like objects. The records are organized into tables which are then grouped into databases. Xata supports rich columns, and relationships between tables can be represented using link columns. These are similar to the foreign key. Xata, a new cloud service type, offers an abstraction layer on top of multiple data stores to simplify application development and operation. This type of service is called a Serverless Data Platform. This document can be used to help you replicate the architecture, which will give you some of the advantages of using Xata.

SurrealDB

SurrealDB, a NewSQL cloud database that is innovative, can be used for serverless, jamstack, single-page, traditional, and serverless applications. It offers unparalleled flexibility and financial value. It can be deployed on-premise, embedded, or edge computing environments, as well as being able to deploy on the cloud. Your team doesn’t need to be fluent in complex database languages. Advanced functionality is also simple and straightforward but still fast and performant. You can forget about scaling servers, databases, load balancers, and API endpoints. SurrealDB removes the complexity from your stack and allows you to scale up with a distributed, highly-available platform. SurrealDB Cloud allows you to deploy anywhere.

CosmosDB

Azure Cosmos DB, a JSON-based global distributed database, is available as a ‘Platform as a Service (PaaS) in Microsoft Azure. It allows users to automatically build and distribute applications across Azure data centers without configuration. It is part of Azure and is available in all regions. It also replicates data across multiple data centers in the network. There are many interfaces available, with the most interesting being SQL-based. CosmosDB is the ideal service for organizations that process, query, and manage many short-lived, important pieces of information.

CockroachDB

CockroachDB, a distributed SQL database built on top of a consistent key-value and transactional store, is called CockroachDB. It is written in Go and is fully open-source. Its primary goals include the support of ACID transactions, horizontal scaling, and survivability. It aims to tolerate anything, from a single disk failure to an entire disaster recovery operation, without any manual intervention, and with minimal latency disruption. CockroachDB is a good choice for applications that need reliable, accurate, and available data at all scales. You can access the admin UI, which comes in a bundle with CockroachDB at http://localhost:8080 as soon as the cluster is up and running. It provides information about the cluster and database configuration and assists us in optimizing cluster performance by monitoring metrics such as health, runtime metrics, replication, and node details.

PlanetScale

PlanetScale, a new DBaaS platform, lets you quickly spin up a database without any connection management. PlanetScale databases were designed for developers and their workflows. You can deploy a fully managed database that has the reliability and flexibility of MySQL. Their databases are built on MySQL 8.0. PlanetScale offers two types of database branches: production and development. Its branching feature lets you treat your databases as code. You can create a branch from your production database schema that will be used for isolated development environments.