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The long, long reigns of popular databases

InfoWorld: “Database popularity rises and falls over decades, not years. The databases that developers are interested in trying today may permeate the enterprises of the future. Database habits die hard. Just ask Oracle, which continues to rake in billions in database revenue despite being one of developers’ “most dreaded” databases, according to Stack Overflow’s 2021 survey of 72,517 developers. But let’s not focus on the negative. Just like last year (and 2019, 2018, 2017, and 2016), Redis topped the charts as developers’ “most loved” database, followed closely by PostgreSQL and MongoDB. Go back to 2017 and the headliners on this database love-in are largely the same, though SQL Server has fallen down the rankings since then, and Google’s Firebase has climbed up. Developer preferences in web frameworks may change relatively frequently, but databases are sticky. As Gartner’s Merv Adrian once said, “The greatest force in legacy databases is inertia.” Hence, although it takes a long time to establish a new database, it takes even longer for a once-loved database to finally get dumped. Even when developers move on, their employers don’t. In short, it’s hard to make accurate technology predictions, but here’s one you can bank on: The databases developers love today will be the ones that permeate enterprises 10 years from now…”

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