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PostgreSQL is the DBMS of the Year 2017
The annual DBEngines ranking have just been updated, with PostgreSQL winning the “DBMS of the Year 2017” award.
http://db-engines.com/en/blog_post/76
PostgreSQL was a runner up last year.
http://db-engines.com/en/blog_post/67
So across the year, we have made more gains in popularity than all other databases. Looking at the detail we see that all of the other 4 databases that make up the Top 5 have reduced in popularity from last year. PostgreSQL has gone up, others have gone down.
What’s even more interesting, is that PostgreSQL is the only database in the top 5 systems that has increased steadily over the last 4 years.
Slow, steady progress. The word is out!
Why is that? PostgreSQL is multi-talented, offering relational features when needed, as well as JSON features for document-centric apps, full text search, GIS functionality, graph database and many other use cases. And it keeps getting better, year on year, with a steady rhythm of improvements. And a clear roadmap of new features in development.
That metric is also supremely flawed and rigged. For instance, it doesn’t actually examine any code whatsoever. There is no analysis of Github — though it would be easily quantified. Moreover, even downloads aren’t factored in. Actual downloads for the node/C# database drivers are excluded from that metric. It’s predominately concerned with jobs, and as we see with tech often jobs lag technology quite a bit.
Flawed seems likely. Rigged would imply knowingly introducing flaws, which seems too strong. Skewed towards jobs is more reasonable, I guess.
It isn’t clear to me that we should include code, but if we did we need to realize that most code isn’t public, so it would skew the metric towards open source. Downloads are also difficult to quantify because of mirror sites, which is why PostgreSQL doesn’t publish numbers.
I agree that jobs often lag technology quite a bit – that’s why its taken PostgreSQL a long time to become popular on these metrics, even though its had great technology for many years. Great technology proven by the number of other DBMS that implement features already available in PostgreSQL.