The ins and outs of FaaS Databases
Introduction
Future proof Databases
Which databases have proven to be ready for the future of technoloy, you ask? While Serverless is getting some traction, the amount of attention in regard to add-on services like databases has lagged behind quite a bit.
In this post we won’t cover the more well known “Key Value” based “databases” or, in-memory type databases you might expect from players like Cloudflare or Fastly Edge Dictionaries. Instead we’ll look at “true” SQL-ready or more traditional databases.
Contenders
There are quite a few known databases that support the way of Serverless.
Below, we’ll tackle four databases. Two very well known ones, and one which I believe deserves a lot more attention.
Amazon’s DynamoDB
Starting with the boring stuff. Amazon’s Dynamo DB has been around for ages, and ticks all the boxes that a serverless function needs in terms of Database connectivity. Dynamo supports large and small customers and validated that Serverless database companies have a reason for existence.
Azure’s Cosmos DB
Azure’s new Cosmos DB brings a new take on this by being globally distributed as well as providing API interfaces through existing database schemas like Mongo DB and Facebook’s Apache Foundation’s CassandraDB.
Mongo DB’s Stitch
MongoDB has a free usge Tier for their “Stitch” version, which seems to offer a low performance low entry way to onboard people for their enterprise hosted platform.
Fauna DB
Finally, we can talk about FaunaDB!
Fauna is a relatively new player in the space, and seems heavily focussed on the serverless market. Their developer-level tier is impressive.
We will have to do a benchmark to find out all the nitty gritty details on which provider actually gives the most bang for yor buck.
Stay tuned!
