Over the past decade, applications have become more and more data-intensive. Dynamic data, analytics, and models are now at the core of any application that matters. To support these requirements, there is a commonly held, but often incorrect, belief that modern applications need to be built on top of a variety of special-purpose databases, each built for a specific workload. It is said that this allows you to pick the best ones to solve your application needs.
This trend is apparent when you look at the plethora of open-source data tools that have proliferated in recent years. Each one was built to scratch an itch, optimized for specific, narrow use cases seen in a smattering of projects. In response, some of the cloud vendors have packaged up these multiple database technologies for you to choose from, commonly forking from existing open-source projects. You’re then meant to wire together several of these tools into the needed data solution for each application.