Best Databases for Serverless
Blog post from Upstash
Serverless computing is an appealing solution for developers seeking to build applications with minimal maintenance and cost, but it requires an external data store due to its stateless nature. Key factors that make a database suitable for serverless include ease of use, serverless pricing models that scale with usage, developer-friendly pricing, support for HTTP-based connections to avoid limitations, low latency, portability, consistency, scalability, edge-friendliness, and global performance. The text reviews several databases for their compatibility with serverless environments: MongoDB Atlas is popular and easy to use but has limitations in its serverless offerings; Cassandra's Datastax Astra provides REST and GraphQL APIs but has complex pricing; DynamoDB integrates well with AWS but lacks portability; FaunaDB offers strong consistency and global replication at the cost of performance; Upstash provides intuitive use and low latency with Redis-based storage; and Firestore is user-friendly but suffers from vendor lock-in and performance issues. The document concludes by emphasizing the ongoing transition towards serverless solutions, highlighting the need for databases to align with serverless principles.