“What is the best database for large eCommerce websites, and why?” was a question I saw on Quora. This question is important because managing data within your eCommerce website plays a pivotal role in delivering positive user experiences and providing smooth transactions. It doesn’t matter how well your eCommerce website interface is designed and how nice the products/services look. It will be worthless unless the eCommerce website has the performance to quickly retrieve, process, and deliver information.
Your database handles organizing and managing your company’s data. And with over 340 databases on the market, finding a powerful, reliable, and secure database for eCommerce can be a challenge, and choosing the best one can be overwhelming.
But we are here to help!
Below, we give some helpful tips on what to look for when choosing the right database for your eCommerce website.
Cloud Native: When evaluating databases, look for an enterprise-grade cloud native database that makes deploying, scaling, and managing data easy within a Kubernetes environment because a cloud native database offers transactional processing speed, reliability, and flexibility all in one.
Reliability: Consider a database with high availability (HA) that provides the performance and resiliency enterprises’ need, while meeting the Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) for your business. ‘High Availability’ (HA) ensures the uptime required for enterprise, mission-critical applications to ensure business success.
Easy Deployment: Developers and agile teams want to begin development in a matter of minutes as opposed to days or weeks. Finding a database that allows for quick deployment yields significant benefits, including reduced time to value, decreased operational costs, and shortened output hours for developers.
Versatility: A database that runs on any cloud – private, public, or hybrid–with no vendor lock-in are features to look for because its capability translates well for on-premise, edge and/or cloud and even embedded/IoT solutions. Also, finding a multi-model database that encompasses multiple disparate data models within a single, streamlined backend allows you and your company to easily combine different database model types into one integrated database engine.
Transactional speed: Speed and performance are top considerations when choosing a database to power critical applications. A database that rapidly delivers the throughput (TPS/TPM), response time, and cost per transaction modern applications require is necessary for large eCommerce platforms.
Ease of Use: A modern user interface to monitor and manage the database delivers business productivity and efficiency. Therefore, you must pay attention to a database’s usability from various viewpoints, including the number of active users it can support at a time, visualization, and overall ease of use. In addition, it would help if you consider ease of reporting key performance indicators (KPIs), a task scheduler, customizable alerting system, operating system, and framework compatibility.
Cost: While scalability and transactional speed requirements are crucial considerations, you can’t overlook the total cost (TCO) of implementing a database with your eCommerce solution. Your new database should fall within your budget and align with your organization’s financial objectives and existing sales and marketing plans.
Trial the Product: Vendors provide experts who will demo the database and perhaps build a customized demo based on your requirements. But you need to know what’s going on behind the curtain. So instead of being shown a static report, why not try to build the demo yourself. Best thing outside of going to a class to learn about the database is requesting a free trial, so that you can work hands-on with the database. It’s a fantastic way to get an actual perspective on the product.
Same Vendor: Now, picking an eCommerce solution from one vendor and a database from another one happens all the time and can work. But one way you can look to complement your eCommerce solution with a powerful database is to buy from the same vendor. This ensures tight integration between the products, and can deliver on innovation that customers want without being constrained by other software vendors. Plus, the same vendor carefully plans roadmaps, support, and new releases for their products to work collectively without issues.
The list of factors to consider when choosing a database is endless. However, the above tips are some of the most valuable ones if you are looking for a place to start.
Are you looking for a powerful, reliable, proven database to power your cloud-native application development projects? Or have questions? Contact the OneDB team, and we will assist.
Also, check out HCL Commerce for enterprise commerce platforms that delivering powerful B2C and B2B (Business 2 Business) customer experiences.
Future of Work (@alanlepo) 
