--- title: "A 2015 Database News Roundup" publication: "DB Weekly" issue: 85 published_at: "2015-12-31" canonical_url: "https://dbweekly.com/issues/85" --- Database Weekly 85 . A look back at 2015 in the world of databases -[Read this on the Web](http://dbweekly.com/issues/85) [Database Weekly](http://dbweekly.com) Issue 85 — December 31, 2015 Featured A LOOK BACK AT THE BEST OF 2015 I hope you've been having a great holiday season. We have, and we decided this week to reflect on the most popular stories in DB Weekly and from the overall database world in 2015. Thanks for reading, and happy new year! _Peter Cooper, Editor_ [RethinkDB 2.0 is Amazing](http://rob.conery.io/2015/04/17/rethinkdb-2-0-is-amazing/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — In the most popular DB Weekly article of the year, Rob Conery waxed lyrical about RethinkDB, a database that challenges many of the assumptions about how an RDBMS should work. Rob Conery [The 10 Most Popular DB Engines (SQL and NoSQL) in 2015](http://blog.jooq.org/2015/10/15/the-10-most-popular-db-engines-sql-and-nosql-in-2015/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — Oracle, MySQL and SQL Server held the top 3 positions, with MongoDB, Cassandra and Redis climbing. jooqnews [10 SQL Articles Everyone Must Read](http://blog.jooq.org/2015/02/13/10-sql-articles-everyone-must-read/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — Lukas always has good stuff to share but this time it’s other people’s articles he considers ‘must reads’ if you’re into SQL. Lukas Eder [Hate Fixing Bugs? Lucky You. We Love It.](http://corgibytes.com) — Tackling technical debt and integrating disparate systems is fun, too. (Yes, really.) Corgibytessponsored — [![\](https://copm.s3.amazonaws.com/b6e5138a.png)](http://corgibytes.com) [PipelineDB: The Streaming SQL Database](http://www.pipelinedb.com/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — An open-source relational database (based on PostgreSQL 9.4) that runs SQL queries continuously on streams, incrementally storing results in tables. PipelineDB [7 Common Database Design Errors](http://www.vertabelo.com/blog/technical-articles/7-common-database-design-errors?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — Covered invalid naming, bad column widths, poor indexing, ignoring time zones, collation, and more. Grzegorz Kaczor [10 Rules for a Better SQL Schema](https://www.periscope.io/blog/better-sql-schema.html?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — A variety of tips for building an easy to understand and maintain schema for your SQL database. Periscope [Gun: The 'Easiest' Database Ever?](http://gundb.io/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — “Gun is a persisted distributed cache, part of a NoDB movement. [..] Think of it as ‘Dropbox for Databases’.” The [discussion on Hacker News](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9076558) was also interesting. GunDB Jobs [Heroku Data Infrastructure Engineer](https://www.heroku.com/careers/104) — Join the Heroku Data team and learn about supporting and operating database systems at scale. Heroku In brief [Amazon Launched 'Elasticsearch Service' (ES)](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-amazon-elasticsearch-service/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — Elasticsearch is a real-time, distributed search and analytics engine (which effectively acts like a document database too). AWS Official Blognews [SQLite 3.9.0 Released](https://www.sqlite.org/releaselog/3_9_0.html?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) SQLitenews [MongoDB 3.0 Released: A Significant Release](http://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-3.0?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — We're [now up to 3.2](https://www.mongodb.com/mongodb-3.2), but 3.0 was a hugely popular release with readers. MongoDBnews [Redis 3.0 Released](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/redis-db/dO0bFyD_THQ/Uoo2GjIx6qgJ?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — This was a major release for the popular key-value cache and store. Salvatore Sanfilipponews [Introducing Espresso - LinkedIn's Hot New Distributed Document Store](http://engineering.linkedin.com/espresso/introducing-espresso-linkedins-hot-new-distributed-document-store?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) LinkedIn Engineeringnews [A Tiny Intro to Database Systems](http://blog.dancrisan.com/a-tiny-intro-to-database-systems?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Dan Crisantutorial [How Does A Relational Database Work](http://coding-geek.com/how-databases-work/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Coding Geektutorial [Creating a Database Model for A Messaging System](http://www.vertabelo.com/blog/technical-articles/database-model-for-a-messaging-system?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Shantanu Khertutorial [9 Tips for Better Database Design](http://www.vertabelo.com/blog/notes-from-the-lab/9-tips-for-better-database-design?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Jeffrey Edisontutorial [An Introduction to Apache Spark](http://www.toptal.com/spark/introduction-to-apache-spark?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Radek Ostrowskitutorial [Can Anyone Provide A Sound Argument for Choosing MySQL Over Postgres?](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9586504&utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — It’s not easy, but some people fought MySQL’s corner pretty well. Hacker Newsopinion [Benchmarking Aurora vs MySQL: Is Amazon’s New DB 5x Faster?](http://blog.takipi.com/benchmarking-aurora-vs-mysql-is-amazons-new-db-really-5x-faster/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Alex Zhitnitskyopinion [Why You Should Never, Ever, Ever Use MongoDB](http://cryto.net/~joepie91/blog/2015/07/19/why-you-should-never-ever-ever-use-mongodb/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — A very controversial opinion piece we only linked due to its popularity in the community. Sven Slootwegopinion [Have you got SQL fingers?](http://www.red-gate.com/products/sql-development/sql-prompt/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=displayemail&utm_content=sqlfingers_v2&utm_campaign=sqlprompt&utm_term=email-24175#sql-fingers) — Try SQL Prompt and you’ll be able to write, refactor, and reformat SQL effortlessly in SSMS and Visual Studio. Find out more. Red Gate Softwaretools sponsored [A List of Over 200 NoSQL Databases](http://nosql-database.org/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — Complete with short summaries. Quite a handy list. nosql-database.​orgtools [Sophia: A Modern Embeddable Key-Value Database](http://sphia.org/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) — Boasts full ACID compliance and is designed for fast write (append-only) and read. Dmitry Simonenkotools [Scylla DB: An Apache Cassandra-compatible Database Written in C++](http://www.scylladb.com/?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Scyllatools [Cayley: An Open-Source Graph Database From Google](https://github.com/google/cayley?utm_source=dbweekly&utm_medium=email) Googletools Database Weekly is curated by Peter Cooper [Read this issue on the Web](http://dbweekly.com/issues/85) [See our archives](http://dbweekly.com/issues) [Change your email address](*|UPDATE_PROFILE|*) [Stop getting this newsletter](*|UNSUB|*) Published by [Cooperpress](https://cooperpress.com/) Fairfield Enterprise Centre, Lincoln Way, Louth, LN11 0LS, UK