Database Trends: What is changing in the database world (besides AI)

Earlier this month, I had a half-hour chat with Kellyn Gorman, a Database and AI Advocate and Engineer at Redgate. The UK software company is known for database DevOps and database management tools most databases – and since 2024 as the owner of DB-Engines popularity Ranking of database management systems.

The chat was an intellectual pleasure, to say the least. Kellyn is outstandingly well informed on databases, with a background starting in Oracle, spanning most databases as a DBA and industry analyst, and by now using MariaDB for about fifteen years, almost since its inception.

Mirror, Mirror on DB-Engines: The MariaDB Story

Mirror, mirror on the wall — what do you measure when you measure us all?
Is it skill, or is it voice?
Is it code, or is it conversation?
DB-Engines is not a looking glass of perfection, but a mirror of perception — reflecting the chorus of those who search, speak, teach, compare, and build. And like every enchanted mirror, it shows not only what is, but what the world believes it sees.

MariaDB today stands firmly among the world’s top relational databases.
Not by inheritance, and not by illusion, but by the millions who use it, trust it, and shape it.