The Enduring Dominance of Relational Databases and the Rise of Distributed OceanBase

Enterprises need different databases at different times and environments, but relational databases remain the mainstream backbone of information infrastructure.

The concept of databases originated in the 1960s, the relational model emerged in the 1970s, and by the 1980s relational databases became the core of societal information systems; the 2000s saw massive concurrency growth, and from 2006 a wave of NoSQL databases appeared.

Despite the NoSQL hype, relational databases have continued to dominate, with long‑standing leaders such as Oracle, SQL Server, and DB2 still holding the top market positions.

According to Gartner, the global database market reached US$37.5 billion in 2018 with a 10 % annual growth rate, projected to hit US$45.9 billion by 2020, while China’s relational‑database market is expected to reach US$2.07 billion in 2020.

Relational databases stay strong because they provide ACID guarantees that simplify application development, and their SQL syntax is close to natural language, improving code readability, maintainability, and reducing communication costs.

In recent years, many domestic vendors have launched their own relational databases, with Ant Financial’s OceanBase being a prominent example; to meet complex business demands, relational databases are evolving from centralized to distributed architectures.

The architectural shift began with Alibaba’s 2009 “去IOE” initiative to break dependence on IBM, Oracle, and EMC, leading to the launch of the OceanBase distributed relational database project in 2010.

Distributed architectures address the scalability limits of centralized systems, align with the rapid growth of cloud computing, and are increasingly adopted despite cautious adoption in sectors like traditional banking.

OceanBase has proven its performance by winning the TPC‑C benchmark, supporting dozens of banks and financial institutions, and its 2.2 version adds MySQL and Oracle compatibility with over 50 % OLTP performance improvement over version 2.0.

Ant Financial also organized a digital classroom livestream from February 19‑26, covering cloud‑native, R&D efficiency, and database topics, with hands‑on sessions on deploying and operating OceanBase 2.2.

OceanBase 2.2 is now publicly released on the official website, offering a stable, high‑performance, and multi‑model distributed relational database solution.