In early December MongoDB was named the most popular database among Linux users. While a great commendation of the work MongoDB's development community has done, such accolades don't fully convey the breadth and depth of MongoDB's popularity. To get a more complete picture of just how successful MongoDB has been, it's important to factor in a number of different measures...
...which is precisely what the DB-Engines database ranking does.
A Comprehensive View Of Database Popularity
More than a simple popularity contest, DB-Engines aggregates data on a number of factors, including job creation, professional certifications, social media mentions, Google searches and more to yield a comprehensive view of a database's impact. For example, as nice as it is to have lots of people running Google queries on "MongoDB," it's far more potent to know that employers are hiring tens of thousands of MongoDB-experienced developers or that dramatically more industry professionals cite MongoDB as a technical competency than they do any other modern database:
But synthesizing all three, along with information on technical discussions online, website mentions and more, gives a pretty complete view of a database's importance.
MongoDB: 2013 Database Of The Year
Which is why we're so happy that DB-Engines has named MongoDB the 2013 database management system of the year, based on MongoDB's growth. As noted by Solid IT, the company that compiles the DB-Engines ranking, "MongoDB is the database management system that gained more popularity in our DB-Engines Ranking within the last year than any other system." Importantly, MongoDB's gains weren't calculated by measuring a percentage gain, but rather an absolute rise in popularity.
More than any other NoSQL database? Yes. But also more than Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server and every other open source or proprietary relational database.
A Modern Database For Modern Applications
That's pretty impressive, and speaks to the shift to a modern database to solve modern application requirements. As good as relational databases were for the neat-and-tidy data of yesteryear, they're often a poor fit for today's applications that depend upon unstructured or semi-structured data.
This honor underscores something that is increasingly clear: MongoDB is very, very popular.
Which of course has less to do with us and more to do with MongoDB's wonderful community of users and developers. MongoDB is an open-source database. Thank you for making it the industry standard for modern applications.