What are the best databases to use for Node.js applications?

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score 80 · Accepted Answer

PostgreSQL

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Top Pro

Strong community

PostgreSQL has a strong community backing it, with guides, tutorials and support for any kind of problem a developer may have. See More

Top Con

Not suited for small apps

Because of it's complexity and power, it may be an overkill to use PostgreSQL in small applications that will not make use of it's full power. See More

Specs

Platforms:Windows, Linux, Mac, BSD

JSON?:Yes

Top Pro

High performance

PostgreSQL performance increases with each release, this is also proven by many benchmark tests. Notable performance features include: As PostgreSQL only supports one storage engine, it has been able to integrate and optimise it and with the rest of the database. This has resulted in multiple benefits such as the ability to allow different transaction types to co-exist efficiently without the need to select storage engine types once for each table ahead of time. On the fly data compression resulting in less IO required for reading. Asynchronous + synchronous Replication. PostgreSQL supports a asynchronous API for use by client applications. It is reported to increase performance by up to 40% and is not supported by MySQL. Designed to scale very well with large numbers of cores at high concurrency levels. See More

Top Pro

Support for JSON data type

JSON data can be stored as a column with optional indexes. In 9.4 (upcoming at the time of this writing), JSONB will be a binary version of JSON that will save space. It's like the best of the NO-SQL world without having to give up ACID and Relationships. This means that cascading deletes can be done in a single Transaction across multiple JSON documents. See More

Top Pro

Fully ACID compliant

PostgreSQL is known to have a very holistic approach to robustness and data integrity which is reflected by it being fully ACID compliant. PostgreSQL has always been strict about making sure data is valid before allowing it into the database, and there is no way for a client to bypass those checks. Depending on your requirements, ACID compliance might be important. See More

Top Pro

Multiple node packages available

There are many packages (like Sequelize) that integrate deeply with the features Postgres offers. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed

Regular fixes and features are released See More

Top Pro

Support for geographic objects

PostgreSQL can be extended to have geographic object support through PostGIS and allows for location queries to be run through SQL. See More

Top Pro

Support Perl and Python for coding stored procedures

Postgres supports popular languages for coding stored procedures, such as Perl and Python. So, you can fairly easy transform just DB-server to reliable Service with complex business logic. See More

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The Best 1 of 15 OptionsWhy?

My Recommendation for PostgreSQL

My Recommendation for PostgreSQL

Strong community

Not suited for small apps

High performance

Support for JSON data type

Fully ACID compliant

Multiple node packages available

Actively developed

Support for geographic objects

Support Perl and Python for coding stored procedures

14 Other Options Considered

My Recommendation for RethinkDB

My Recommendation for RethinkDB

Easy install

Cannot run queries from its CLI

Changefeeds (change listeners)

No user accounts

Powerful query language

Auto master promotion

CLI and web administration tools

Horizontal scalability

Ease of cluster setup

My Recommendation for CouchDB

My Recommendation for CouchDB

Can only achieve consistency through replication and verification

Simple Map/Reduce support

Replicate and sync with the browser via PouchDB

Useful for applications where versioning is important

Sharding and Clustering support

Master-Master replication

Works well between physical network partitions

Available

My Recommendation for MongoDB

My Recommendation for MongoDB

Easy to scale

Document Stores may be not suited for relational data

Doesn't require a unified data structure

Reported to lose or corrupt data

Great speed

Need many search features

Uses JSON

Perfect documentation and tutorials

My Recommendation for Redis

My Recommendation for Redis

Redis is written in ANSI C and therefore doesn't have a VM

My Recommendation for MySQL

My Recommendation for MySQL

Error messages usually are not very detailed

Lots of community support available

Multiple third-party tools that help working with MySQL

Easy to start working with

Scalable

Backed by Oracle

My Recommendation for SQLite

My Recommendation for SQLite

Limited locking

Flexible

My Recommendation for RxDB

My Recommendation for RxDB

Replication with couchdb

Build size is over average

You can subscribe to queries

My Recommendation for ArangoDB

My Recommendation for ArangoDB

Easy cluster setup

Supports joins

Powerful Java Driver (Sync & Async)

Transaction save

JavaScript-API

Document and graph-orientend

My Recommendation for OrientDB

My Recommendation for OrientDB

Free clustering support

Bulk inserts may cause an out of memory crash

Open Source commercial friendly license (Apache 2)

Learning curve

Multi-model database (document, object, graph)

Not well known