Best SQL Databases for Microsoft Power Query

Snowflake is a cloud-native data platform that combines data warehousing, data lakes, and data sharing into a single solution. By offering elastic scalability and automatic scaling, Snowflake enables businesses to handle vast amounts of data while maintaining high performance at low cost. The platform's architecture allows users to separate storage and compute, offering flexibility in managing workloads. Snowflake supports real-time data sharing and integrates seamlessly with other analytics tools, enabling teams to collaborate and gain insights from their data more efficiently. Its secure, multi-cloud architecture makes it a strong choice for enterprises looking to leverage data at scale.

MySQL stands out as the most widely used open source database globally. Thanks to its established track record in performance, dependability, and user-friendliness, it has emerged as the preferred database for web applications, powering notable platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, alongside the top five websites. Furthermore, MySQL is also highly favored as an embedded database solution, being distributed by numerous independent software vendors and original equipment manufacturers. Its versatility and robust features contribute to its widespread adoption across various industries.

Microsoft SQL Server 2019 incorporates both intelligence and security, providing users with added features at no additional cost while ensuring top-tier performance and adaptability for on-premises requirements. You can seamlessly transition to the cloud, taking full advantage of its efficiency and agility without the need to alter your existing code. By leveraging Azure, you can accelerate insight generation and predictive analytics. Development is flexible, allowing you to utilize your preferred technologies, including open-source options, supported by Microsoft's advancements. The platform enables easy data integration into your applications and offers a comprehensive suite of cognitive services that facilitate the creation of human-like intelligence, regardless of data volume. The integration of AI is intrinsic to the data platform, allowing for quicker insight extraction from both on-premises and cloud-stored data. By combining your unique enterprise data with global data, you can foster an organization that is driven by intelligence. The dynamic data platform provides a consistent user experience across various environments, expediting the time it takes to bring innovations to market; this allows you to develop your applications and deploy them in any environment you choose, enhancing overall operational efficiency.

Amazon Redshift is the preferred choice among customers for cloud data warehousing, outpacing all competitors in popularity. It supports analytical tasks for a diverse range of organizations, from Fortune 500 companies to emerging startups, facilitating their evolution into large-scale enterprises, as evidenced by Lyft's growth. No other data warehouse simplifies the process of extracting insights from extensive datasets as effectively as Redshift. Users can perform queries on vast amounts of structured and semi-structured data across their operational databases, data lakes, and the data warehouse using standard SQL queries. Moreover, Redshift allows for the seamless saving of query results back to S3 data lakes in open formats like Apache Parquet, enabling further analysis through various analytics services, including Amazon EMR, Amazon Athena, and Amazon SageMaker. Recognized as the fastest cloud data warehouse globally, Redshift continues to enhance its performance year after year. For workloads that demand high performance, the new RA3 instances provide up to three times the performance compared to any other cloud data warehouse available today, ensuring businesses can operate at peak efficiency. This combination of speed and user-friendly features makes Redshift a compelling choice for organizations of all sizes.

Azure SQL Database, a member of the Azure SQL suite, is a sophisticated and adaptable relational database service designed specifically for cloud environments. It is continuously updated, ensuring you benefit from the latest advancements, including AI-driven features that enhance both performance and reliability. With serverless computing and Hyperscale storage options, resources can effortlessly adjust according to your needs, allowing you to concentrate on creating innovative applications without the stress of managing storage or resources. This fully managed SQL database simplifies the challenges of ensuring high availability, performing tuning, handling backups, and executing other essential database management tasks. You can expedite your application development on the unique cloud platform that offers evergreen SQL, utilizing up-to-date SQL Server features while remaining free from concerns about updates, upgrades, or the end of support. Customize your modern app development experience with both provisioned and serverless compute choices, ensuring flexibility and efficiency tailored to your specific needs. This way, you can unleash your creativity while relying on a robust foundation.

IBM Db2 encompasses a suite of data management solutions, prominently featuring the Db2 relational database. These offerings incorporate AI-driven functionalities designed to streamline the management of both structured and unstructured data across various on-premises and multicloud settings. By simplifying data accessibility, the Db2 suite empowers businesses to leverage the advantages of AI effectively. Most components of the Db2 family are integrated within the IBM Cloud Pak® for Data platform, available either as additional features or as built-in data source services, ensuring that nearly all data is accessible across hybrid or multicloud frameworks to support AI-driven applications. You can easily unify your transactional data repositories and swiftly extract insights through intelligent, universal querying across diverse data sources. The multimodel functionality helps reduce expenses by removing the necessity for data replication and migration. Additionally, Db2 offers enhanced flexibility, allowing for deployment on any cloud service provider, which further optimizes operational agility and responsiveness. This versatility in deployment options ensures that businesses can adapt their data management strategies as their needs evolve.

SAP HANA is an in-memory database designed to handle both transactional and analytical workloads using a single copy of data, regardless of type. It effectively dissolves the barriers between transactional and analytical processes within organizations, facilitating rapid decision-making whether deployed on-premises or in the cloud. This innovative database management system empowers users to create intelligent, real-time solutions, enabling swift decision-making from a unified data source. By incorporating advanced analytics, it enhances the capabilities of next-generation transaction processing. Organizations can build data solutions that capitalize on cloud-native attributes such as scalability, speed, and performance. With SAP HANA Cloud, businesses can access reliable, actionable information from one cohesive platform while ensuring robust security, privacy, and data anonymization, reflecting proven enterprise standards. In today's fast-paced environment, an intelligent enterprise relies on timely insights derived from data, emphasizing the need for real-time delivery of such valuable information. As the demand for immediate access to insights grows, leveraging an efficient database like SAP HANA becomes increasingly critical for organizations aiming to stay competitive.

PostgreSQL stands out as a highly capable, open-source object-relational database system that has been actively developed for more than three decades, earning a solid reputation for its reliability, extensive features, and impressive performance. Comprehensive resources for installation and usage are readily available in the official documentation, which serves as an invaluable guide for both new and experienced users. Additionally, the open-source community fosters numerous forums and platforms where individuals can learn about PostgreSQL, understand its functionalities, and explore job opportunities related to it. Engaging with this community can enhance your knowledge and connection to the PostgreSQL ecosystem. Recently, the PostgreSQL Global Development Group announced updates for all supported versions, including 15.1, 14.6, 13.9, 12.13, 11.18, and 10.23, which address 25 reported bugs from the past few months. Notably, this marks the final release for PostgreSQL 10, meaning that it will no longer receive any security patches or bug fixes going forward. Therefore, if you are currently utilizing PostgreSQL 10 in your production environment, it is highly recommended that you plan to upgrade to a more recent version to ensure continued support and security. Upgrading will not only help maintain the integrity of your data but also allow you to take advantage of the latest features and improvements introduced in newer releases.

MariaDB Platform is an enterprise-level open-source database solution. It supports transactional, analytical, and hybrid workloads, as well as relational and JSON data models. It can scale from standalone databases to data warehouses to fully distributed SQL, which can execute millions of transactions per second and perform interactive, ad-hoc analytics on billions upon billions of rows. MariaDB can be deployed on prem-on commodity hardware. It is also available on all major public cloud providers and MariaDB SkySQL, a fully managed cloud database. MariaDB.com provides more information.