What is a database?

Following a recent YouTube video for our series documenting the development of a mobile game from client brief through to publishing and sales, we touched on databases as we worked through designing a database architecture. In that video, we promised to explain in a little more detail the different types of database.

A database, simply put, is software that stores data or information. This data might be text, or files, video or images. You can think of a database like a filing cabinet - It the thing within which all information is stored. There are two main types of databases, relational and non-relational. They are both acting as a filing cabinet, but choose to go about it in different ways.

Non-relational databases

Non-relational databases opt to have all information in a single place, it offers advantages over relational databases with improvements in performance, but belonging to one schema (the way the information is stored) for all data, risks restrictions for future development and changes. Typically, non-relational databases are suited to more abstract, unstructured data types, where performance is likely to be a major factor.

Sticking with the filing cabinet analogy, a non-relational database, would be like having a filing cabinet with just a single draw and in that draw is a single document with everything on it.

Relational databases

Relational databases, use tables similar in look to a spreadsheet. Data is grouped together by type and keys between tables create relationships between tables. Less efficient that non-relational databases, but with far greater flexibility for future design changes.

In this scenario, the filing cabinet has draws of different data types, in one draw is information relating to users, in the next draw is every product that users has purchased. Two distance types of data, but connected via a key. In this instance, it might be the user ID.

Best of both worlds

There is a way to get the best of both worlds, leveraging the flexibility inherent in relational databases without suffering on performance. Xano. Xano uses PostgreSQL. SQL (structured query language) the language that manages and manipulates data stored in relational databases - it's used in a vast array of software systems, but PostgreSQL goes well beyond. Postgres is scale without the compromise on flexibility. Xano is built with PostgreSQL 15 database engine, each instance uses a single database within a PostgreSQL instance. The three workspaces are partitioned within this same database with Docker and there you have it - scale and flexibility deployed on a platform that focuses on data security and visual development and all you have to do is log in and build.