Contemporary Trends in the Development of Databases

Databases have been established for a long time as an efficient and reliable technology for organizing and storing data in almost all areas of human activity. In addition to their widespread use in the operational activities of practically all enterprises and organizations, they are also sources of data for research and analysis of economic processes. Databases were developed rapidly in the second half of the 20th century and as a result relational databases emerged, which are an extremely powerful tool for storing and accessing data. Since the beginning of the 21st century, with the extraordinary increase in the volume of stored and processed information, as well as the significant part of unstructured and semi-structured information, a new type of databases, named NoSQL databases, have emerged and developed. The article attempts to define the characteristics of different types of databases, analyzing their advantages and disadvantages and outlining their areas of application on this basis. The trends in the development of the databases from the point of view of the author are also presented.