Database — What comes to your mind?

If I tell you to close your eyes and think about what comes to your mind when we think about database. Most of us would imagine it as some storage , in some sort of structure. We would think of lots and loads of data stored in some server stored remotely somewhere. We would think of data as some passive thing.

Then we would think of us as the one who use that data using some kind SQL or other language but data remains passive . It gives you what you ask for.

Isn’t our notion about data being passive is biased. What if data is active and it decides where it wants to flow and inform others when it changes.

Thinking of data in database as active is whole new thinking and brings to serve whole new set of use cases in much better way. First of we need to stop considering data as passive and let it be the main driver.

So here comes the event streaming databases. I really liked the idea of making data itself as active. Yes, you should still be able to query it like traditional database but what makes it really powerful concept is data being itself active and that database is not only meant for us. Its meant for software.You can think of software consuming software.

Data knows when it changes , it does not need to be passive and it flows to software as event and software acts on this changed data.

Hope this idea makes us think differently about data and database!