For nearly 30 years, PostgreSQL[1] (a.k.a., Postgres) has arguably been the most common SQL open source database that you have never heard of. Call it the Zelig of databases, its technology either sat behind or acted as the starting point behind an array of nearly a dozen commercial database offerings from EnterpriseDB[2] to Redshift[3], Greenplum[4], Netezza[5], CockroachDB[6] and a host of others. And PostgreSQL has distinguished lineage as one of the brainchilds of Turing Award winner and database legend Dr. Michael Stonebraker[7], who started the PostgreSQL project based on the lessons learned from his previous database venture, Ingres.
But now there are commercial products that put PostgreSQL out front and center. EnterpriseDB opened the Pandora's Box roughly a decade ago with a commercially supported platform designed as an Oracle replacement. More recently, cloud providers have stepped in with a raft of hosted offerings, beginning with Amazon, offering PostgreSQL as one of the platforms supported through its managed Relational Database Service (RDS).[8][9]
But the past year has seen Amazon and its rivals taking PostgreSQL up more than a notch. Late last year came the GA release of Amazon's[10] implementation of PostgreSQL through its Aurora[11] cloud-native database platform. In the past few weeks, Microsoft and Google, respectively, have followed through with their answers to Amazon's RDS PostgreSQL service with Azure Database for PostgreSQL[12] and Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL[13].
A few months back, Matt Assay[14] made the case for PostgreSQL becoming hip again[15] in the sense that boring (things just work) has come into vogue. The one