List of the Top 6 Database Software for Hex in 2025

BigQuery is a highly adaptable and robust database solution designed to efficiently manage both structured and semi-structured data at large volumes, making it ideal for diverse applications. It utilizes standard SQL for querying, which facilitates seamless integration with current workflows and tools. Being a fully managed service, it alleviates the burdens of database maintenance, allowing organizations to concentrate on gaining insights instead of dealing with infrastructure management. New users can take advantage of $300 in complimentary credits to explore BigQuery’s functionalities, giving them the opportunity to experiment with both operational and analytical queries to assess its effectiveness for their data storage and access requirements. Additionally, BigQuery is equipped with strong security measures, ensuring the protection of sensitive information, even when dealing with large datasets.

Snowflake is a comprehensive, cloud-based data platform designed to simplify data management, storage, and analytics for businesses of all sizes. With a unique architecture that separates storage and compute resources, Snowflake offers users the ability to scale both independently based on workload demands. The platform supports real-time analytics, data sharing, and integration with a wide range of third-party tools, allowing businesses to gain actionable insights from their data quickly. Snowflake's advanced security features, including automatic encryption and multi-cloud capabilities, ensure that data is both protected and easily accessible. Snowflake is ideal for companies seeking to modernize their data architecture, enabling seamless collaboration across departments and improving decision-making processes.

Microsoft SQL Server 2019 merges cutting-edge intelligence with robust security features, presenting a wealth of additional tools at no extra expense while maintaining exceptional performance and flexibility tailored for on-premises needs. Users can effortlessly migrate to the cloud, fully leveraging its operational efficiency and nimbleness without modifying their existing codebase. By harnessing Azure, organizations can speed up the generation of insights and engage in predictive analytics more effectively. The development process remains versatile, empowering users to select their preferred technologies, including those from the open-source community, all backed by Microsoft's continuous innovations. This platform facilitates straightforward data integration within applications and provides an extensive range of cognitive services designed to nurture human-like intelligence, accommodating any data volume. AI is fundamentally woven into the data platform, enabling faster insight extraction from data stored both on-premises and in the cloud. Combining proprietary enterprise data with global datasets allows organizations to cultivate a culture steeped in intelligence. Moreover, the adaptable data platform ensures a uniform user experience across diverse environments, significantly reducing the time required to launch new innovations; this flexibility enables developers to create and deploy applications in multiple settings, ultimately boosting overall operational productivity and effectiveness. As a result, businesses can respond swiftly to market changes and evolving customer demands.

Amazon Athena is an interactive query service that makes it easy to analyze data stored in Amazon S3 by utilizing standard SQL. Being a serverless offering, it removes the burden of infrastructure management, enabling users to pay only for the queries they run. Its intuitive interface allows you to directly point to your data in Amazon S3, define the schema, and start querying using standard SQL commands, with most results generated in just a few seconds. Athena bypasses the need for complex ETL processes, empowering anyone with SQL knowledge to quickly explore extensive datasets. Furthermore, it provides seamless integration with AWS Glue Data Catalog, which helps in creating a unified metadata repository across various services. This integration not only allows users to crawl data sources for schema identification and update the Catalog with new or modified table definitions, but also aids in managing schema versioning. Consequently, this functionality not only simplifies data management but also significantly boosts the efficiency of data analysis within the AWS ecosystem. Overall, Athena's capabilities make it an invaluable tool for data analysts looking for rapid insights without the overhead of traditional data preparation methods.

LanceDB is a user-friendly, open-source database tailored specifically for artificial intelligence development. It boasts features like hyperscalable vector search and advanced retrieval capabilities designed for Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG), as well as the ability to handle streaming training data and perform interactive analyses on large AI datasets, positioning it as a robust foundation for AI applications. The installation process is remarkably quick, allowing for seamless integration with existing data and AI workflows. Functioning as an embedded database—similar to SQLite or DuckDB—LanceDB facilitates native object storage integration, enabling deployment in diverse environments and efficient scaling down when not in use. Whether used for rapid prototyping or extensive production needs, LanceDB delivers outstanding speed for search, analytics, and training with multimodal AI data. Moreover, several leading AI companies have efficiently indexed a vast array of vectors and large quantities of text, images, and videos at a cost significantly lower than that of other vector databases. In addition to basic embedding capabilities, LanceDB offers advanced features for filtering, selection, and streaming training data directly from object storage, maximizing GPU performance for superior results. This adaptability not only enhances its utility but also positions LanceDB as a formidable asset in the fast-changing domain of artificial intelligence, catering to the needs of various developers and researchers alike.

The MariaDB Platform stands out as a robust open-source database solution tailored for enterprise use. It is versatile enough to handle transactional, analytical, and hybrid workloads while accommodating both relational and JSON data formats. Its scalability ranges from single databases to extensive data warehouses and fully distributed SQL systems capable of processing millions of transactions every second, enabling interactive analytics on vast datasets. Additionally, MariaDB offers deployment options on standard hardware as well as across major public cloud services, including its own fully managed cloud database, MariaDB SkySQL. For further details, you can explore MariaDB.com, which offers comprehensive insights into its features and capabilities. Overall, MariaDB is designed to meet the diverse needs of modern data management.