The cloud has become the new normal as organizations of every size are deploying applications to the cloud by default, and migrating existing on-premises applications at a rapid pace. In concert with this, application developers have become empowered with an increasing selection of tools and services, many available for free as open source and available on demand. At the center of the discussion is the database, as data will be generated, delivered, analyzed, and stored across all of these apps.

In this presentation, we will dive into the world of the relational database, including a brief history and how it has transformed in the cloud era. Then, we will look at the rise of developer-friendly NoSQL databases that are workload-optimized, and explore how relational databases have evolved in response to the NoSQL phenomenon. Finally, we will discuss how the latest generation of relational databases have become native to the cloud and fully managed as a service. We will dive deep on AWS’s own relational database built for the cloud, Amazon Aurora, and look at how its customers are using its cloud-native capabilities to their advantage.