A serverless database is a database solution that is tailored to meet the demands of dynamic workloads. Any serverless computing endeavor would be incomplete without it. The major distinguishing feature of such a database is its capacity to increase performance capacities autonomously in response to a given workload.

Current options

One of the most well-known stacks in the JavaScript ecosystem is the MERN stack.

To create web apps, a combination of MongoDB, Express.js, React, and Node is used. Unfortunately, MERN is not yet ready for modern Serverless applications. You may now use current static hosting providers like Netlify or Cloudflare pages to launch your React application. These systems relieve you of the responsibility of managing servers for your app's front end. Similarly, the Serverless community has developed significantly on the backend side. A lot of tutorials on how to construct an Express.js backend on AWS Lambda are now available. You may quickly convert your Express.js code to Serverless if you already have it developed.

Requirements for a Serverless Database

• Easy to use
• Pay-as-you-go pricing
• Scalable
• Managed service

Currently, the most used databases in the JS community are MongoDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. But, none of them is Serverless for the production environment. There is some solution like AWS Aurora Serverless but there are several limitations that don't meet all the requirements.

Solution

The objective is to use DynamoDB instead of MongoDB in your MERN stack. As a result, it's now DERN. DynamoDB is a genuine Serverless database, which means it is managed, extremely scalable, and scales to zero.

If you're interested, DynamoDB also has some more features that you can enable:

1️⃣ Continuous backup and global tables with Point-In-Time Recovery (PITR) bring your database closer to your users.

2️⃣ You may catch any change in your table using streaming applications.

3️⃣ The vendor lock-in to AWS is one of the problems I perceive with DynamoDB. You should have no trouble migrating databases to a different cloud provider provided you follow best practices.

AWS Lambda is more performant and offers more functionality than its competitors, putting it ahead of the pack in the Serverless race.

So, if you're developing a Serverless application for production, there's a good chance you'll already be familiar with the AWS environment. It should be simple to integrate DynamoDB into your setup.

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