A quantitative study on the popularity and performance of SQL and NoSQL DBMS.

Abstract: Context: This study compares the popularity and the performance of two DBMS. The two systems are SQL and NoSQL. The objective of the study is to determine which DBMS junior developers should learn first, in order to provide a head-start to their future career. Methods: To determine the most popular DBMS, surveys are collected from the Internet and are meta-analyzed. In order to determine the best performing DBMS, a SLR method that leads to a meta-analysis is conducted and tests the execution time of the read operation. Results: The research findings suggest that SQL is a more popular DBMS than the NoSQL system. This is verified statistically through the Fisher-Freeman-Halton Test, p <.001. As far as performance goes, the SQL DMBS performs a bit better compared to the NoSQL system if descriptive statistics is considered for 100 (M=12.4, SD=19.11),(M=174.4, SD=284.6) and 1000 (M=50.77, SD=113.5), (M=228.8, SD=276.6) records. However, once the t-test is performed it reveals that there is no statistical significance. Thus, the statistical test suggests that both DBMS perform equally well for both 100 and 1000 records t (8) = 1.27, p = .24 and t (8) = 1.11, p = .3 with a small effect size Cohen’sd, (d1=0.27) and (d2=0.28) respectively. Conclusion: Based on our research results and accounting for the importance of the date that this study has been conducted (2021), we recommend that junior developers should focus on learning a SQL DBMS first as their primary backend skillset for the foreseeablefuture.