PostgreSQL and Neo4J, a relational and a graph database respectively, are among the latest data stores taking the route to the cloud.
EnterpriseDB has announced the availability of Postgres Plus Cloud Database (PPCDB), a DB-as-a-Service offering PostgreSQL 9.1 and Postgres Plus Advanced Server 9.0 as AMIs on Amazon AWS. OpenStack will include support for PPCDB and will be used by CloudBees and HP Cloud Services. Another vendor interested in using it is Engine Yard.
PPCDB comes with a web interface for installing and managing single instances or clusters of Postgres databases in the cloud, and features auto-scaling, read and write load balancing, binary replication, failover, auto-provisioning, elastic storage, DB cloning, and automated backups.
Postgres Plus Advanced Server includes Oracle compatibility enabling developers to run most of the Oracle SQL against a Postgres database.
A PPCDB AWS instance costs as a similar MySQL one.
Another database making its way to the cloud, but a NoSQL this time, is Neo4J, a graph database. Besides other improvements – cypher (its query engine), web admin, kernel, Lucene upgrade –, Neo4J 1.6 can now be accessed from Heroku through an add-on currently in beta via a RESTful interface. There are a number of Neo4J REST clients allowing to use it from different languages: .NET, Python, Django, PHP, Ruby, and Java. Heroku adds-on enable users to extend basic functionality, add features or connect to external services, the latest being the case of how Neo4J is accessed from Heroku.