Getting a dedicated database for your Ecommerce application is essential and it can be tricky. One of the most important things to get right, especially in an Ecommerce setting is to ensure security, performance and availability at all times.
This database for e-commerce app has numerous benefits, and comes with a lot of features. It is easy to use and can be used for any online store. You can download the database application on your phone or computer and start designing your own online store by adding products, prices, sales and discounts.
When it comes to an ecommerce solution, data storage is one of the most critical aspects of any database architecture. This database will be put to the test with a heavy workload throughout the day and night, storing thousands upon thousands of pieces of data.
As with all other software applications, e-commerce applications demand the implementation of the new technological advances in order to be efficient, to sell better and to manage data more rapidly. This article is all about best database for ecommerce application.
How to Choose the Right Mobile App Database for Your Application
Quick Summary :- With so many offerings available, it’s a challenge for mobile app developers to select the right database for the right application. This blog consists of general criteria and some use cases based criteria to help developers to build scalable and fast mobile apps.
How to Choose the Right Mobile App Database for Your Application
Whether you are building a brand new mobile application or want to add more features to the existing app, choosing the right database can be overwhelming given all the choices available today. There’s a huge possibility that your current database is not sufficient to handle millions of users and frequent updates.
Crisp a messaging platform built their original platform with Firebase as the database. But, they quickly ran into the following challenges:
- Difficulties in handling complex queries
- Storing data offline
- Managing object relations at web scale
For Crisp, it was extremely important that their users are able to effectively communicate with their customers. But customers were often missing important communications sent via the app. Thus Firebase proved to be a bad fit here!
They, later on, moved to a SQL database for data storage and MongoDB to store the messages for better performance and scalability.
Crisp isn’t the only story where a database dramatically compromised the quality and performance of an application.
The face of disruption, Uber had to migrate their database from PostgreSQL to MySQL. Uber made this choice as they faced inefficient database replication features and constant migration from one PostgreSQL version to another.
Relational Databases
A relational database is similar to a set of spreadsheets. Each spreadsheet has columns and rows of data.
Databases are similar to spreadsheets, except the rows and columns are called tables. But, unlike spreadsheets, in a relational database the data can, well, relate to other data.
For example, a relational database for an ecommerce store can have a table of customers and, separately, a table of orders. In the orders table, there is a relationship to customers, so that each order relates to a single customer. This relationship is expressed in the form of a simple data element that points to the specific customer row.
In a relational database, you only have to update information in one place instead of multiple locations.
The benefit of this is that when the customer data changes, you only have to update one piece of data. For example, if a customer obtains a new email address, you only have to update the one row in the customer table and not all of the rows in the orders table. All orders for that customer automatically relate to the new email address.
Relational databases work well for transactions and non-product content. They also work for most parts of product catalogs, which can be difficult to design when there are a large number of combinations, such as multiple colors and sizes. (Given the popularity of relational databases, however, they are no longer difficult to use, as there are many product-catalog solutions.)
Common relational databases include PostgreSQL, MySQL, and Oracle.
Document and Key/Value Databases
Each unique item in a document database is assigned a “key” that is used as an identifier.
A second type of database is a document or key/value. Document and key/value databases are technically different, but for purposes of this article, I’ll group them together and call them, simply, “document databases.”
Document databases are straightforward. Picture a directory on your computer full of different types of files. Each file has a unique name and contains unique data.
Document databases work on this model. Each piece of data is given a name, called a “key.” That key is used to find and retrieve that data. You can define different types of data, much in the same way your computer has different types of files. A ecommerce store, for example, has order, customer, and page types.
With document databases, you can design what types of data to include. This makes document databases flexible and powerful
This flexibility can be difficult to manage, though. If you need to change how the data is stored, you could end up having to update every piece of data in the database. Thus, document databases usually require long-term thinking when deciding how to structure and store the data.
Document databases work well for product catalogs and non-product content, such as blog posts and “about us” pages. Ecommerce transactions are not ideally suited for document databases, however. Relational databases work much better for transactional data.
MongoDB, CouchDB, and Redis are examples of document databases that are used by stores.
Cloud Databases
Cloud databases are more recent. They are not a true database type, but more of hosting process.
Cloud databases are hosted by a third party, typically at a very large scale. This can benefit an ecommerce storeowner, as she will not have to worry about hosting or growing the database as the store grows.
But cloud databases have risks. For one, a storeowner must ensure that the third party is trustworthy since it is holding your company and customer data. A storeowner should also make sure that the host is a viable business and will be around as long as the store is.
An interesting thing about cloud databases is that they can mix and match multiple database types — pure relational databases, pure document databases, and features from both to create something unique. Cloud databases can therefore work for all types of ecommerce data.
Amazon Web Services, for example, offers cloud databases. It has a Relational Database Service and, also, DynamoDB, a document database.
API Databases
Another type of database is an application programming interface — API. This is where your ecommerce site connects to a third-party company via its API to store and retrieve data.
Like cloud databases, API databases are not really a separate type. But depending on the API, they can replace the need for a database entirely.
API databases are common on SaaS platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce, where merchants can connect to the API to customize how their store functions.
A simple example is using an API to determine which products are best sellers and then saving that to a best sellers’ page in your store.
The biggest limitation of an API database is the API supplier. You can only use and work on data that the supplier exposes in its API. If it doesn’t expose order data, you can’t do anything with orders.
Is MySQL good for eCommerce?
High-performance & Scalable The scalability of MySQL makes it a very useful application for ecommerce applications. Businesses, of course, plan on growing and this platform can grow right along with them. MySQL is a platform that can be integrated with many other technologies besides ecommerce.
Should I use MongoDB for ecommerce?
Most objections about NoSQL usually have to do with the perception that NoSQL databases in general, and Mongo in particular, have problems with reliability, and thus such databases are not suited for ecommerce systems, which thrive on financial transactions.
Database Scope
The main consideration when designing the database is identifying the functionalities offered by the e-commerce platform. These functionalities can be further divided into core functions and additional functions.
Core functions are the functions necessary for facilitating the day-to-day operations of the e-commerce platform, including user management, product and inventory management, shopping cart function, payment management, and shipping/logistics management.
Additional functions are the nice-to-have functions for the e-commerce platform that enhance the user experience for both end-users (customers) and administrators (the business). Additional functions include marketing functions, help desk and support, advanced analytics, and third-party integrations.
Core functions
In this section, let’s see how to structure the database to facilitate the core functions. The following table structure is an example of a database design that covers the core functionality of an e-commerce platform.
This example covers all the basics of an e-commerce platform. Here, the table fields and indexes depending on the design of the overall platform. It contains three separate sections for user management, product management, and shopping process. Let’s have a closer look at each section.
User management
We have created a user table that contains all the user details along with user_payment and user_address tables to store multiple addresses and payment details of users. This structure offers more granular control over data while eliminating duplicate records.
Another way to manage users is by creating two separate user tables for end-users and administrators and assigning relationships according to their requirements, as shown below.
Product management
Managing products is not simply about maintaining a list of products. You also have to manage the inventory, discounts, categories, and other attributes of the products. So always focus on simplifying the data structure while reducing duplicates. In the following table structure, the main product table contains information about the products.
There are two other separate tables called discount, product_inventory, and product_category that are connected to it through database relationships. This approach provides the greatest level of flexibility to the database.
For instance, we can simply query the product_inventory table to check for inventory without going through all the data associated with other related tables. This is also a good place to utilize indexes to increase the performance of the database.
Shopping process
This is the most critical and complex part when it comes to designing the database. The shopping process will guide a user to search the products, add the desired products to the shopping cart, and finally complete the transaction using a payment provider.
The heart of the e-commerce process connects users with products. A good chunk of design effort should be exhausted to streamline the shopping process.
In the example above, there are shopping_session and cart_item as temporary data stores that only store the shopping session information of the current user until the order is confirmed and the data is moved to permanent storage tables with the payment details (order_details, order_items, and payment_details).
As shown in this section, the scope of the database structure is determined by the overall functionality of the platform. Therefore, it is paramount that you properly define the required functionality before diving into designing the database. This way, you can create a clearly defined data structure with enough flexibility to support future expansions.
Conclusion
Ecommerce platform is a step by step procedure for the vendors and customers of an ecommerce business website, who want to buy and sell their products online. Almost every ecommerce vendor thinks that they have a unique and particular method and technique for their ecommerce business, but in reality it’s not 100% true. The fact is that any vendor or a retailer can arrange his/her own ecommerce store simply and conveniently by using an extremely powerful and technically mind-blowing system.
Database Management Systems or DBMS in short refers to the technology of storing and retrieving users’ data with utmost efficiency along with appropriate security measures. In the early days of computing, file systems were used by programmers and analysts as a primitive database for their applications.