Jan 14, 2021 5:00 AM PT Since the 1970s there's been a steady decline in the number of free-standing relational database companies until only Oracle remains. Familiar names like Sybase, Ingres, Informix, MySQL, SQL Server and others are either out of business or have been acquired. So, it would be reasonable to believe that the database market has commoditized, and that one relational DB is as good as another (plus or minus), though today Oracle has the dominant share of the market. But if commoditization was true a few years ago, it's certainly not now. In the recent past, lost market share, technology hiccups, and a minor rebellion among users over pricing and related policies aimed at Oracle, helped to launch a new generation of databases from startups and well-heeled competitors like Amazon.