It's the year 2021 and at this point there's nothing interesting about saying the world has gone digital, a lot of applications are cloud based (which is just a fancy way of saying that your data is stored on a server rather than on your device) and more people getting connected to the internet (yes, there are people who are alive and have never used the internet). With most digital infrastructure being hosted on the cloud one might say that these databases (more like your data store or a bank, only they store data) must evolve rather quickly to keep up with demand.

The world of software engineering prides itself on being the fastest innovative field with new advances consistently occurring inbetween 3 to 6 months cycles. It will however shock you to know that for decades there have been virtually no changes in database management languages (which are like programming languages as they are used to manage and manipulate how data is stored, received or processed).

Organizations don't joke with their database or with engineers who specialize in that field. Stability and reliability is more important than innovation in such a line of work. Imagine for a second that your bank loses all records of her customers and financial records, that fear you feel right now is why database and all that relates to it are perceived as sacred cows. As long as it works it will remain unchanged because with innovation comes the risk of failure and when it comes to data which value is worth billions, even a 0.5% chance of failure is not an option.

The people who see to the task of managing these database aren't entry-level staff either because a database is rather fragile, you'll be surprised how easy it is to wipe a company's database and unlike most softwares or platform, database management softwares have no undo feature. You start to appreciate stability and reliability when you know that there's no second chance when you make a mistake.