Summary

In this chapter, you learned about the evolution of DBMSs, the industry pain points, and the new requirements presented by the industry when it comes to databases. This implies that the role of the DBA has to keep up and adapt or, if you will, evolve. If you are reading this book, you are on the right track as you're probably aware of the significant changes that are taking place in the database field and want to be ahead of the curve.

Being ahead of the curve and answering the challenges that databases are facing today has been – and is – our community's driver for developing Apache ShardingSphere. The last section of this chapter gave you a brief introduction to the ShardingSphere clients and how it is built, but this is just the beginning. You have 11 more chapters ahead of you, and by the time you complete them, you not only will master ShardingSphere – you will have acquired a new tool, expanded your skillset, and placed yourself ahead of the curve of upcoming database changes.

By the time this book is published, Apache ShardingSphere will still probably be a unique product in the industry that's aiming to achieve a blue ocean strategy by building Database Plus standards, rather than drowning in the red ocean of distributed databases. A unified database service platform is the only solution to fragmented database tech stacks. Remember, ShardingSphere was born to solve this problem and build the criteria and the ecosystem above multi-model databases.

The next chapter will start your deep dive into Apache ShardingSphere by giving you an architectural overview of the project.