# Five Common Data Stores and When to Use Them

DevFeed: [Five Common Data Stores and When to Use Them](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/five-common-data-stores-and-when-to-use-them-1392.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://shopify.engineering/five-common-data-stores-usage>)

Author: Toria Gibbs

Published: 2019-10-15T19:15:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering.md>), [Shopify Engineering - Shopify Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/shopify-engineering-shopify-engineering.md>)

Topics: [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>), [Databases](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/databases.md>), [MySQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/mysql.md>), [SQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/sql.md>), [Structured-data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/structured-data.md>), [NoSQL](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/nosql.md>), [Transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/transactions.md>), [Scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/scalability.md>), [systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/systems.md>), [Shopify](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/shopify.md>)

Tags: [article](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/article.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [database](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/database.md>), [databases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/databases.md>), [mysql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mysql.md>), [queue](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/queue.md>), [relational-databases](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/relational-databases.md>), [scalability](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/scalability.md>), [search](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/search.md>), [sql](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/sql.md>), [storage](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/storage.md>), [technical](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/technical.md>), [transactions](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/transactions.md>)

## AI overview

This article introduces five common data stores--relational databases, NoSQL databases, key-value stores, full-text search engines, and message queues--and discusses their attributes and appropriate uses. It explains relational database concepts such as schemas, tables, primary keys, foreign keys, and SQL, and notes that Shopify uses MySQL as its relational database management system.

## Source excerpt

An important part of any technical design is choosing where to store your data. This post describes five common data stores and their attributes.