Once upon a time, getting a new database was an arduous experience. You might want to host a third party application, away from the main database, or wanted a dedicated one for supplier collaboration. The bureaucrats did not see reason in whatever you said or wrote. Even getting a mere development database was challenging.

Things improved little after you received an official nod. First you provisioned for hardware. His hard stare and borderline hostility would make you feel that you had laid claim to a part of his ancestral land, not a tiny mid-range server.

The OS guy would look plain bored. That would subsequently reflect on his pace of work. He would take nothing less than two days to install Linux. And if "root access" was on your wishlist, you might as well prepare for a major constitutional amendment.

The database administrator used to make things difficult by asking you to decide upon sizing issues involving dbf files and table spaces.

Today, in 2022, those guys are mostly redundant.

Cloud computing has made things infinitely simpler. It took me 15 minutes flat to have a MySQL provisioned and operational on AWS RDS. RDS stands for Relational Data Service.

One great thing about RDS is that AWS decides most of the things for you with only a few inputs expected from your side.

AWS has a good spread when it comes to relational databse.

This is what you see in the beginning:

Please note that for Oracle and MS SQL it is BYOL or bring your own license. Others are free.

After a plethora of routine clicks you enter superuser name and password for the new database. Also you need to input the default database name.

From disk to wire everything is defaulted. You do not do sizing. You do not do networking either.

In the end you get a host name, NOT public IP, for accessing the database over Internet.

Look around and you will get the URL from which MySQL Workbench for Windows is to be downloaded.

After 20 minutes I got to see this:

A sigh of relief escaped me. An era of inefficiency and feudalism had finally come to an end.