PostgreSQL really has no right to be cool. PostgreSQL development began during the Reagan administration — in 1986! Although shepherded by “exceptional early leadership,” according to open source luminary Mike Olson, the project was later superseded in popularity by its Eurovision-esque cousin, MySQL, which launched in 1995.
Yet over the past decade PostgreSQL has become hip with startups and enterprises alike, surging in popularity to become the world’s fourth-most-popular database, steadily gaining on MySQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and Oracle.