First steps in the Cloud SQL and NoSQL world with Firestore

In previous chapters, we have reviewed fundamental concepts, good security practices, computing solutions, and unstructured data storage. However, most applications need to store structured data (such as tables and columns) or semi-structured data (such as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) objects) in order to perform the actions of creating, updating, obtaining, and deleting information.

In this section, we will review what Cloud SQL and Firestore are and what their main features are, and examine how they can help us implement data operations in our applications.

What is Cloud SQL?

Cloud SQL is a fully managed solution for the management of relational databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server. Cloud SQL can reduce operational costs by delegating those tasks to Google Cloud. In this way, we can focus on the development of data modeling and the coding of our application.

In addition, thanks to the capabilities...