📊 HiddenMerit Morning Post · Issue 67

Focus on Database Frontiers, Practical Insights for DBAs August 4, 2026 ｜ 5 Selected Global Breaking News

01｜Domestic Database Industry Landscape Reshaping: The Inevitable Path from “Replacement” to “Leadership”

CETC Kingware recently published an in‑depth analysis article titled “From Replacement to Leadership: The Inevitable Path for Domestic Databases to Reshape the Global Data Landscape.” The core judgment is: Over the past decade, the mission of domestic databases was to be “usable” – solving the problem of existence. Today, in critical areas such as financial cores, government clouds, and energy dispatch, domestic databases are taking on the mission of being “good‑to‑use” and even “industry‑leading.”

Industry Landscape Changes: The database industry has moved beyond the early “single‑point replacement” phase and entered a new cycle of “full‑stack collaboration” and “scenario‑deep cultivation.” The nature of industry demand has fundamentally changed – it is no longer about replacing a single database product, but about full‑chain adaptation from operating systems to databases to middleware. In the “deep water” zones of financial core transaction systems and government data sharing platforms, domestic databases have demonstrated the capability to handle critical business, moving from being supplements to edge systems to taking centre stage in core systems.

Core Judgment: Only by adhering to a fully self‑developed core engine can domestic database vendors truly gain industry influence and evolve from “followers” to “definers.” The path of secondary development based on open‑source communities or foreign code branches inevitably faces fundamental risks in long‑term evolution, including uncontrollable technical direction and passive responses to security vulnerabilities.

• DBA Perspective: The evolution of domestic databases from “usable” to “good‑to‑use” to “leading” means that the focus of DBA work is shifting from “evaluating compatibility” to “deeply mastering tuning capabilities for self‑developed kernels.” Kingware’s “full‑stack collaboration” concept requires DBAs in Xinchuang projects not only to focus on the database itself, but also to understand the collaborative performance of operating systems, middleware, and databases. CETC Kingware’s successful cases in the core transaction systems of leading financial institutions validate the feasibility of the fully self‑developed route under extremely high stability and transaction consistency requirements. DBAs should further consider core code autonomy rate as a key dimension in technology selection.

02｜OceanBase Launches Series A Funding Round: Targeting RMB 2‑3 Billion, Annualized Revenue Exceeds RMB 1.4 Billion

OceanBase has officially launched its first external equity financing round, targeting approximately RMB 2‑3 billion, and has already engaged with multiple leading investment institutions. OceanBase responded that it “maintains open communication with the capital market,” without further disclosing specific progress.

Key Data: In 2026, OceanBase’s annualized revenue has exceeded RMB 1.4 billion, representing approximately 70% year‑on‑year growth. The company’s customers include leading institutions such as Bank of Communications and China Mobile, and it has expanded into Southeast Asia, Japan, India, and Latin America. IDC data shows that OceanBase ranked first in market share for distributed database on‑premises deployment in China in 2025.

Strategic Upgrade: This funding round will be used to enhance independent operational capabilities and accelerate the transformation toward an AI data platform. The new “lakehouse‑integrated” AI database has been tested in dozens of customer scenarios, unifying structured and unstructured data processing capabilities within a single engine. Several Ant Group subsidiaries – including OceanBase, Ant Digital, and Ant International – have initiated independent financing rounds, signalling an acceleration of market‑oriented operations across Ant’s multiple business units.

• DBA Perspective: OceanBase’s first external funding is a landmark event for domestic databases moving toward independent market‑oriented operations. The annualized revenue exceeding RMB 1.4 billion and 70% growth validate the large‑scale commercial viability of domestic distributed databases. The AI data platform transformation direction means DBA skills need to expand from “distributed database operations” to “AI data platform architecture and multi‑modal data management.”

03｜Domestic Database Replacement Market Overview: Energy, Communications, and Government Lead; Manufacturing Still in Pilot Phase

CETC Kingware published the “Preferred Choice for Domestic Replacement: Database Panorama and Selection Navigation,” comprehensively reviewing the progress and characteristics of database domestic replacement across various industries.

Replacement Status by Industry:

Industry	Core Business Scenarios	Replacement Ratio	Key Characteristics
Energy	Energy regulation, planning, operations	Relatively high in petrochemicals; rapid growth in new energy	New energy market fastest‑growing; core system deployment accelerating
Communications	Billing, CRM, signaling collection	High in B/M domains; 40‑70% in O domain	Entered large‑scale promotion in 2024; high replacement rate in dual domains
Government	Online services, data openness	Comprehensive coverage, breakthroughs in core systems	Emphasis on high‑concurrency support and rapid recovery capability
Finance	Core transactions, risk control, payments	Deep replacement, high‑frequency validation	Extremely high requirements for data consistency and security
Manufacturing	Production management, inventory, CRM	Less than 20%	Core system replacement cautious; still in pilot phase

Trend Judgments: Domestic replacement is no longer just a simple technology swap, but a strategic project to address “bottleneck” challenges in critical national sectors. Billing and accounting systems (B‑domain) and CRM management systems (M‑domain) in the communications industry have both entered large‑scale promotion, with over half of business systems already domestically replaced. O‑domain core system replacement rates have reached 40‑70%. The energy sector shows a “two‑ended hot” trend – traditional power generation replacement is around 30%, while the new energy (solar, wind) market is growing rapidly.

• DBA Perspective: This industry panorama provides directional reference for DBAs’ career planning. Finance and communications have entered the “deep water” zone, with strong demand for advanced skills such as high availability and distributed transactions. The new energy sector in the energy industry is the fastest‑growing area and a growth point for Xinchuang positions. The manufacturing sector’s replacement ratio of less than 20% indicates significant incremental space, but requires attention to pilot‑phase selection dynamics. Xia Ke, Marketing Director at GBASE, stated: “Database selection should prioritise hardware‑software synergy and ecosystem maturity. A DBA’s breadth of skills across multiple databases is more important than depth in a single database.”

04｜Kingware Proposes “Technology Leadership” Path: Self‑Developed Core Engine is the Prerequisite for Defining Data Standards

CETC Kingware further elaborated on the key path “from replacement to leadership” in its article – only by adhering to a fully self‑developed core engine can domestic database vendors truly gain industry influence and evolve from “followers” to “definers.”

Core of the Technology Path: The path of secondary development based on open‑source communities or foreign code branches inevitably faces fundamental risks in long‑term evolution, including uncontrollable technical direction and passive responses to security vulnerabilities. True leadership means the ability to define future data standards, not just adapt to existing ones. Only with an autonomous core codebase can vendors rapidly iterate database architectures to adapt to new demands such as AI large models and real‑time computing in response to drastic changes in business scenarios.

Ecosystem Building: Kingware has completed extensive mutual certification with mainstream domestic software and hardware, building an open and compatible industrial ecosystem. In ecosystem building, Kingware not only provides core database products but also a complete product matrix including high‑availability cluster software, distributed transaction management components, data integration platforms, and database migration service tools – opening up the full chain of data flow and reducing the threshold and risk of migrating from traditional to autonomous architectures.

• DBA Perspective: Domestic database competition is moving from “compatibility benchmarking” into the “core engine self‑development + architecture restructuring” deep water. Kingware’s emphasis on the “fully self‑developed core engine” route means that DBAs in heavily regulated industries such as finance and government can include “core code autonomy rate” as a key dimension in selection assessments. Kingware’s complete product matrix (high‑availability clusters, distributed transactions, data integration platforms, etc.) also reminds DBAs that when selecting domestic databases, they should not only look at the database kernel itself, but also the maturity of its surrounding toolchains.

05｜ARM Server Shipment Share in China Rises to 15%, Domestic Databases Fully Adapt to the “New Compute” Era

On August 4, industry data showed that ARM server shipment share in the Chinese market has risen to 15% , accelerating penetration in industries such as internet, finance, and telecommunications. Leading domestic databases have completed full‑stack adaptation to ARM architectures, with major products including Dameng DM9, KingbaseES V9, OceanBase, and GaussDB all achieving large‑scale deployment on ARM servers (Kunpeng, Phytium, etc.).

Technical Background: ARM servers, with higher energy efficiency and TCO advantages, are moving from “edge computing” to “core transactions.” Unlike x86 architectures, ARM architectures have differences in NUMA topology, cache coherence, and I/O paths that significantly impact database lock management, memory allocation, and parallel execution plans. Through kernel‑level optimisation, domestic database vendors have achieved performance on ARM platforms comparable to x86.

• DBA Perspective: The rising share of ARM servers is a significant change in the underlying database hardware landscape. DBAs need to pay attention to new tuning dimensions under ARM architecture, including NUMA affinity tuning, cache line alignment, and I/O queue depth configuration. Leading domestic databases have completed full‑stack ARM adaptation, meaning DBAs are no longer limited to x86 in Xinchuang project hardware selection – “Kunpeng + domestic database” is becoming one of the standard combinations in finance and telecommunications industries.

📚 SQL Little Knowledge Point

This Issue’s Knowledge Point: What is “Fully Self‑Developed Core Engine” in Databases?

“Fully self‑developed core engine” means that the source code for core database components – including the storage engine, query optimiser, transaction manager, and concurrency control – is entirely developed by the vendor, rather than being a secondary development or wrapper based on open‑source code (such as PostgreSQL or MySQL).

“Self‑Developed Route” vs. “Open‑Source Wrapper Route” :

Dimension	Open‑Source Wrapper Route	Self‑Developed Core Engine Route
Technology Path	Based on open‑source code modifications	Fully independent design
Code Controllability	Constrained by upstream community release cadence	Fully autonomous iteration
Security Response	Passively following community patches	Proactive discovery and fixing of vulnerabilities
Deep Customisation	Constrained by open‑source architecture	Flexible adaptation to new business scenarios
Long‑Term Evolution	Technology path uncertainty	Capability to define standards independently

Why a Self‑Developed Core Engine is the Prerequisite for Being a “Definer” : CETC Kingware’s article points out that the path of secondary development based on open‑source communities or foreign code branches inevitably faces fundamental risks in long‑term evolution, including uncontrollable technical direction and passive responses to security vulnerabilities. Only with an autonomous core codebase can vendors rapidly iterate database architectures to adapt to new demands such as AI large models and real‑time computing in response to drastic changes in business scenarios, evolving from “followers” to “definers.”

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