📊 HiddenMerit Morning Post · Issue 79

Focus on Database Frontiers, Practical Insights for DBAs August 19, 2026 ｜ 5 Selected Global Breaking News

01｜Dameng Surpasses Foreign Vendors for the First Time to Rank First in China Database Market

Recently, CCID Consulting released the “2025-2026 China Platform Software Market Research Annual Report.” The report shows that in 2025, Wuhan Dameng Database Co., Ltd. (Dameng) surpassed foreign database vendors for the first time, ranking first in China’s database management system market – becoming the first Chinese database vendor to achieve this feat.

Key Data: Since 2019, Dameng has maintained the top position among domestic vendors for seven consecutive years. This marks a historic breakthrough, moving from “number one domestic” to “number one overall.” In 2025, Dameng’s revenue reached RMB 1.306 billion. Its products serve major customers including China Construction Bank, PICC, State Grid, China Travelsky, and China Mobile, with successful deployments in finance, energy, aviation, telecommunications, and dozens of other sectors.

Technology Path: Dameng adheres to original innovation and independent R&D, with 100% self-developed source code, and is the first domestic database product to pass the independent control assessment. In the AI era, Dameng is accelerating the integration of AI capabilities into its database products, launching next-generation AI-native databases and multi-modal converged databases, gradually building a complete product matrix covering centralised, distributed, and cloud-native architectures.

• DBA Perspective: Dameng’s first-place overall ranking is a milestone for domestic databases – a domestic vendor surpassing Oracle and other foreign giants in revenue for the first time. For DBAs, this means the “leading candidates” for Xinchuang selection now have stronger market data backing. The 100% self-developed code path and continued deployments in energy, finance, government, and other core sectors provide quantifiable references for DBAs selecting Dameng products in critical sectors.

02｜Ant Group’s OceanBase Launches First External Funding Round: Targeting RMB 2‑3 Billion

On July 29, Ant Group’s independent database company OceanBase officially launched its Series A funding round, targeting approximately RMB 2‑3 billion, and has already engaged with multiple leading investment institutions. This marks OceanBase’s first external funding since its establishment. In March 2024, OceanBase established an independent board of directors with a CEO‑accountable governance structure and an independent employee equity incentive mechanism.

Key Data: In 2026, OceanBase’s annualized revenue has exceeded RMB 1.4 billion (approximately $200 million), representing approximately 70% year‑on‑year growth. According to IDC, OceanBase ranked first in China’s distributed database on‑premises deployment market share in 2025. The company currently serves finance, telecommunications, transportation, manufacturing, retail, public services, internet, and other industries, with thousands of customers including Bank of Communications and China Mobile.

Strategic Benchmarking: OceanBase is evolving from a distributed database toward an AI data platform, benchmarking against Databricks. The “lakehouse‑integrated” AI database released in June has been tested in dozens of customer scenarios, with plans to further advance commercialisation.

Ant Group Independent Financing Acceleration: Ant International completed a Series A round of approximately $1.2 billion in July, and Ant Digital is preparing for a Pre‑IPO round. New businesses incubated by Ant Group over the past few years around globalisation, AI, and data are progressively establishing more independent governance, incentive, and financing mechanisms.

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

03｜CETC Kingware Selected in CAICT 2026 Industry Landscape: Leader in Six Industries, Converged and Intelligent Databases Dual‑Selected

On July 9, at the 2026 Trustworthy Database Development Conference, CAICT released the “China Database Industry Landscape (2026).” CETC Kingware appeared across the board: in the transactional database vertical industry segmentation, it ranked as an industry leader in six industries – government, telecommunications, energy, transportation, healthcare, and manufacturing.

Industry Coverage: Energy sector ranks among the top overall, with the oil and gas sub‑sector ranking first. In transportation, railway and highway sub‑sectors rank first, covering civil aviation, rail transit, and other scenarios. Healthcare and manufacturing both rank first in their respective tracks.

Frontier Products: Converged databases and intelligent databases were both selected as “Frontier Database Products.” Kingware’s converged database eliminates the pain point of multiple databases coexisting, with a single platform handling TP, AP, AI, and other full‑scenario workloads. The intelligent database has built‑in development, operations, and knowledge Q&A agents, enabling natural language data querying, intelligent fault diagnosis, and automated optimisation.

Industry Research: At the conference, CETC Kingware and CAICT jointly initiated the development of the “Intelligent Database Technology Research Report,” advancing industry research from “architectural convergence” to “AI‑deep empowerment.”

• DBA Perspective: Kingware’s selection as a leader in six CAICT industry landscape categories validates its large‑scale maturity in cross‑industry Xinchuang projects. The dual selection of converged and intelligent databases provides DBAs with a reference benchmark for evaluating the “AI‑readiness” of domestic databases in Xinchuang selection.

04｜Databricks Acquires Electric, Bringing Local Postgres Database to AI Agents

Recently, Databricks announced the acquisition of startup Electric, which embeds Postgres databases into application environments using WebAssembly technology. The acquisition aims to address latency issues caused by frequent access to central databases by multiple agents in agent applications.

Technical Solution: Electric’s PGLite, combined with the Electric Sync real‑time sync engine, allows agents to run Postgres‑compatible databases locally while staying synchronised with the central database. After the acquisition, PGLite will form a two‑tier database architecture with Databricks’ Lakebase (built on Neon, acquired in 2025) – PGLite handles local data within the application or agent environment, while Lakebase serves as the centralised database for shared persistent data.

Analyst Views: The lead analyst at Pareekh Consulting noted that local database access reduces network hops, helping improve agent speed, especially for complex, long‑running tasks. However, the lead analyst at Nord‑IQ Research cautioned about data governance and security concerns – distributing state across agent sandboxes expands the attack surface, forcing enterprises to extend access control, auditing, and compliance frameworks from a single database boundary to hundreds of temporary local instances.

• DBA Perspective: Databricks’ acquisition reflects the urgent need for “data locality” in AI agent applications. For DBAs, this means database architecture is evolving from a “single central database” to a “central + local two‑tier architecture.” At the same time, sandbox‑level data governance and security challenges remind DBAs that AI agent data management cannot simply follow traditional database governance models – new management frameworks for state data location, retention, auditing, and cleanup need to be established.

05｜CETC Kingware Supports Research Management System Domestic Database Transformation: Research Sector Xinchuang Implementation

Recently, CETC Kingware disclosed a case of assisting a large research institution in completing a domestic database transformation of its research management system. Facing typical challenges of outdated architecture, severe data silos, and performance bottlenecks, the Kingware team helped complete the full domestic replacement of the core database.

Core Value: KingbaseES V9 adheres to a fully self‑developed core engine, achieving autonomous control from underlying architecture to upper‑layer applications. Kingware provides full‑lifecycle services from centralised monitoring and performance tuning to fault emergency response, conducting comprehensive “health checks” through professional migration assessment tools to determine the optimal migration path, ensuring “zero downtime” or “minimal downtime” during business system cutover.

• DBA Perspective: Research management system domestic transformation is a case of Xinchuang deepening in the research sector. KingbaseES V9’s fully self‑developed core engine provides DBAs with a reference benchmark for evaluating “autonomous control” capability in Xinchuang projects involving sensitive research data.

📚 SQL Little Knowledge Point

This Issue’s Knowledge Point: What is the CCID China Database Market Ranking?

CCID Consulting is a research institution directly under China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Its “China Platform Software Market Research Annual Report” is one of the most authoritative industry reports in the domestic database market.

Historical Significance of the 2025 Ranking: Dameng surpassing foreign vendors for the first time to top the Chinese market is a milestone event in the domestic database field. Since 2019, Dameng has maintained the top position among domestic vendors for seven consecutive years, and this marks the transition from “number one domestic” to “number one overall.”

Ranking Indicator System: The report comprehensively evaluates vendors based on annual revenue, market share, customer coverage depth, industry penetration rates, and other dimensions. Dameng’s 2025 revenue was RMB 1.306 billion, with products serving dozens of critical sectors including finance, energy, aviation, and telecommunications.

Implications for DBAs: The CCID report is an authoritative third‑party data source that can be referenced in Xinchuang selection. Metrics such as leading vendor ranking changes, revenue scale, and industry penetration rates serve as important reference dimensions for evaluating the long‑term competitiveness of domestic databases.

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