Research and benchmark free JSON databases for suitability for scaled down on-prem MET deployments

[gopa-noaa]

MET team has reached out to Molly to inquire as to if there is a free alternative to Enterprise Couchbase and Capella. There are a number of alternatives like JSON databases, Traditional relational databases with JSON features, key-value stores. The scope of this issue is to:

1. Research and tabulate pros, cons of each
2. Short list 1 -3 of these to run performance and scalability evaluation
3. Create a brief report and recommend a free alternative

[ian-noaa]

This could be useful for our own purposes as well. Especially if there are databases that support the sql+ query language. We should explore this as a few week time-limited exercise.

We'd be interested in exploring this in Q1 2026.