# SQL (Relational) Databases { #sql-relational-databases }

**FastAPI** doesn't require you to use a SQL (relational) database. But you can use **any database** that you want.

Here we'll see an example using <a href="https://sqlmodel.tiangolo.com/" class="external-link" target="_blank">SQLModel</a>.

# Testing a Database { #testing-a-database }

You can study about databases, SQL, and SQLModel in the <a href="https://sqlmodel.tiangolo.com/" class="external-link" target="_blank">SQLModel docs</a>. 🤓

There's a mini <a href="https://sqlmodel.tiangolo.com/tutorial/fastapi/" class="external-link" target="_blank">tutorial on using SQLModel with FastAPI</a>. ✨

This also means that in many cases you can pass the same object you get from a request **directly to the database**, as everything is validated automatically.

The same applies the other way around, in many cases you can just pass the object you get from the database **directly to the client**.

You will see examples of this in the next chapters, about relational and NoSQL databases, security, etc.

## **FastAPI** compatibility { #fastapi-compatibility }

The simplicity of the dependency injection system makes **FastAPI** compatible with:

* all the relational databases
* NoSQL databases
* external packages
* external APIs
* authentication and authorization systems

## Other data types { #other-data-types }

Here are some of the additional data types you can use:

* `UUID`:
    * A standard "Universally Unique Identifier", common as an ID in many databases and systems.
    * In requests and responses will be represented as a `str`.
* `datetime.datetime`:
    * A Python `datetime.datetime`.

Here's a little bit of that history.

## Alternatives { #alternatives }

I have been creating APIs with complex requirements for several years (Machine Learning, distributed systems, asynchronous jobs, NoSQL databases, etc), leading several teams of developers.

As part of that, I needed to investigate, test and use many alternatives.

The history of **FastAPI** is in great part the history of its predecessors.

      advanced/conditional-openapi.md: how-to/conditional-openapi.md
      advanced/extending-openapi.md: how-to/extending-openapi.md
      advanced/testing-database.md: how-to/testing-database.md
  mkdocstrings:
    handlers:
      python:
        options:
          extensions:
          - griffe_typingdoc
          show_root_heading: true
          show_if_no_docstring: true

It's the most popular Python framework and is widely trusted. It is used to build systems like Instagram.

It's relatively tightly coupled with relational databases (like MySQL or PostgreSQL), so, having a NoSQL database (like Couchbase, MongoDB, Cassandra, etc) as the main store engine is not very easy.

## 0.10.1

* Add docs and tests for [encode/databases](https://github.com/encode/databases). New docs at: [Async SQL (Relational) Databases](https://fastapi.tiangolo.com/advanced/async-sql-databases/). PR [#107](https://github.com/tiangolo/fastapi/pull/107).

## 0.10.0

For example, there's an official <a href="https://hub.docker.com/_/python" class="external-link" target="_blank">Python Image</a>.

And there are many other images for different things like databases, for example for:

* <a href="https://hub.docker.com/_/postgres" class="external-link" target="_blank">PostgreSQL</a>