Dolt

Dolt is a Structured Query Language (SQL) database (data management) that combines traditional relational database capabilities with Git-style version control for data, enabling branching, merging, and collaboration workflows on table contents.

• Relational database engine with MySQL-compatible SQL interface (database management)
• Git-like version control for data, including branching, diff, merge, and commit history (data versioning)
• Command-Line Interface (CLI), SQL, and Application Programming Interface (API) tools for collaborative workflows on shared data repositories (developer tooling)
• Hosted and self-managed options via DoltHub for publishing, sharing, and coordinating data changes (data collaboration)
• Support for integrating versioned datasets into analytics, Extract, Transform, Load (ETL), and application backends (data integration)

More About Dolt

Dolt is a relational database (database management) designed to apply Git-style version control concepts directly to tabular data, providing native support for branching, merging, and auditing changes at the row and cell level. It targets use cases where data is edited, reviewed, and curated by multiple contributors over time, and where full history, provenance, and reproducibility are required.

At its core, Dolt implements a SQL engine with a MySQL-compatible interface (SQL database), allowing applications, tools, and users that speak MySQL wire protocol and SQL dialect to interact with it using familiar queries and drivers. Tables, schemas, and queries behave like those in a conventional relational database, while every change to data can be committed, inspected, and reverted using operations modeled on Git, such as commit, branch, merge, diff, and log (data versioning).

The project provides a CLI (developer tooling) that lets users clone databases, create branches, push and pull changes, and review diffs, similar to workflows used with Git repositories. In addition to row-level versioning, Dolt stores complete commit histories and supports the ability to query data as of a given commit or branch, which supports time travel queries and reproducible analytics workloads (data governance). Conflicts that occur when merging branches are surfaced at the data level, supporting review and resolution processes that resemble code review practices.

Dolt integrates with DoltHub, a hosted service (data collaboration) that acts as a central repository and coordination platform for Dolt databases. Through DoltHub, teams can publish datasets, manage access, open pull requests on data changes, and run collaborative workflows around contributions and reviews. Enterprises can use this model to enforce structured change management on reference datasets, regulatory datasets, or curated operational data, and to keep auditable records of how data evolved over time.

From an architectural and ecosystem perspective, Dolt operates as a transactional database with versioned storage (transactional data store) and exposes interfaces compatible with existing MySQL client libraries and tools. This supports integration into application backends, analytics pipelines, and ETL processes that already rely on relational databases. In an enterprise context, Dolt fits into categories such as Data Version Control (DVC), governed data collaboration, and reproducible analytics, enabling workflows where data is treated as code and managed through branching, review, and controlled promotion from development to production branches.