Knex

SQL query builder for Node.js that composes type-safe, portable queries across multiple database engines. Lets developers write one query interface and run it against PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQLite3, CockroachDB, SQL Server, or Oracle without raw SQL strings.

Widely adopted in the Node.js ecosystem as the query layer behind Objection.js, Bookshelf, and MikroORM. Differentiates from ORMs by staying close to SQL: you compose queries programmatically and see exactly what runs, while migrations, pooling, and streaming stay first-class.

Key capabilities:

• Multi-dialect support with a single API
• Built-in migrations and schema management
• Transactions, connection pooling, and streaming queries
• Promise and callback APIs with TypeScript support
• ESM and CommonJS module support

Common scenarios: powering backends and APIs with type-safe database access, running the same query logic across SQLite in tests and PostgreSQL in production, and building lightweight data layers without a full ORM. Integrates with existing drivers like pg, mysql2, sqlite3, better-sqlite3, tedious, and oracledb.