What is the primary database service offered by Alibaba Cloud?

The primary database service offered by Alibaba Cloud is ApsaraDB for RDS. This service is designed specifically for relational database management, supporting multiple database engines, including MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB. ApsaraDB for RDS provides a fully managed service, which allows users to focus on their applications without worrying about the underlying database infrastructure, such as setup, maintenance, and scaling.

This service includes features such as automated backup, monitoring, and security, ensuring that users have a reliable and efficient database solution. It also supports high availability configurations, which are crucial for production environments that require minimal downtime.

Other options, while significant offerings from Alibaba Cloud, serve different purposes. MaxCompute is primarily focused on large-scale data processing and analytics rather than being a conventional database service. Object Storage Service is meant for storing large amounts of unstructured data and is not a database service. Elastic Compute Service provides virtualized computing resources and is more about computing power rather than database management.