An excellent tool for some specific scenarios.

As with other cloud tools, users must learn a new terminology to navigate the various tools and configurations, and understand Google Cloud's configuration structure to perform even the most basic operations. So the learning curve is quite steep, but after a few months, it gets easier to maintain.

We are using Google Cloud SQL exclusively with traditional applications hosted on standard virtual machines. Its integration is straightforward for this purpose: we set all necessary permissions and utilize it as a conventional DBMS.

In our experience, Google Cloud SQL is useful for applications that need a relational database but are not very intensive in data processing and/or don't have heavy loads of data write and read. In these scenarios, it proves to be less expensive and easier to maintain than a traditional DBMS. On the other hand, for really database-intensive applications, it can become too costly and too complicated to maintain.