If you are new to any of the top 5 database mentioned here, please read the rest of the article to understand more about them.
MySQL is used in almost all the open source web projects that require a database in the back-end. MySQL is part of the powerful LAMP stack along with Linux, Apache and PHP.
This was originally created by a company called MySQL AB, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems, which was acquired by Oracle. Since we don’t what Oracle will do with MySQL database, open source community has created several forks of MySQL including Drizzle and MariaDB.
Following are few key features:
- Written in C and C++.
- MyISAM storage uses b-tree disk tables with index compression for high performance.
- Support for partitioning and replication.
- Support for Xpath, full text search.
- Support for stored procedures, triggers, views etc.,
- Home Page: http://www.mysql.com/
- Stable release: 5.1.43
- License: GNU
- Read more about MySQL , Drizzle and MariaDB on Wikipedia
PotgreSQL is a open source object-relational database system. It runs on most *nix flavours, Windows and Mac OS. This has full support for joins, views, triggers, stored procedures etc.,
Following are few key features:
- MVCC – Multi-Version Concurrency Control
- Hot backups and point-in-time recovery
- Support for tablespaces
- Asynchronous replication
- Highly scalable
- Home page: http://www.postgresql.org/
- Stable release: 8.4.2
- License: Open source MIT License
- Read more about PostgreSQL at wikipedia
Oracle is the best database for any mission critical commercial application. Oracle has following four different editions of the database: 1) Enterprise Edition 2) Standard Edition 3) Standard Edition One 4) Express Edition
Following are few key features of the oracle database.
- Real Application Cluster (RAC)
- Data Guard for standby database
- Virtual Private Database
- Automatic Memory, Storage and Undo Management
- OLAP, Partitioning, Data Mining
- Advance Queuing, XML DB, Support for Spatial data
- Flashback Database, Query, Table and Transaction
- Home Page: http://www.oracle.com/us/products/database/index.htm
- Stable release: 11g R2
- License: Proprietary
- Read more about Oracle at wikipedia
SQLite does not work like a traditional client-server model with standalone process. Instead, it is a self-contained, server-less SQL database engine.
Main Features of SQLite:
- Zero configuration with no setup or admin tasks.
- Complete database is stored in a single disk file.
- No external dependencies
- Supports database of several TB in size
- Work on most *nix flavors, Mac OS X, windows. It’s also cross-platform.
- WinCE is supported out-of-the box
- Home Page: http://sqlite.org/index.html
- Developed by: D. Richard Hipp
- Stable release: 3.6.22
- License: Public domain
- Read more about SQLite at wikipedia
5. Microsoft SQL Server
This is Microsoft’s flagship Database product. If you are stuck in a company that heavily uses Microsoft products, you might end-up working on MS SQL Server.
- Home Page: http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/default.aspx
- License: Microsoft EULA
- Stable release: SQL Server 2008
- Written in C, C++
- Read more about MS SQL Server at wikipedia