How to Choose a Relational Database

Choosing the correct database can be tricky. Are you working on a hobby project? Or is it for a company with a large team of developers? Let’s take a look at some of the factors that might influence your decision!

Commercial databases have been around for a long time. Some of the popular ones are Oracle and IBM DB2. The database software comes with a high licensing cost and is only available for commercial use. These are premium databases that offer guaranteed on-demand technical support. They also include a large suite of tools that can accommodate most of the problems you or your customers might encounter. Software installation and updates are administered by system professionals. Commercial databases like Oracle also have system requirement specifications. This means your business may have to upgrade its hardware before it can use the database.

Open Source databases are perfect for smaller projects and include MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and SQLite to name a few. These are free to use and are supported by a large community of developers and users. Software installation and updates are conducted by the users, who can reach out to the community for support if needed, but no official technical support is available. Since they are open-source, the source code is available to view, and users can change the source code for their own database based on their needs.

MySQL has a reputation for being compatible with other similar database systems. MySQL makes speed and performance a priority, but at the cost of some features that you’ll find on most other open-source databases. MySQL is a free-tier open-source database offered by Oracle, and therefore has a strong technical support team behind it.

MariaDB is fully compatible with MySQL as it actually started as a fork of the MySQL source code. MariaDB was created to improve upon the speed of MySQL, which it does in most cases. MariaDB is supported by a community rather than a corporation like MySQL. So while MariaDB is technically a superior database to MySQL, MySQL makes up for it with unparalleled on-demand technical service and support.

PostgreSQL has been rising in popularity over the years, as it is able to work with both SQL and NoSQL database types. It has more features than other open-source databases like supporting numerous data types. It is easy to implement locally or in the cloud. Some users find the PostgreSQL documentation to be lacking.

SQLite isn’t directly comparable to other relational databases as it works as a serverless embedded system rather than the traditional client/server model. SQLite is small in size, quick and efficient when used for the right purpose. Popular uses are thermostats, cameras, drones, medical devices, and low-traffic websites. Or the original use case and the reason it was developed: a damage-control system aboard guided-missile destroyers!

As cloud services like AWS continue to grow in popularity, storing info and hosting of databases locally has been on the decline. If you are creating an application that will have a fixed small or limited number of users, a local database may be the easiest and cheapest solution for you. It can also be done for free. However, most cloud services offer a free tier, and you won’t be billed for services unless the amount of storage used passes a certain threshold. Cloud services also can offer many additional services like analytics that can be super useful. Security is also top-notch, and comes built-in with the cost, unlike having to monitor it yourself with a local database. However, if you are building a demo project o an application for school with limited users, a locally hosted database will be fine in most cases and will save you money as well. If you are hosting a large number of users or are expecting any sudden growth, a cloud database is most likely the safest and most effective option and will allow for easy scalability.

If you want to start out with a small local database, but eventually migrate to a cloud database, PostgreSQL or MySQL offer local and cloud compatible versions for an easy transition. If you have no intentions of migrating to a cloud database, you could use the lightweight and simple SQLite for your local database.

A large option of free-to-use, open-source databases and free-tiers of cloud services make it an exciting time for databases. Gone are the old days of large corporations being the only option when looking for quality. The best way to test which database is right for you is to start exploring for yourself! Try building and accomplishing the same things using different databases and see which one is right for you!

Related posts:

My improv group Quest was performing a set at CSz Seattle recently. Being a Seattle based improv group, Amazon comes up more often than not as a punchline. It also helps that one of our cast members…

Top 5 UX Design Podcasts. Let’s listen to some podcasts instead of Netflix and Indulge in quality pastime activities. Here’s a collection of some of the best design….

It depends on who you know, who you see, how you define bad, and what you are used to. The situations we are in are not inherently good or bad in themselves, what makes them good or bad is how we…