DB selection

[Chris Mary]

Hi,

We have been into normal web application development used by multiple users. (json, string, blob, clob etc.)

On analysis come across several open source dbs

1. MySQL
2. OrientDb
3. ArangoDb
4. TitanDB
5. RealDB
6. Postgres
7. Neo4j

Which one would be the best choice ?

Thanks

[Tim Cooke]

Depends on your criteria for "best". Unless you have any specific requirements then pretty much any database of your required type, i.e. relational, document, graph, will usually suffice.

Quite often DB choice comes down to which one the developers are most comfortable developing with.

[Tim Holloway]

Probably the most popular open-source RDBMS at the moment is MySQL/MariaDB. If you need something more heavy-duty or your developers have an Oracle background, then PostgreSQL is likely it. Note, however, that it's not an "either/or" situation. I run both DBMS's at my site.

Note also that a lot of third-party apps tend to favor a particular DBMS.

Conversely, systems like JPA allow you to pretty much insulate the apps from any particular brand of RDBMS.

You listed Neo4J. It's not a SQL DBMS, or more precisely, it's a NoSQL DBMS. It does have a lot of utility, however, as it specializes not as much as what's in the tables, but in how table entries are related.

Also in the NoSQL category is MongoDB, which offers performance and flexible storage, but isn't relational. There's also couchDB, which I've seen in systems but never studied myself.

You will probably settle on one particular brand as your primary database. Which one will, as Tim noted, probably be whatever the local talent prefers.

[Chris Mary]

Great Tim Holloway....

Out of MySQL vs MariaDB - which one you would prefer or choose?

[Campbell Ritchie]

What is the difference between MariaDB and MySQL?

[Tim Holloway]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:What is the difference between MariaDB and MySQL?

MySQL was originally created by a Swedish group and like a lot of open-source software, they provided it both as FOSS and paid support.

Oracle bought the product from them, keeping the MySQL name. But Oracle has a reputation that makes people nervous, so MariaDB was forked off of it to keep it fully free and open-source. The two products are (at the moment) enough alike that we consider them to be mostly identical and even refer to "mysql" when we're actually running MariaDB.

A similar situation happened with the office suite. StarOffice was developed in Germany, became OpenOffice, was purchased by Oracle and a fork was made to create LibreOffice. In this particular case, Oracle later donated OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation, but the damage was done and OpenOffice has been eclipsed by LibreOffice.

[Ron McLeod]

Chris Mary wrote:On analysis come across several open source dbs ...

What were the factors/considerations for your analysis?  

Chris Mary wrote:Which one would be the best choice ?

What are the requirements for your application?

[Chris Mary]

@Ron McLeod

#1 - Web application
#2 - Mostly File Processing
#3 - Document Management System
#4 - PDF/CSV/Excel Reports
#5 - Text Place Holders on Document Template Images
#6 - Quartz or Spring Jobs

[Campbell Ritchie]

I knew some of the story about Oracle purchasing MySQL, before they took over Sun, and part of the story about OpenOffice.  Similarly to OpenOffice/LibreOffice, I was wondering, is there that much difference between MySQL and MariaDB? You said, no.
Do people still use OpenOffice?  Whenever I get a new computer and install Linux, I get LibreOffice as a default and I simply stick with that.

[Tim Holloway]

At the moment, there is no practical difference between MariaDB and MySQL. If Oracle has added or incompatible features, they don't come up in general discussion.

OpenOffice is still alive and being half-heartedly developed, but the major distro vendors moved to LibreOffice and have stayed there. At the moment, I think OpenOffice lags features.

Red Hat have always been rabid about FOSS. For many years you could not get MP3 support from their package repository even though Fraunhofer publicly stated that non-commercial use of MP3 was OK. Only when the last of the MP3 patents expired did they relent. So you can see why MySQL and OpenOffice went off the table.

[Paul Clapham]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Whenever I get a new computer and install Linux, I get LibreOffice as a default and I simply stick with that.

I installed LibreOffice on my new Windows computer. I wouldn't mind paying a moderate amount of $ for a new copy of MS Office but I'm not keen on paying a moderate amount every single year, and LibreOffice is a reasonable version of MS Office for my purposes.

[Tim Holloway]

Paul Clapham wrote:

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Whenever I get a new computer and install Linux, I get LibreOffice as a default and I simply stick with that.

I installed LibreOffice on my new Windows computer. I wouldn't mind paying a moderate amount of $ for a new copy of MS Office but I'm not keen on paying a moderate amount every single year.

Well Microsoft have re-branded and apparently changed licensing recently.

I don't necessarily mind a modest annual fee — emphasis on the modest — and do in fact donate to the providers of some of my more valued tools. To say nothing of the small projects that I myself offer at no cost. But the Software Licensing Police can be heavy-handed and it's that much extra headache to keep up with licenses on lots of products.

Microsoft's dilemma is that they need a steady revenue stream and since software is not that much an evenly-flowing product, they have to take the automobile manufacturer approach where a lot of the stuff is just cosmetic changes rather than functional improvements. Rename the "Network Neighborhood". Move stuff around so you know it's not the same version of Windows as last year.

One of the things that came out the widespread adoption of FOSS is that people are not, in fact, all lazy moochers. Red Hat did a LOT to assist my retirement portfolio (before IBM bought them) selling support licenses for stuff that they were also making available for free. Businesses aren't averse to paying for timely expert help, and the FOSS software support is often as good/better than the closed-source products provide.

In fact, I might be paying a few of those support fees myself except that I've always been the final desperate hope for products before out-of-house support was contacted and usually can do as good a job as those who are paid to do it. Allowing for the extra time spent on Google.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Tim Holloway wrote:. . . Red Hat . . . FOSS. . . .

Tell me about it....

[Chris Mary]

So what's the preference MySQL or MariaDB

[Paul Clapham]

I think the consensus is: Yes.

[Chris Mary]

Paul Clapham - MySQL or MariaDB?

[Paul Clapham]

Yes, absolutely.

[Chris Mary]

So which one you recommend Paul Clapham?

[Paul Clapham]

I don't recommend either of them. I also don't dis-recommend either of them.

[Al Hobbs]

Use mariadb

[Tim Cooke]

Chris, I think you have completely missed the point of the discussion here about MySQL and MariaDB. They are so similar that it makes little difference which you choose, so pushing for a hard recommendation is pointless.

Al has said "use MariaDB" as is their preference, but "use MySQL" would have been an equally helpful recommendation.

It's your choice.

[Tim Holloway]

If you are running Linux and probably also MacOS, MariaDB is what you get from your distro's repository.

For MySQL, you have to obtain the product from Oracle's own product repository. However, MySQL allows the purchase of a support license from Oracle. If you are a big corporation, you might prefer to spend the money for their support.

MariaDB doesn't have a supporting organization as such as far as I know; just a development team. But I've no doubt that there are quite a few independent contractors who'd be glad to provide paid MariaDB support for you. Actually, I've done a little of that myself.

[Paul Clapham]

I could say "I use MySQL" -- which is true. You might construe that as a recommendation, but it isn't one. Many people would construe it as a recommendation anyway.

I never made a choice between MySQL and MariaDB because I chose MySQL before MariaDB was split from it. Well, actually I did make a choice, I chose not to switch at the time of the split. But that choice wasn't based on a comparison between the two products, it was based on the cost of switching versus the cost of not switching, and based on me not needing support from Oracle anyway.

In other words, if you get a recommendation of the form "Use product X" you should be aware that there's a story behind that recommendation, and that story may or may not have any bearing on your requirements.

And notice that Tim H has pointed out that the difference between MySQL and MariaDB is mostly in how you get support for it. You posted a long list of requirements but they were all technical and you said nothing about your support requirements. Therefore there's no basis for a recommendation.

[Tim Holloway]

Paul Clapham wrote:
I never made a choice between MySQL and MariaDB because I chose MySQL before MariaDB was split from it. Well, actually I did make a choice, I chose not to switch at the time of the split.

I ran MySQL for years. Then one day I did an OS update and the new system installed MariaDB instead. Never noticed the difference.