Good, Free DBMS solution

rexehuk · 14 Apr 2011 at 08:23

I have a customer with little or no money who wants a DBMS developed... I'm thinking of doing it with open source software to keep the costs to a minimum, and to prove something to myself.

The client has no licenses for Microsoft Access as far as I'm aware so I would need a full solution (possibly web based) to update and manage the DB.

So yeah, what DBMS would you guys recommend?

Main uses will be:

Maintaining bookings
Maintaining venues
Keeping track of availability
Queries

Go go team OCUK. This will be my first commercial DB, fun times. Although I have had training in DB development / management etc.

kkelly · 14 Apr 2011 at 12:53

Oracle XE & APEX(web interface) ?

uv · 14 Apr 2011 at 13:03

Yup, XE is your best bet, assuming the database will be small enough to run within XE's hardware limitations.

rexehuk · 14 Apr 2011 at 13:27

Cheers for the suggestion guys, will take a look into it. Will it require a dedicated box to be running the oracle server? Or can it be ran from a single clients machine, so self contained database as it were?

You're looking at like maximum of 4 simultaneous clients if it was server based, thats at a push as the team is quite small, it would expand if we made the database into something for the entire department, but that is way past my six month contract here so would get complex.

kkelly · 14 Apr 2011 at 13:34

It runs as a service on any machine, I run it on a P4 & Core2Duo at work with no issues. XE Supports a max of 4gb of data I think, this will last a long time with just text however clob/blobs will soon eat it up

robotSocks · 14 Apr 2011 at 13:40

only a fool wouldn't suggest MySQL

rexehuk · 14 Apr 2011 at 13:44

Is there no way to plug the APEX system into a longer term database? 4GB will indeed hold a lot of data, but any overheads are bad overheads considering I'm the only expertise in the team to be able to do this, needs to stand on its own, if they use the DB day in / day out and eventually run out of space, they will be stuffed.

kkelly · 14 Apr 2011 at 14:28

It's 11gb nordays

"The maximum amount of user data in an Oracle Database XE database cannot exceed 11 gigabytes."

robotCocks mySQL doesnt come with a front end tho (I may be wrong

))?

rexehuk · 14 Apr 2011 at 14:36

Where does it claim 11GB btw? This is one I read

Oracle Database XE can be installed on any size host machine with any number of CPUs (one database per machine), but XE will store up to 4GB of user data, use up to 1GB of memory, and use one CPU on the host machine.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/express-edition/overview/index.html

kkelly · 14 Apr 2011 at 15:13

11g RC2 Read me file

robotSocks · 14 Apr 2011 at 16:02

kkelly said:
It's 11gb nordays

"The maximum amount of user data in an Oracle Database XE database cannot exceed 11 gigabytes."

robotCocks mySQL doesnt come with a front end tho (I may be wrong ))?

of course it does

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/administrator/en/

OP: also consider PostgreSQL - there really is no need to consider Oracle if you're looking for a small lightweight RDBMS, at all

kkelly · 14 Apr 2011 at 16:24

heh Sorry robotCocks,

I use Oracle at work and find XE really usefully for testing hence why I suggested it

I have only used mySQL with custom front ends

RoyMi6 · 14 Apr 2011 at 17:09

Any above "basic" web hosting is going to provide you with and SQL database and access via phpmyadmin allowing you to have both web hosting and complete control over an open source database.

Although from the fairly straight forward requirements I'd be looking at a Wordpress installation with a couple of plugins such as http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/webreserv-embedded-booking-calendar/. Unless you looking to specifically develop it from scratch for the challenge/fun of it. Which is fair enough.

rexehuk · 15 Apr 2011 at 08:08

Web hosts are not an issue, this is for a large organisation with a few hundred employees

. I only started a few weeks ago, and learnt they have NO database to store their information and do enquiries, it's all paper / spreadsheets which made me laugh.

I did have a crack at installing oracle XE last night with the APEX ui, needless to say "more reading required", definitely not a plug and play solution! I will have another crack at it later in the week.

FredFlint · 16 Apr 2011 at 18:08

php + mysql + linux on a vm would be a good way as it leaves room to grow.
I had never used any of it but there is lots of good info on net so I could get it up and running.

osc89er · 17 Apr 2011 at 12:08

I have to say that for small deployments, why not use mysql as it will likely give you everything you need but unlike Oracle XE you will be able to install it on bigger better servers without paying if it needs beefier hardware at some point.

Or have I misunderstood something here?

Xelene · 18 Apr 2011 at 19:27

osc89er said:
I have to say that for small deployments, why not use mysql as it will likely give you everything you need but unlike Oracle XE you will be able to install it on bigger better servers without paying if it needs beefier hardware at some point.

Or have I misunderstood something here?

MySQL doesn't have a user interface?

robotSocks · 18 Apr 2011 at 22:06

sldsmkd said:
MySQL doesn't have a user interface?

yes, it does.

Dj_Jestar · 18 Apr 2011 at 22:32

Sounds like you want a CMS not just a DBMS.

Beansprout · 18 Apr 2011 at 23:29

Apex, eew, don't go there :eek:

MySQL + a competent dev or 5min googling to find a suitable CMS/CRM system