Ubuntu Tips n Tricks

5 of the Best Relational Database Management System for Linux

Posted: 01 Mar 2011 11:32 PM PST

A Database Management System (DBMS) is described as a set of computer programs that manages the creation, maintenance, and administration of a database. It is a system software package that supports the use of unified collection of data records and files known as databases. A DBMS could utilize any of a variety of database models, such as the network model or relational model.

A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a DBMS in which data is stored in the form of tables, and the relationship among the data is stored in the form of tables as well. Nowadays, majority of popular commercial and open-source databases are based on the relational database model.

For those of you who are interested, I have here a list of some of the best Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for Linux (in no particular order):

MySQL

MySQL is a central component of the widely used LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, Perl/PHP/Python) web application software stack. It is a common choice of database in web applications and is used in many well-known websites, including Google, Facebook, Wikipedia and YouTube. In addition, free software projects that need a full-featured database management system often use MySQL. Some of the popular free software projects using it are WordPress, MyBB, Drupal, and Joomla. MySQL is written in C and C++. Its SQL parser is written in yacc, and a home-brewed lexical analyzer named sql_lex.cc. The main features of MySQL include SSL support, query caching, embedded database library, True Varchar support, updatable views, and more. It also provides features that other RDBMS systems may not, such as multiple storage engines (native, partner-developed, and community-developed storage engines) and commit grouping.

Apache Derby

Apache Derby is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) that is based on Java, JDBC, and SQL standards. The project's main aim is to provide a data management system that is easy to install, deploy, and use. Apache Derby has a 2.6 MB disk-space footprint, which contains the base engine and embedded JDBC driver. And since it provides an embedded JDBC driver, you could easily place it in any Java-based solution. Apache Derby supports the more standard client/server mode with the Derby Network Client JDBC driver and Derby Network Server. The network server maximizes the reach of the Derby database engine by allowing traditional client server operation. It also allows clients to connect over TCP/IP using the standard DRDA protocol and enables the Derby engine to support networked JDBC, ODBC/CLI, Perl and PHP.

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL (also known as Postgres) is a free and open source object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) that has evolved from the Ingres project. With over 15 years of active development and a tested architecture, it is renowned for its dependability, data integrity and accuracy, and is widely considered as the most full-featured open-source database system. PostgreSQL has native programming interfaces for C/C++, Java, .Net, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, ODBC, among others. It offers state of the art features such as Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point in time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups, a sophisticated query planner/optimizer, and write ahead logging for fault tolerance. It also supports international character sets, multibyte character encodings, Unicode, and it is locale-aware for sorting, case-sensitivity, and formatting.

HSQLDB

Written in Java, HSQLDB (Hyper Structured Query Language Database) is a relational database management system that supports a huge subset of SQL-92 and SQL:2008 standards. It provides a small but fast database engine that provides both in-memory and disk-based tables. HSQLDB offers tools such as a minimal web server, command line and GUI management tools, and several demonstration examples. It can run on Java runtimes from version 1.1 and above, including free Java runtimes like Kaffe. Some of the high-level features of HSQLDB include user-defined SQL procedures and functions, updatable views, arrays, schemas, datetime intervals, lobs, full and lateral joins and set operations. A lot of non-standard functions such as TO_CHAR and DECODE are also supported, and extensions to Standard SQL incorporate user-defined aggregate functions.

Ingres

Ingres is an SQL relational database management system that is aimed to support massive enterprise and government applications. Although commercially supported, it is fully open source with an ever-increasing global community of contributors. Ingres started as a research project at the University of California in the early 1970s and has since spawned a number of commercial and open source database applications that include Sybase, Microsoft SQL Server and Postgres. Originally funded by U.S. defense agency and the National Science Foundation, it has been steering the industry with pioneering technology for decades and has helped handle the most challenging enterprise applications of a number of Fortune 500 companies. Some of the main features of Ingres include fully transactional DBMS, ACID, and unlimited database and table size.

If you know of other excellent Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) for Linux, you may share them with us via comment.