Which free databases aren't crap?
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I'm doing some work for a charity website. They want a portal where you can sign up, download resources and they can track what's been downloaded by whom. The current site is all static, so no databases or anything. My database experience is all SQL server and a bit of mongo, but I don't want to have to deal with licensing and I don't even know if you can get a free version of SQL server for non profits.
My knowledge of free/open source databases goes as far as knowing that mysql and postgres exist. Are they much of a muchness or are there strong reasons to prefer one over the other? Are there better options I could use instead?
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@Jaloopa MySQL got Oracle'd, there's a GPL fork called MariaDB and it worked for me well enough. As with all SQL databases, many features have completely different syntax and behavior than what you're used to in MSSQL, but it should be easy to adapt if you're only going to do simple stuff.
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SQL Server Express Edition is free.
Otherwise, I'd recommend Postgres over MySQL. Doesn't MySQL not believe in typed data, or is that just SQLite? Even if it does... well, it's owned by Oracle.
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@Jaloopa I like Postgres and use it in real production apps.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
SQL Server Express Edition is free.
Otherwise, I'd recommend Postgres over MySQL. Doesn't MySQL not believe in typed data, or is that just SQLite? Even if it does... well, it's owned by Oracle.
As much as I'd like to trash MySQL for this, they made InnoDB the default database engine ages ago and it actually does support the kinds of things you'd expect in a relational database.
...I still think it's worse than PostgreSQL, though.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
Otherwise, I'd recommend Postgres over MySQL. Doesn't MySQL not believe in typed data, or is that just SQLite?
That's just SQLite (which totally aims to be a DB engine you can embed in your desktop app or phone app; that's it's target niche). Yes, MySQL (and MariaDB, which is basically a fork by the original author after MySQL got Oracle'd) has lots of quirks, but not that one.
Postgres is reasonably well regarded by many people; I've heard that from multiple independent sources. I've never used it myself (my apps don't need that sort of thing) but I have corresponded a bit with some of the PG devs over the years and they seem sensible types.
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@Jaloopa PG is definitely the best.
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Amazon has postgres and mysql compatible Aurora which is supposed to be better architected, and they now have serverless versions of each.
Postgres has postgis which is geo support.
If you can architect things properly, you can basically host this site for free.
Host the static stuff on s3, use lambda for the backend and dynamodb for the database.
Amazon DynamoDB is a high performance non-relational database service that is easy to set up, operate, and scale. It is designed to address the core problems of database management, performance, scalability, and reliability. It also provides predictable high performance and low latency at scale.
FREE TIER: Each month, Amazon DynamoDB users pay no charges on the first 25GB of storage, the first 2.5 million DynamoDB Streams read request units, as well as 25 write capacity unit and 25 read capacity units of provisioned capacity. Free tier also provides 25 replicated write capacity units to deploy DynamoDB Global Tables in up to 2 AWS regions.
They have a free tier for pretty much everything.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
SQL Server Express Edition is free.
It just limits the database size. I don't remember the limit, I think it was 8gb last time I checked (many years ago)
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@sockpuppet7 10 GB
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@dangeRuss said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
Amazon has postgres and mysql compatible Aurora which is supposed to be better architected, and they now have serverless versions of each.
Postgres has postgis which is geo support.
If you can architect things properly, you can basically host this site for free.
Host the static stuff on s3, use lambda for the backend and dynamodb for the database.
Amazon DynamoDB is a high performance non-relational database service that is easy to set up, operate, and scale. It is designed to address the core problems of database management, performance, scalability, and reliability. It also provides predictable high performance and low latency at scale.
FREE TIER: Each month, Amazon DynamoDB users pay no charges on the first 25GB of storage, the first 2.5 million DynamoDB Streams read request units, as well as 25 write capacity unit and 25 read capacity units of provisioned capacity. Free tier also provides 25 replicated write capacity units to deploy DynamoDB Global Tables in up to 2 AWS regions.
They have a free tier for pretty much everything.
They're hosted on Azure, and I don't want to mess with the infrastructure to that level. Maybe if this becomes a regular thing.
Looks like the consensus is that postgres is decent. I'll download it and have a play then. Thanks everyone
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@dangeRuss said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
Postgres has postgis which is geo support.
MySQL (but not MariaDB) supposedly has basic geography support in 8.x now as well. However, the chance that it's significantly worse than PostgreSQL's and will always stay inferior is approximately 99.995%.
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@Unperverted-Vixen said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
SQL Server Express Edition is free.
Oracle Database Express Edition is also free.
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@Jaloopa said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
Are they much of a muchness or are there strong reasons to prefer one over the other?
Unless you're forced to use MySQL, I'd always prefer PostgreSQL. Unlike the former, it has all features you could possibly want from a relational database and you don't have to read the documentation in detail to make sure that they actually work. MySQL has stupid
bugsquirks in pretty much every feature they ever implemented.
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@Jaloopa said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
They're hosted on Azure, and I don't want to mess with the infrastructure to that level.
Is Azure SQL an option, then? The lowest tier is only $5/month. Not quite free, but less than paying for a VM to host Postgres.
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@Jaloopa said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
@dangeRuss said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
Amazon has postgres and mysql compatible Aurora which is supposed to be better architected, and they now have serverless versions of each.
Postgres has postgis which is geo support.
If you can architect things properly, you can basically host this site for free.
Host the static stuff on s3, use lambda for the backend and dynamodb for the database.
Amazon DynamoDB is a high performance non-relational database service that is easy to set up, operate, and scale. It is designed to address the core problems of database management, performance, scalability, and reliability. It also provides predictable high performance and low latency at scale.
FREE TIER: Each month, Amazon DynamoDB users pay no charges on the first 25GB of storage, the first 2.5 million DynamoDB Streams read request units, as well as 25 write capacity unit and 25 read capacity units of provisioned capacity. Free tier also provides 25 replicated write capacity units to deploy DynamoDB Global Tables in up to 2 AWS regions.
They have a free tier for pretty much everything.
They're hosted on Azure, and I don't want to mess with the infrastructure to that level. Maybe if this becomes a regular thing.
Looks like the consensus is that postgres is decent. I'll download it and have a play then. Thanks everyone
I mean hosted is a strong word given that it's a static site. Is there any backend at all? Why would you choose to host on Azure if you don't have any dynamic pages? Or is it on top of some sort of framework, WordPress, .NET whatever?
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@dfdub Yep MySQL is the PHP of the database world. Everywhere, because it was once good enough. But today? Better use a better option -- it's easy enough to get a Linux VM somewhere...
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@dangeRuss said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
@Jaloopa said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
@dangeRuss said in Which free databases aren't crap?:
Amazon has postgres and mysql compatible Aurora which is supposed to be better architected, and they now have serverless versions of each.
Postgres has postgis which is geo support.
If you can architect things properly, you can basically host this site for free.
Host the static stuff on s3, use lambda for the backend and dynamodb for the database.
Amazon DynamoDB is a high performance non-relational database service that is easy to set up, operate, and scale. It is designed to address the core problems of database management, performance, scalability, and reliability. It also provides predictable high performance and low latency at scale.
FREE TIER: Each month, Amazon DynamoDB users pay no charges on the first 25GB of storage, the first 2.5 million DynamoDB Streams read request units, as well as 25 write capacity unit and 25 read capacity units of provisioned capacity. Free tier also provides 25 replicated write capacity units to deploy DynamoDB Global Tables in up to 2 AWS regions.
They have a free tier for pretty much everything.
They're hosted on Azure, and I don't want to mess with the infrastructure to that level. Maybe if this becomes a regular thing.
Looks like the consensus is that postgres is decent. I'll download it and have a play then. Thanks everyone
I mean hosted is a strong word given that it's a static site. Is there any backend at all? Why would you choose to host on Azure if you don't have any dynamic pages? Or is it on top of some sort of framework, WordPress, .NET whatever?
I haven't seen what the infrastructure is like yet, but have been told it's on Azure. The site is done in assemble.js with handlebars and gulp from what I've seen in the code. There's no news area or anything like that so no need for a CMS
