[plug] Database advice - Newbie

[Craig Ringer]

> As someone who uses Java-<insert x database here> everyday I give it the
> big thumbs up(tm). As was said Java uses JDBC which basically means that
> the database on the backend can be whatever your comfortable with/have
> experience with. We use both Oracle and MySQL, but have switched to
> using MySQL in more of our projects simply because of runtime licence
> costs ~$30,000 per year compared to $600 once off (from memory) - also
> depending on the usage MySQL could be free.

Just to expand on that, MySQL is GPL, so if you're distributing the 
application you create you'll need to make the code available under the 
GPL. If you don't want to do this, you can buy a commercial MySQL 
license that eliminates that need - but of course, increases the cost. 
Alternately, maybe SAP-DB or Firebird have a non-GPL free license - I 
don't know off the top of my head, so you'd need to look into that and 
if they'll run on your target platform.

> The main thing to remember about JDBC is that some of its functions
> aren't supported by certain databases (ie MySQL does not support
> commit/rollback functionality) so these methods are obsolete in the
> MySQL implementation.

MySQL 4 supports transactions :-)

Otherwise, I would've said "either run PostgreSQL on a *nix box or look 
into SAP-DB or Firebird - don't use MySQL because it doesn't support 
transactions".

It's one of those features that makes the difference between a 
may-as-well-be-read-only database and a serious database (in my somewhat 
bigoted opinion :-P )

That said, I'm still mainly using PostgreSQL, but the MySQL 4 enhanced 
fulltext search is awfully tempting.

Craig