Commercial/Non-commercial DBMS

[Hightower]

What are these? What is the difference between commercial and non-commercial database management systems?

Advantages/disadvantages?

[somabc]

Is this coursework?

Why don't you read this.
http://www.devx.com/dbzone/Article/20743

Basically Commercial (such as Oracle, MSSQL etc) will cost money, Non Commercial (MySQL, PostgreSQL) are "free" or at least opensource. They are developed in different ways and come with different levels of support. If you want extra support (or even any) you are able to buy a support contract even with opensource.

[Hightower]

Haha, is this course work?! What a question..... It is

I've looked in books and such and can't find anything - I've tried various searched on Google and didn't find much - thanks for the link.

I thought when I first looked at it that commercial would be a database in a big bank for instance, and non-commercial would be a database used at home or something along those lines - am I completely off with this?

What environments would you say these will be used in?

[somabc]

Any Business could use a DBMS system! This forum uses one to enable me to talk to you just now

Any business that wants to store and easily access information using computers is going to use a DBMS, whether that is Banking, IT, Supermarkets, whatever.

A good case study is Oracle vs MySQL.

Oracle pretty much invented the RDBMS (relational database using T-SQL). It used to be if you wanted to run a large database with very important mission critical info, you went to oracle paid a ton of money and bought their DBMS. The advantages were it was very robust, reliable and if you had any problems you could go to Oracle and ask them to fix it. Really if you had any problems you had a large billion dollar corporation to sue!

Oracle Database - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Along came MySQL essentially programmed by volunteers that has now grown into a system that MySQL claims is as robust as Oracle, but which is offered for free. There are also paid versions that offer certain levels of support but overall it could be seen as riskier to entrust your data to a non-commercial DBMS. MySQL is commonly used by many large websites to host their data.

MySQL - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You will find it hard to find a neutral comparison of DBMS as all software companies tout theirs as the best.

http://www.experts-exchange.com/Data..._21200353.html
From experts exchange -

rebies:
I'll start from my experiences:

Microsoft SQL Server: It has a fairly intuitive Enterprise Manager which makes it easy to use. It's fairly expensive to start off and can get extremely expensive when you want more advanced features and reliability. This is where I have 99% of my database experience. It is nice in that a lot of people know it and finding developers who are familiar with it is not too hard. It’s full-text searching capabilities are quite advanced in my opinion too. The Query Analyzer and other wizards like DTS Import/Export make MS SQL Server much simpler and easier to learn too! (My experience: 8 / 10)

Oracle: This is very expensive for both hardware and for the people to manage it. From everything I hear it is a very tough learning curve, however it could be the most powerful relational database out there... But I have not used it. (My experience: 0 / 10)

MySQL: Its very powerful and fairly easy to use. It is completely free which makes it an excellent choice and lots of people know it due to it’s wide success as an open source program. From what I hear, the latest revision of MySQL makes it quite comparable to Microsoft’s SQL server in terms of performance and scalability. Even though it does not ship with a user interface, PHPMyAdmin is decent at doing the job. Though PHPMyAdmin does not seem nearly as powerful or easy to use as Microsoft's Enterprise Manager. (My experience: 1 / 10)

PostreSQL: Unfortunately I don’t know anything about it.

11.09.2004 at 04:11PM PST, ID: 12540035


Rank: Guru
rherguth:
I like this link for feature comparisons and theoretical limits:
http://dev.mysql.com/tech-resources/features.html

A DB's primary feature is data integrity (which requires stability) and I do not know of any that are not stable once you have your apps working with them.

An inexperienced admin can make any of these DBs unstable in a hurry, so having an experieneced DBA on hand is a good thing.

SQL Server is nice to develop for and easy to maintain. Why? Because support for it via the MDAC is likely to be already installed on the user's computer. Because the syntax favors making things easier on the developer. Because Microsoft has tried to make the engine self-tuning more than the other companies.

Oracle's record locking is not only different in design, but more granular than SQL Server, so for large scale transaction processing applications, it may be the better choice.

Sybase is no longer that similar to MS SQL. It has similar syntax, but the philosophy behind how to squeeze performance out of it has gone down a different path than MS SQL. The admin tools weren't as nice for this DB as MS SQL Server, so I built a tool in a couple of weeks that has much of the same functionality as Enterprise Manager. For any of these DBs, you're sure to find a company that has developed a better administrative interface.

Ultimately, you need to look at the requirements of the applications that you intend to build to determine which is best. Any of the products you mention could be the "best" depending on the requirements. Or you could ask different questions.
Assisted Solution

11.09.2004 at 08:21PM PST, ID: 12541091

mrnaz:
Unbiased? I'll do my best, here's my *opniion* on Microsoft’s SQL vs MySQL vs Oracle vs PostgreSQL.

As far as features, performance and power goes, Oracle is leader of the pack clearly. There are more features and tools available for Oracle than for any other DB. However, you will be paying, and paying dearly. You will be able to rest assured that your DB system is the best that money can buy.

Now in most cases, money *is* an object, and as such tradeoffs must be made. In my opinion, PostgreSQL is just below Oracle for powerand features. In fact, there are some things now that PGSQL even do better than Oracle especially in terms of transaction concurrency, PGSQL's MVCC (Multi Version Concurrency Control) model is widely accepted as beign the best conscurrency handling system there is. And its catching up. PGSQL version 8 is due out any day now, there are huge performance increases and features being added in the new version such as native Windows support (it will now install and run on any Win32 system including NT, 2000, XP and 2003), replication in the Slony-I project which brings PGSQL's scaleability to Oracle's calibre.

MySQL is a non-fitter in my opinion. It would be a great product, but since PGSQL's performance has taken great steps in the last few years there is little room for this between PGSQL and SQLite for MySQL to fit in. (SQLite is an ultralightweight, ultrafast SQL database that is embeddable and can be used for small simple projects, and is blisteringly fast in such uses.) MySQL has a *huge* following, and I'm risking a lynching bad mouthing it here, but I personally feel that it is a has-been product with benefits that were once leaders of the pack but have since been overtaken by superior products, namely PostgreSQL and SQLite.

MS SQL is a good product to work with if you're a die hard Windows and Microsoft user and are familiar enough with the other software that goes with it, and are comfortable paying large amounts of money for licences. Personally, with far superior open source options, I feel that MS SQL is a silly choice unless you have your hands tied by other considerations such as licencing constraints or compatibility with other MS products.

Finally, my overall view is that I use SQLite for small projects such as web polls and guestbooks where only the standard SQL commands are sufficient and there is no need for transactions, row/column/table locking, stored procedures and the like. I use PostgreSQL for large projects requiring transactions, stored procedures and with replication I cannot see myself involved in anything too big for PG. In fact I can't think of anything outside genetics and other highly specialised fields where PG would not suffice.

Finally, PG is distributed under the BSD licence, which means there is no chance of licencing compliance issues in your application, and you are guaranteed that there will never be any costs associated with the use of the DB itself.

I hope this information has been helpful.

[dhicks]

What is the difference between commercial and non-commercial database management systems?

Commercial ones you pay for, non-commercial ones you don't? MySQL is an open-source database, so you can use and distribute it with no charge, but many pieces of commercial software (mostly websites) rely on it to store their data.

--
David Hicks

[Hightower]

I think I'm starting to understand this - I must have read the task the wrong way as this is now starting to make sense.

I think I've got enough ammo to be on with - cheers guys!