The best way to support robust content management and high perfomance data retrieval is by using an online database. A commercial workgroup database such as Microsoft Access is not really designed for use on high performance websites. A more enterprise class database such as Microsoft SQL Server may cost you a hefty monthly fee to rent in a hosting scenario and many times more to host yourself. Oracle can handle any dataset that a small business might create, but is priced out of the range of most small businesses.
In this gap between performance and affordability a number of open source databases have become very popular. They are well supported by a large developer community, are basically free to operate, and provide access to source code for learning or modification purposes. Using them requires more technical knowledge than the typical desktop database management system, but they are very useful for creating web based systems.
PostgreSQL
When development began on inCONTEXT in the spring 2000, for our needs we felt that the
PostgreSQL database was the best open source database available. It is:
- One of the most standards compliant open source databases in existance.
- Is fully compliant with the ACID data integrity standard.
- Uses the same data storage strategy (MVCC) as Oracle.
- Supports rules, triggers, views, procedural languages and most commercial database features.
- Supports standard and spacial data types for Geagraphical Information System support.
- Can be extended through the use of plug in components.
- Runs on over 34 platforms.
In summary, for a system where there would be multiple contributors submitting content in a real time setting, PostgreSQL provides the best set of features to maintain data integrity and performance.
In 4 years of performance, the database has yet to crash.
