What are the best open-source Relational Databases?

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score 19 · Accepted Answer

PostgreSQL

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Top Pro

Strong community

PostgreSQL has a strong community backing it, with guides, tutorials and support for any kind of problem a developer may have. See More

Top Con

Not suited for small apps

Because of its complexity and power, it may be overkill to use PostgreSQL in small applications that will not make use of its full power. See More

Specs

JSON?:Yes

Top Pro

High performance

PostgreSQL performance increases with each release, this is also proven by many benchmark tests. Notable performance features include: As PostgreSQL only supports one storage engine, it has been able to integrate and optimise it and with the rest of the database. This has resulted in multiple benefits such as the ability to allow different transaction types to co-exist efficiently without the need to select storage engine types once for each table ahead of time. On the fly data compression resulting in less IO required for reading. Asynchronous + synchronous Replication. PostgreSQL supports a asynchronous API for use by client applications. It is reported to increase performance by up to 40% and is not supported by MySQL. Designed to scale very well with large numbers of cores at high concurrency levels. See More

Top Pro

Actively being developed

Postgres has been receiving major feature updates with every release over the past few years, and is quickly gaining on closed source competitors like Oracle. See More

Top Pro

Easily extendable

Postgres is highly extendable programmatically through custom procedures that are called "stored procedures". These functions give you the ability to simplify the execution of repeated and/or complex operations. See More

Top Pro

Data safety is always the primary concern.

While any other databases are abusing their safety system to show better benchmark result, PostgreSQL never did that. They always chose safety over anything else, and you get full safety by default. You need to be an expert to make it unsafe. See More

Top Pro

Native JSON support

Postgres recently introduced JSON support, meaning it can be used much in the same way as a Document-store. This is incredibly useful for a hybrid Relational/Document approach. See More

Top Pro

Support Perl and Python for coding stored procedures

Postgres supports popular languages for coding stored procedures, such as Perl and Python. So, you can fairly easy transform just DB-server to reliable Service with complex business logic. See More

Top Pro

Support for geographic objects

PostgreSQL can be extended to have geographic object support through PostGIS and allows for location queries to be run through SQL. See More

Top Pro

Multiple node packages available

There are many packages (like Sequelize) that integrate deeply with the features Postgres offers. See More

Top Pro

Fully ACID compliant

PostgreSQL is known to have a very holistic approach to robustness and data integrity which is reflected by it being fully ACID compliant. PostgreSQL has always been strict about making sure data is valid before allowing it into the database, and there is no way for a client to bypass those checks. Depending on your requirements, ACID compliance might be important. See More

Top Pro

Many third-party tools are available

Because of it's popularity and regardless of it's extremely powerful features, Postgres has a lot of third-party apps and tools that make it easy to develop and manage applications built with it. See More

Top Pro

Powerful stored-procedure

Trigger and function build by PostgreSQL is very flexible. With a tiny learning curve but one can produce a ton of business logics and rules. See More

Top Pro

Permissive Open-Source License

PostgreSQL is released under the PostgreSQL License, a liberal Open Source license, similar to the BSD or MIT licenses. See More

Top Pro

Object Oriented RDBMS

The Object Oriented approach of PostgreSQL design, which gives it a power full feature in Table inheritance. This is a very nice feature and can map nicely with ORMs in Object Oriented Platforms like EntityFramework and .Net. See More

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What are the best open-source Relational Databases?

The Best 1 of 5 OptionsWhy?

PostgreSQL

My Recommendation for PostgreSQL

My Recommendation for PostgreSQL

Strong community

Not suited for small apps

High performance

Actively being developed

Easily extendable

Data safety is always the primary concern.

Native JSON support

Support Perl and Python for coding stored procedures

Support for geographic objects

Multiple node packages available

Fully ACID compliant

Many third-party tools are available

Powerful stored-procedure

Permissive Open-Source License

Object Oriented RDBMS

4 Other Options Considered

SQLite

My Recommendation for SQLite

My Recommendation for SQLite

Self-contained

Some SQL features are missing

Portable

Reliable

Zero configuration

Great language support

Small

Great for testing and first stages of development

MySQL

My Recommendation for MySQL

My Recommendation for MySQL

Scalable

Error messages usually are not very detailed

Multiple third-party tools that help working with MySQL

Easy to start working with

MariaDB

My Recommendation for MariaDB

My Recommendation for MariaDB

More cutting edge features

Truly open development community

Dynamic column support

CockroachDB

My Recommendation for CockroachDB

My Recommendation for CockroachDB

Cross Cloud Provider Replication/Migration

Immature project

Automated scaling & repair

SQL

Strong consistency

Simplified deployment

High availability

Distributed transactions

Don't see your favorite option? Add it.

Oracle Database 12c

My Recommendation for Oracle Database 12c

My Recommendation for Oracle Database 12c

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