CBBrowne Computing

Free Linux Databases and Tools

All major and most minor databases are now available on Linux (with the lone exception of MS-SQL). This is a sea-change compared to summer of 1996, when this list was slim indeed, listing mSQL, Postgres and a handful of others (Solid, Empress, Adabas). But at the end of 1998 and start of 1999, all of the major commercial DB vendors (IBM, Oracle, Informix, Ingres, Sybase) made their wares available on Linux, and there has been no going back.

This page is not a complete listing. Use the following cross-references to form a more complete picture.

  • Linux Non-SQL Databases lists OODBMS, xBase, Pick and other database systems.
  • Linux SQL Programming Interfaces lists ODBC, JDBC and data dictionary API's for SQL databases.
  • Linux Database Management and RAD Tools lists graphical GUI tools for developing database apps and administering databases.
  • Web-to-Database Gateways and Scripting Languages 
  • Slashdot's discussion of OODBMS vs. SQL Databases   

 

Open Source Linux Databases

Even as Linux has garnered support by all of the major commercial database vendors, the freely available open source databases have grown in sophistication and features. Below follows a partial list of some of the more popular of these.
In addition to the listings on this page, many of the commercial database vendors have free "personal edition" or "single user" policies that allow their products to be used free of charge at home or in non-commercial applications.

The goal of these policies to allow users to evaluate their software free-of-charge, and to allow developers to port their applications without making a large financial investment.
 
SQLite Embeddable SQL Database Engine (New Listing!)
SQLite Embeddable SQL Database Engine is a C library that implements an entire SQL server. This allows application programmers to embed an SQL server directly into thier application. Note that this is not a client library, and it cannot be used to contact an SQL server.
  • Implements most of the SQL 92 dialect.
  • Small footprint; 25K lines of code.
  • Sources in the public domain; no license.

 

McKoi SQL Database 
The Mckoi SQL Database is released under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and is written entirely in Java. Supports transactions, referential integrity, triggers, indexes, Java-specific enhancements. Supports multi-threaded, multi-client operation; embedable. Released under the GPL license. This is probably the most advanced open-source pure-Java database out there.
 
SAP DB 
The SAP DB was the liberation, under the GPL/LGPL license, of the SAP AG database.
 
This product has now reverted back to SAP and is available under the name of MAX DB.
 
HypersonicSQL 

HSQLDB is a leading SQL relational database engine written in Java. It has a JDBC driver and supports a rich subset of ANSI-92 SQL ( BNF tree format) plus SQL 99 and 2003 enhancements. It offers a small (less than 100k in one version for applets), fast database engine which offers both in-memory and disk-based tables and supports embedded and server modes. Additionally, it includes tools such as a minimal web server, in-memory query and management tools (can be run as applets) and a number of demonstration examples.

 
PostgreSQL 

PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source relational database system. It has more than 15 years of active development and a proven architecture that has earned it a strong reputation for reliability, data integrity, and correctness.

It runs on all major operating systems, including Linux, UNIX (AIX, BSD, HP-UX, SGI IRIX, Mac OS X, Solaris, Tru64), and Windows. It is fully ACID compliant, has full support for foreign keys, joins, views, triggers, and stored procedures (in multiple languages). It includes most SQL92 and SQL99 data types, including INTEGER, NUMERIC, BOOLEAN, CHAR, VARCHAR, DATE, INTERVAL, and TIMESTAMP. It also supports storage of binary large objects, including pictures, sounds, or video. It has native programming interfaces for C/C++, Java, .Net, Perl, Python, Ruby, Tcl, ODBC, among others, and exceptional documentation.

An enterprise class database, PostgreSQL boasts sophisticated features such as Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC), point in time recovery, tablespaces, asynchronous replication, nested transactions (savepoints), online/hot backups, a sophisticated query planner/optimizer, and write ahead logging for fault tolerance.

It supports international character sets, multibyte character encodings, Unicode, and it is locale-aware for sorting, case-sensitivity, and formatting. It is highly scalable both in the sheer quantity of data it can manage and in the number of concurrent users it can accommodate. There are active PostgreSQL systems in production environments that manage in excess of 4 terabytes of data. Some general PostgreSQL limits are included in the table below.

 
MySQL 
MySQL from MySQL AB is, with Postgres, one of the most popular GPL'ed databases for the GNU/Linux and BSD platforms. Documentation is avialable here.
 
  • Commercial sales, support and training is available from NuSphere. They also do contract programming and infrastructure enhancements and feature additions for MySQL.
  • Commercial support from AbriaSoft.
  • Rudimentary support for table locking recently added.
  • Complex but powerful user access control mechanism.
  • Multi-threaded for parallel queries
  • Includes ODBC, Perl, C, Java, Tcl, Python API's
 
InterBase 
The InterBase SQL server from InterBase Corp. is the well-known InterBase database released under an open source (MPL) license. In case you are wondering why you haven't heard of InterBase before, note that they were recently spun off from Inprise, which is, of course, the new name for Borland.

Server Edition
InterBase SMP 2009 Server Edition features a scalable, portable, cross-platform database, ideal for mission critical enterprise or embedded applications.

InterBase SMP 2009 Server Edition delivers high performance for applications with complex business logic and high concurrent user levels through its symmetric multiple processing support and multi-threaded architecture. Built-in SMP allows enterprises greater scalability with support for Dual/Quad-core and additional CPUs built-in, no additional licensing required. Fast, easy installation, a small footprint, automatic crash recovery, self-tuning, and near zero maintenance make InterBase SMP the ideal solution for embedded, turn-key applications. SQL 92 compliance, advanced data reliability and recovery, Unicode, numerous connectivity options, and support for Windows®, Linux, Solaris™, and Mac OS® X make InterBase SMP perfect for high-powered, cost-effective business-critical server applications in small-to-medium enterprises.

Desktop Edition
InterBase SMP 2009 Desktop Edition for Windows is a powerful, cost effective deployment solution for standalone applications.

Through its integration with RAD Studio, Delphi®, C++Builder®, 3rdRail, and JBuilder® development tools, InterBase Desktop Edition enables the rapid development of sophisticated business applications. With a small operational footprint, capabilities for automatic crash recovery and incremental backup, InterBase SMP Desktop Edition is an ideal embedded database for broad, cost-effective deployments that lack IT support and administration resources.

To-Go Edition
The new InterBase SMP To-Go Edition is a completely embeddable, full-featured, zero administration database that enables ISVs and OEMs to bring their applications and solutions to market faster. The To-Go Edition allows deployment of applications that utilize the InterBase engine DLLs. No separate database server process is running; the database engine is executing in the application process space. InterBase To-Go provides the benefits of InterBase in an extremely small footprint. Available October,2008

Developer Edition
InterBase SMP 2009 Developer Edition provides all developers the best cross-platform database to build and test database applications for embedded and SME segments. Developers are free to choose the standard connectivity they want, and make use of a mature SQL92 compliant database for their applications. Database performance monitoring allows the developer to streamline applications for optimal deployment.

 
CQL++ 
Machine Independent Software offers the CQL++ DBMS. Originally developed originally as a full-featured commercial software product, it is currently available under several licenses, including the GNU GPL. (The free version is under GPL, non-free, non-GPL versions are available at reasonable cost.) The feature list mentions the following:
  • Transaction support, including commit, rollback, nested transactions, logging, failure recovery.
  • ANSI 1989 Level 2 SQL and ODBC Level 1 API support
  • ISAM or B-tree access
  • Unlimited number of cursors
  • BLOB (Binary Large Object) Support
  • Optimistic concurrency control with shared read locks.
  • Preprocessor for embedding SQL in C++
  •  
Gadfly 
Gadfly is a small, portable database system written entirely in python and specifically intended for python programmers. Database files are portable from Win95 to Linux. Source code freely available, and is commercially supported by Chordate Systems.

 

GigaBASE and FastDB 
GigaBASE  (US Mirror) and FastDB  (US Mirror) are memory & file-based databases with an SQL-like query language. Because they compile into an application, they avoid most of the DB management problems of client-server. BSD-like license.

 

GNU SQL 
GNU SQL from Russia ... project development seems to have stalled in 1998.

 

 
Portions copyright (c) 1996-2003 Linas Vepstas.

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.1; with no Invariant Sections, with no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included at the URL http://www.linas.org/fdl.html , the web page titled "GNU Free Documentation License".

All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
Go Back to the Enterprise Linux(TM) Page
Go Back to the Linas' Home Page 

 

linux users conflict resolution seminar

This archived version of www.cbbrowne.com is provided as a public service.

All original content is copyrighted by Chris Browne.