PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL is an open source object relational database which has several features that differentiate it from MySQL and SQL Lite. It's the most advanced with a focus on extensibility and adherence to standards such as ANSI/ISO. PostgreSQL supports ACID or atomicity, consistency, isolation and durability making is compliant in this way as well. The Multiversion Concurrency Control stands out as a another strong feature in PostgreSQL and helps the standards compliance and data integrity overall. This database is very customizable and programmable. You can utilize custom stored procedures to extend it while using this feature to greatly speed up your workflow by taking care of multiple, repeatable and complex operations using it's automation which is great. The variety of overall functionality and capabilities with PostgreSQL are excellent such as the ability to utilize conversions, casts, domains, various data types and functions, custom indexing, operators, languages and much more. The aggregate functions are especially powerful along with the window functions in my opinion. There is a huge community supporting PostgreSQL as well so you get help actually. I've noted several clients available for this database as well to help simplify and streamline it's capabilities somewhat though I have yet to explore these in any depth. The documentation is very good for PostgreSQL relatively speaking, which is not typical in my experience of open source based educational materials and helps out the learning curve a lot. There are knowledge bases available as well as question and answer sites just to help with PostgreSQL.

I sort of with that PostgreSQL was the more popular database other than MySQL for typical hosting environment installations through Cpanel, for example. That way I would automatically have to learn it even though it goes beyond the needs of us. I am interested in learning more but with so much on the plate already so to speak it's a challenge in that my passion for learning is not practical in this instance. This database features are far to vast that for the read mostly operations we need and utilize MySQL in every case for this reason. While MySQL is perhaps better suited to fast read heavy operations. Ensure you have adequate system and database admin experience on your team. This is not as cost effective as MySQL in that PostgreSQL is much more specialized and requires a significant investment when hiring an expert.

I love the concept of open source it's a truly a symbol of the greatness possible by collective humanity. To have access to such an advanced and well refined database with great extensibility for free, along with the high quality documentation available is cool. And I appreciate it even though it may be over kill for most common purposes. If you require pristine reliability and strict adherence to standards compliance to help data integrity, or if you have custom requirements and need to extend your database in non-typical ways than this is going to be your best open source choice of database certainly though not for read heavy operations. And it's open source which is outstanding to have this much refined value available for free.