Free database for Maker, what do you use

Maker
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I need to decide on the type of database I am going to use.

I am familiar with Microsoft SQL and use that at work. Is MySQL free? Is there something better out there that anyone recomends I look into?

Thanks in advance for your guidance and recomendations!

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MariaDB works well

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There are the 3 big ones:

  • MS SQL is paid, has a lot of extensions to the languages
  • MySQL is free, and also has a lot of (different) extensions to the language
  • PostgreSQL is free, but tries to adhere to the SQL standard.

MariaDB is a fork of MySQL by the original authors of MySQL after Sun was bought by Oracle. So it’s pretty similar but the project have diverged a bit over the years.

For whatever use a Maker can have, any database will do.

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Unless you use the express edition, which is free but has some limitations: single core, 10GB Max per database.

For small projects, you might get away with a simple single-file sqlite database

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The majority of volunteer MySQL developers went over to MariaDB. If I couldn't use PostgreSQL, I'd be using MariaDB.

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I believe there is a 2GB ram allocation limit as well.

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If it’s just for personal use, you can also just use SQLite. There’s a seeded driver + translator now available, so you can pretty easily point it to a local database. I think there’s a few issues (resolved in 8.0.15) with history, but if you just need simple relationship mapping it works great. Extremely portable, too - it’s a single file on disk you can plainly copy.

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Also have to agree with Griffith here, I just needed some simple data storage, installed sqlite on my RPi 4, made a DB, and got it connected in less than 15 minutes. If helpful, I could make up a quick walkthrough.

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:+1:
One of my "little tricks" also has been to place that SQLite DB within the data/projects/ folder so that it gets incorporated into the gateway backup. Wouldn't want to probably use this strategy for tag history or something that grows large over time, but it is a nice technique for bundling simple database assets that should be atomic with your Gateway.

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FYI, In addition to MS SQL Express edition, MS now offered the the full version of SQL Server for free as a developer edition. The caveat is that the license is only for development and test systems, and not production.

But given that Maker edition is also only licensed for non-commercial use, then this shouldn’t be not an issue.

I use the developer version for developing (duh) work projects and haven’t had an issue with it.

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This seems like a nice trick for projects like the sample dashboard, where each user define their dashboard

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