While choosing a small / compact RDBMS, one must keep in mind that almost all such databases lack (in varying degrees) in the range of features offered by leading enterprise databases. A good technique to choose a small / compact database is to compare small / compact databases to enterprise databases and see how well they match up to the same.

For our comparison purposes, we have taken Oracle as the standard enterprise RDBMS and compared ourselves both with Oracle and other popular RDBMS packages available in the market.

It has been brought to our notice that a user looks at the following parameters normally while choosing an RDBMS:

• Datatypes Supported
• Support for Triggers
• Support for Views
• Availability of Stored Procedures
• SQL functionality
• Transactions
• JDBC Support (3.0)
• Security
• Price

As mentioned earlier, we have taken Oracle as the standard enterprise RDBMS. Then we compared Daffodil DB and other popular databases with the standard database (Oracle) to establish how well they match up to the features offered by that standard.

Criteria Oracle Standard Cloudscape v10.0 Pointbase Embedded MySQL Pro Daffodil DB v3.3 Datatypes Triggers Views Stored Procedures SQL Functionality Transactions JDBC Support (3.0) Security Price per license $ 300 Open Source $ 499 $ 500 $ 199

We can thus safely say that on the basis of the above parameters, only Daffodil DB comes close to matching Oracle Standard on features at the lowest price.

DISCLAIMER: All entries in the comparison table have been made on the basis of information available on respective product websites. The views expressed in this section and the information made available are purely those of Daffodil Software.

Open source databases compared at Devx