On Sat, 02 Apr 2005 23:41:20 -0600, Jimmie Houchin <jhouchin at cableone.net>  
wrote:

> It seems that for productions sites with larger database needs that  
> Relational databases are currently preferred. At least this is how I  
> interpret what I've read. Please feel free to correct.
>
I disagree. I put the cut only w.r.t. the complexity of the domain model.  
Simple domain model -> relational; complex domain model -> OODB. No matter  
what people say, there's a chasm between the OO and relational models and  
it will hurt your ability to create a flexible domain model, which IMNSHO  
is one of the most important things about any moderately complex app.

OmniBase is a very good option for Squeak as long as you stick to  
commercial projects (some 400 dollars per developer seat; you can't  
possibly call that expensive), because the free version of OmniBase is  
slightly crippled (and needs updating). I don't know about GOODS or Magma,  
I tend to stick with what works :)

> The primary options of those it seems are PostgreSQL 7 and MySQL 4.
>
Forget MySQL for anything serious. It works fine if you have small amounts  
of data, but everyone I know ran into big trouble when trying to put it  
behind high-volume, high-traffic websites - it will crash, screw up  
indexes, and do bad things to your data. Don't believe the marketing and  
the hype, it's a low end RDBMS nice for low end applications.

PostgreSQL always has been more robust, supports a way better locking  
model, and has mostly closed the performance gap with MySQL. As far as  
free RDMSes go, I think it's the preferred choice for any situation where  
the use of third-party stuff (PHP apps come to mind) doesn't mandate MySQL.

> I also think that SQLite 3 looks interesting and much more along the  
> lines for comparison with Magma and GOODS. It is small, embeddable, and  
> to my understanding performs very well.
>
As you started talking about 'production sites with larger database  
needs'... SQLite is probably even lower end than MySQL :)