Types of Software for Database Management Systems

Available in three compatible editions—enterprise, standard and express—Oracle 11g provides database capabilities that run on Windows, Linux and UNIX operating systems. Special features include transaction processing, business intelligence and content management applications. Oracle 11g provides protection from server failure, secures data encryption and total recall of data, and easily manages the largest of databases. The Enterprise edition offers a range of options that include data mining, data warehousing, OLAP, advanced security and management. Other options are real application testing and advanced compression. Oracle promotes database applications by offering a free starter database in Oracle Database 10g Express Edition which users are free to download, distribute, develop and deploy.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 is scalable database management software in four editions: Enterprise and Standard and the R2 editions (Parallel Data Warehouse and Datacenter) designed to meet the needs of large scale Datacenters and Data warehouses. In general the four editions provide management for an organization’s database infrastructure while also providing time-critical business intelligence. The Parallel Data Warehouse and Datacenter editions cost much more than the enterprise and standard editions. The standard edition is for small organizations and can save more than 60 percent of the time spent on backups because it has a backup compression feature. Microsoft offers two free editions (compact and express) for students and software developers in addition to a trial version of SQL 2008.

MySQL is regarded as the most popular open source database that has ease of use and lowest total cost of ownership compared to other database management systems. Available in four tiers of increasing cost (basic, silver, gold and platinum), it provides high performance and scalable online transaction processing (OLTP) capabilities and multi-terabyte data warehousing applications. The real engine is called MySQL Enterprise Server.

Some of the special features of MySQL Enterprise 5.1 server include partitioning that helps manage very large databases and Event Scheduler to help create and schedule jobs. Three other features are Views, which ensures that sensitive information is not compromised; Triggers, which enforces complex business rules at the database level; and Archive Storage Engine for historical and audit data.