Most applications and programs in the modern era need somewhere to store data. For web apps, a database is a crucial cog in the wheel.
A few factors to consider when choosing the best open source database — a primary aspect is its cost, but flexibility and support from hosting providers are also crucial. An open source database is your best bet for many reasons.
For example, an open source database won’t hit your budget, nor will you have restrictions on how you can use it. Like a content management system (CMS) such as WordPress, open source tools can offer immense power and functionality. Even better, some of the most popular (and supported) databases are open source solutions.
Open source databases typically offer lower upfront costs and more community support and, in recent years, have offered strong competition to commercial database offerings.
Open source database distributions use an open source software licensing model that varies in distribution restrictions. Open source generally refers to programs with source code that's available for users to freely modify and use as they see fit. Open source database advantages include lower upfront licensing and ongoing maintenance costs than most commercial database management system (DBMS) offerings.
But open source does not always mean the product is totally free. Many vendors provide base functionality in their free, open source offerings and a higher level of features in versions that have upfront purchase costs or require subscription-based support contracts.
The key differentiator is that the upfront licensing and ongoing maintenance costs are often much lower than commercial competitors.
When compared to commercial competitors, open source databases were historically characterized as niche offerings with limited features, functionality and vendor support. As a result, organizations would shy away from open source databases that were not commercially supported.
There wasn't a stable, mature vendor they could rely on for product support, patches and upgrades. Data professionals felt uncomfortable implementing critical or mission-critical applications that were crowd-supported.
But whenever there are gaps in the IT industry, there are enterprising vendors that quickly provide offerings. Over the years, a growing number of service providers have stepped in to provide 24/7 support for open source database products.
In addition, with the ever-increasing interest in database as a service (DBaaS) platforms that inherently provide 24/7 database back-end support as part of their offering, you'll be hard pressed to find an open source DBMS product that doesn't have multiple support options.
All database vendors know they must add new features to remain competitive. A hot open source and commercial database market compels vendors to maximize their products' inherent feature set. Open source database advantages include constant innovation and integration of new features that differentiate products from other vendors -- a requirement for their competitive survival.