In order to extend an in-house IT service provider's database portfolio, multiple relational and non-relational open source databases are to be evaluated. Key aspects here include high availability, recovery, monitoring, security, the SQL scope, licensing, performance, and the installation and update process. MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Firebird and Cassandra were examined. After a comparison was made using the recorded requirements, the selection was restricted to MySQL, PostgreSQL and MariaDB. These were evaluated again in greater detail, in some cases with the involvement of the manufacturers, in particular with regard to performance, monitoring and high availability. In addition, licensing models were set up for enterprise subscriptions. The project not only successfully extended the service provider's portfolio, it also acquired and documented advanced knowledge of the behavior, advantages and disadvantages of the individual relational database systems.
Supplement
The RDBMS were installed and tested on Red Hat Enterprise Linux machines. For MySQL and PostgreSQL, experts from the manufacturers were invited to workshops in order to explain in detail how the databases function and to discuss various features in depth. HammerDB was used as a tool for performance benchmarking. Together with a specially developed script, the tool can also be used in future for automatic evaluations of other databases.
Subject description
An in-house IT service provider wants to extend its portfolio of databases. In particular, specialist departments are interested in open source databases, due to the lower costs. To enable informed offers to the departments, multiple database systems are to be evaluated internally so that two of them can then be included in the service provider's portfolio.