Managing a business from a spreadsheet works for a while. Whether you are using Excel, Google Sheets or OpenOffice Calc. As time goes on it can become difficult to turn that data into information. Being able to query your data and, for example, review which products are selling during during a particular season can help you plan your supplies.
There are many database products and this post aims to give you the highlights of the most popular.
Oracle
One of the oldest relational database products on the market. This American company has been around since the 1970s and is a fixture of coporate database usage. Of course, that means it comes at a cost, and moving from a speadsheet to this product is probably too bigger a step for a SME.
Microsoft SQL Database Server
Where you find computers you will always find Microsoft. Their database product was released in 1989 and is another popular choice with corporations. Each release has strengthened this enterprise level database and it is a proven asset for critical business environments.
https://www.microsoft.com/sql-server
Microsoft Access
If MS SQL is for large business then MS Access to for SME. It was created in 1992 and shipped as part of Microsoft Offce Professional and is still included with Office 365. Its Office style design makes it a easy option for businesses to move over from Excel. Although the forms that used to be so popular have widely been replaced with web portal, allowing browser access.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/access
MySQL
This is the most popular open-source relational database and now belongs to Oracle. Using the database is free but you can pay for levels of support. One of the founders of MySQL, Monty Widenius, has kept a free version running as MariaDB. Often you will find webhosting sites offer MySQL as a database.
PostgreSQL
This is another popular open-source relational database and has been around since 1996. It supports many programming languages and is seen as an elegant solution.
In general, for a small database most people would start with MS Access and then move to MySQL if they transfer to a web-host. The good thing about relational databases is once you have your data tables organised it is quite simple to move data between different products. At DBackbone we would recommend this appoach with a frontend coded using PHP. By keeping your frontend separated from your database it makes moving DB products much easier.
Of course, the corporation are now looking at larger cloud solutions for the databases. Microsoft offers Azure SQL Database and AWS offerings include Amazon RDS and RedShift.
As always, if you have any topics you want covered or questions feel free to post a message below.
