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Linux SQL Databases and Tools

[ Recommended by Linux Journal! ] [Sitting Penguin] An increasingly large number of databases are available for Linux. The list below has tripled in size since Dec 1996, and continues to grow weekly! And it is still not a complete listing. Use the following cross-references to form a more complete picture.

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Open Source Databases

Even as Linux has garnered support by all of the major commercial database vendors, the freely available open source databases have grown in sophistication and features. Below follows a partial list of some of the more popular of these.

Please Note, in addition to the listings below, many of the commercial database vendors have free "personal edition" or "single user" policies that allow their products to be used free of charge at home or in non-commercial applications. The goal of these policies to allow users to evaluate their software free-of-charge, and to allow developers to port their applications without making a large financial investment.

InterBase (New Listing)
The InterBase SQL server from InterBase Corp. is the well-known Interbase database released under an open source (MPL) license. In case you are wondering why you haven't heard of InterBase before, note that they were recently spun off from Inprise, which is, of course, the new name for Borland.

CQL++
Machine Independent Software offers the CQL++ DBMS. Originally developed originally as a full-featured commercial software product, it is currently available under several licenses, including the GNU GPL. (The free version is under GPL, non-free, non-GPL versions are available at reasonable cost.) The feature list mentions the following:

PostgreSQL
A long-time Unix favorite is back, and in style! The PostgreSQL Object-Relational DBMS takes the familiar Postgres concepts and updates them with extensive SQL support. A dedicated web site, a mailing list, a bug submission form backed by an active core development team of ten contributors keeps the code postgressing forward. A selection of features picked from their web site:

MySQL
The incredible popularity of MiniSQL on the net has lead to a free-ware clone: MySQL. Available in source-code form. It still seems to be nearly API compatible with MiniSQL, it is claimed to be a little faster and more feature-rich.

Gadfly
Gadfly is a small, portable database system written entirely in python and specifically intended for python programmers. Database files are portable from Win95 to Linux. Source code freely available, and is commercially supported by Chordate Systems.

Maverick
Maverick is a project to create a PICK-compatible database system. First phase is to create a DataBasic compiler, written in Java.

BeagleSQL
BeagleSQL is a project to create a free Object-Relational SQL RDBMS.

GigaBASE and FastDB
GigaBASE (US Mirror) and FastDB (US Mirror) are memory & file-based databases with an SQL-like query language. Because they compile into an application, they avoid most of the DB management problems of client-server. BSD-like license.

GNU SQL
GNU SQL from Russia ... project development seems to have stalled in 1998.

Commercial SQL Databases

There are a large number of database vendors that support Linux. It is difficult to review these accurately in a small space, yet, based on some highly subjective criteria, I've attempted just that. As you shop for a database, you should make your own list of the features and functions that you believe are important for your application. Remember that the "best" database is not necessarily the one with the greatest number of features, or the lowest price. For your needs, it may be raw performance for small queries, or it may be ease of administration of a database with tens of millions of records. Remember that whichever database you choose, you will be living with it for many years.

This section (of commercial databases) is no longer actively maintained. After all of the 'big boys' announced availability on Linux in 1998, so did everyone else, and it has become impossible/impractical to attempt to list all of the commercial databases available for Linux.

UniVerse (New Listing!)
UniVerse for Ardent is a flavor of PICK.

abase (New Listing!)
jBase is a PICK-compatible DB.

IBM DB2
IBM has announced availability and support for the DB2 for Linux database. The DB2 Universal Database is the flagship database: it boasts a long track record of large installations and rich & powerful features. Interesting twists include:

Ingres
Computer Associates has announced the availability of its Ingres II database on Linux in 4Q98. It is currently available for beta testing.

Oracle
Oracle has announced that it will be making available its Oracle 8 and 8.1 database products on Linux in 1Q99. A trial version is currently available for download.

Informix
Its official! After years of lobbying from its user community, Informix has finally made the SE Standard Engine database, ESQL/C and Connect available on Linux as supported products. Development versions can be downloaded for free, commercial use requires a license. Informix-SE is a high-quality, powerful and feature-rich SQL database aimed at folks looking for a low-maintenance, easy-to-administer database.

Sybase
Sybase is now offering Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) in the form of a free, unsupported release for Linux, for both development and deployment. Besides a raft of flagship-product capabilities, Sybase currently holds the world tpm/C speed record on a non-clustered SMP box.

Sybase also offers the OpenClient/C libraries in free, unsupported form. These libraries allow Linux clients to connect to Sybase server products. They are available in

There are various Open Source tools for Sybase:

SOLID
The SOLID SQL Server is available from Solid Information Technology Ltd. These folks are interesting to look at for a number of reasons: they offer a free evaluation copy, they claim support on Linux SMP, and they provide clients for non-Linux systems that can talk to Linux servers.

Taking the enterprise computing viewpoint, Solid is particularly interesting because it provides a number of the features required in an industrial strength database. I've abstracted a sampling of these from their FAQ and server technology overview, but probably don't do it justice:

New: The Free Linux SOLID Desktop Campaign is promoting a two-connection version of the server.

Empress
Empress provides the EmpSQL database as well as a variety of add-on products, including Motif-based clients. Some EmpSQL features that caught my eye:

Adabas D
Adabas D from Software AG can be obtained from Caldera, S.u.S.E GmbH and S.u.S.E LLC; S.u.S.E. offer support contracts. The feature list rattles off the following:

A Menu-driven database administration tool supports:

Velocis Database Server
Raima's Velocis Database Server is a client/server SQL database engine that is built into thousands of commercial applications. It offers multiple API's, including an ANSI SQL C-API, a low-level C-API, C++ class libraries, and a custom API through Server Extensions. Velocis supports the relational database model and the pointer-based network database model, but for flexibility and performance, developers can combine these two database models. The Server Extension feature allows application code to be hosted directly on the database server, reducing network traffic.

mSQL
The MiniSQL database from Hughes Technologies provides a simple, fast database that supports a subset of SQL. This is a popular, solid, widely used database and is superb for basic database applications. It comes with an extensive set of freeware tools, language bindings (e.g. Java, perl, tcl/tk), monitors, web interfaces, ODBC, JDBC bindings. It is packaged as shareware, and the current version comes in source code form. Its principal drawback is its lack of support for the industrial strength features such as transaction support and multi-tasking.

Kubl
The Kubl Home Page describes a "High Performance, Compact DBMS Server [and] Replication Server [with] ODBC Client API, SQL [and] Stored Procedures [support]" It runs on NT and most Unix's. The Linux pricing for this is *very* *sweet*, just a small fraction of the price for other OS/s.

YARD-SQL
YARD Software GmbH offers YARD-SQL. This appears to be a high-end package, with a large variety of features; among them an X11/Motif interface. Some randomly selected features:

JustLogic
The SQL Relational Database System from JustLogic Technologies. Their feature list should be consulted for details; some features that caught my eye are:

DBIX
Halcyon Software is known for its Windows-Unix cross platform tools. It offers the DBIX SQL database. Some salient features:

LNX-DBMS
LNX-DBMS SQL-Datenbank-Server für Linux/Unix Version 4 ist ein relationales Datenbankmanagmentsystem. LNX wurde als Client/Server Datenbank entworfen (ODBC-Interface), um Ihnen einen sehr vielseitigen Zugriff auf Daten, kombiniert mit der bequemen Handhabung von MS-Windows, zu ermöglichen.

SQLFlex
The SQLFlex database from InfoFlex. InfoFlex also markets an Informix-look-alike 4GL, a report writer, and a general ledger accounting system.

Texis
The Texis database from Thunderstone Specializes in support for natural language text, images, video and audio.

A very professional web site ... I really enjoyed the demo pages.

Linter
The Linter SQL Server from Relex Ltd. Demo versions can be downloaded from the News page. There is no on-line documentation or marketing material; this is a Russian company & the download page is in Russian.

Microsoft SQL
Microsoft SQL is reported to be a Sybase clone, at least as far as the wire protocol is concerned. In particular, the Linux Sybase client library available from Sybase will connect to the Microsoft SQL server. Users of PHP-3 report great successes with the Sybase CT-Library. If anyone is having trouble with accessing MS SQL from Linux, obtaining the latest PHP-3 sources is recommended.

SQL Tools, Shells, Report Writers, Web Interfaces

See also:

RAD (Rapid Application Development) Tools

Commercial deployment of databases usually means having a rapid application development tool to use. RAD tools come in two varieties: GUI and 4GL. Most newer tools are GUI'd, in that they use menus, drag-n-drop, and all those modern windowing facilities. Older tools are 4GL "4th Generation Languages" i.e. are intended for programmers. The idea is that using a 4GL is still a lot easier & faster than learning C or perl (or COBOL...)

Query and DB Management Tools & GUI Utilities

Managing databases is a chore in any shape or form. Most databases offer only a command-line interface with only the poorest of command-line shell interfaces. A good shell can make the development of management scripts much easier. And a good graphical database management and browsing tool is as important to the novice & expert SQL user as a good graphical file browser is to the general computer user.

Report Writers

Many of the database vendors also market report writers. As a result, almost all of these report writers will work ONLY with that vendors database. A partial list of these are:

Web Database Gateways

Commercial Web Database Gateways & Interfaces

Most things in the list below appear to be a server-side html-embedded scripting language. It seems that the schema-based approach used in the early days of web-database gateways has been abandoned, probably due to the limited artwork/appearance capabilities of schema systems.

One exception is WebKit, which instead extends a 4GL so that web cgi-bins can be more easily created in the 4GL.

Non-commercial Web Interfaces

Below, a taste of some of the free web interfaces out there. Not an exhaustive list.

Misc SQL Tools, Including ODBC & JDBC Drivers

Non-SQL Databases

This list is very incomplete, as I have been ignoring these.

Pick
Pick Systems has been a popular DBMS vendor offering sophisticated, robust, high-performance products for decades. This popular DBMS is used widely in commercial production environments, enjoys a strong following, and is now supported under Linux.

Character Mode Recital
Recital offers Character Mode Recital is a complete RDBMS environment. Complete with development tools for report generation, screen layout, data dictionary rules. Includes support for FoxPro, dBase, C-ISAM, and RMS data.

Raima
Raima offers their Raima Database Manager++ (RDM++), which is a db_VISTA follow-on.

Qddb
Qddb is a file-based database. Includes a graphical report generator, CGI toolkit, some applets: adressbook, contact manager, bug tracker, etc.

Texpress
Texpress is an object-oriented database server from KE Software. Excels in free-text and OO applications. Includes support for Texql, a SQL-like query language.

FlagShip
The Flagship Clipper clone from Workgroup Solutions. Can manipulate dBase III and higher flat-file databases. Includes language extensions allowing communication with SQL databases SQLKit and for creating CGI-BIN's WebKit

FairCom
FairCom offers the FairCom Server. This uses a proprietary interface, c-tree for access. Features: Faircom also markets a report generator, a Java interface, ODBC drivers and a 4GL language for rapid application development.

X2C
X2C xBase compiler.

POET
POET offers a variety of object database products and services.

POET Persistent Objects and Extended Database Technology- ist das führende Objekt Datenbanksystem für Desktops, Workstations und lokale Neztwerke.

LanBase
LanBase is a distributed, replicated RDBMS using proprietary formats and network protocols.

CSLIB, the C++ database library
CSLIBcontains a series of C++ classes which in combination with a program generator is used to build databases with automatically updated indexes, easy access to fields, export to dBase, and more. It includes classes for variable-length records, virtual heaps, btrees, etc. CSLIB produces small, fast stand-alone executables. It's available for DOS, Windows, Windows95/NT, OS/2 and Linux.

dBMAN
dBase III+ compatible dBMAN from

VersaSoft Corporation
4340 Almaden Expressway Suite 110
San Jose, CA 95118
Fax: (408) 723-9046
dBMAN V is a dBASE compatible relational database management system. Has a fully relational report generator.

SHORE
Shore - A Scalable, High-Performance, Persistent Object Repository

LEAP
LEAP is a free RDBMS that has been used as an educational tool in Universities around the world to aid the students as they learn database theory. It has also been used as a light weight back end database system. LEAP is in active development by the author.

Documentation, Other Notes

Last Updated April 2000 by Linas Vepstas
linas@linas.org
Copyright (c) 1996-2000 Linas Vepstas. All rights reserved. All trademarks belong to their respective owners.
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