Question

I need a open source database for POS application(Swing). I don’t know much about database as I have been delighted by JPA. I would like to use MySQL database now, but I don’t know which one of them will be best suited to POS application. I have gone thro’ their site. Which among the following is best and what is their difference?

1. MySQL Cluster
2. MySQL Installer
3. MySQL Community Server

Requirement:

1. Maximum of 10 POS will access the database.
2. Sequence generation and simple Stored procedures will be employed.

If I had left out any other open-source DB that will suit my need, please point it out.
Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

The answer really depends on your environment and other requirement like HA, license issues. 10 concurrent access should be no problem for most popular open source DB with today’s hardware and most popular open source DB supports sequence generation/stored procedures except SQLite.

• MySQL Installer is the wizard installer for Windows, it provides all-in-one package like sample DB, connector, documentation, but the server is same as MySQL Community Server.
• MySQL Community Server is “the MySQL server”.
• MySQL Cluster provides clustering capabilities with synchronous replication. While the clustering solution provided in MySQL server (replication) is asynchronous.

the community server should be fine for you.

You might also want to check others like

• PostgreSQL
• H2: written in java, claim has better performance
• derby: writter in java, shipped with JDK6 in as Java DB

these DB has commercial friendly license in case you need redistribute.