What are relational databases, and what are the best engines to use them?

Databases are a way to store and organize information in a logical and orderly structure. There are different types of databases depending on the model they follow to represent the data and the relationships between them. One of the most popular and widely used models is the relational model.

What is a relational database?

A relational database is one that organizes data into tables or relations, where each table has a unique name and is composed of rows (or records) and columns (or attributes). Each row represents an entity or object from the problem domain, and each column represents a property or characteristic of that entity. For example, a table named “customers” might have columns like “first name,” “last name,” “email,” and “phone,” with each row representing a different customer.

Tables can be related to one another using primary and foreign keys. A primary key is a set of one or more attributes that uniquely identify each row in a table. A foreign key is a set of one or more attributes that refer to the primary key of another table. For example, if we have a table called “orders” with the columns “id,” “date,” “customer_id,” and “total,” the “id” column would be the primary key, and the “customer_id” column would be the foreign key that points to the “customers” table.

The advantages of using a relational database are:

• It facilitates the logical and conceptual design of data, as it is based on the principle of normalization, which aims to avoid redundancy and inconsistency in data.
• It allows complex and efficient queries using the SQL (Structured Query Language), a universal standard for managing relational data.
• It offers data security and integrity, as rules and constraints can be defined to ensure the validity and consistency of the data.
• It is compatible with many operating systems, programming languages, and development tools.

What are the best engines for using relational databases?

A database engine or management system (DBMS) is the software responsible for creating, managing, and manipulating relational databases. There are many engines available on the market, each with its own features, advantages, and disadvantages. Some of the most popular are:

• MySQL: One of the most widely used engines in the world, especially for web applications. It is free, open-source, and cross-platform. It supports a wide variety of data types, functions, and operations. It offers high speed, performance, and scalability. However, it also has some limitations, such as the lack of support for some advanced relational model features, like updatable views, triggers, or stored procedures.
• PostgreSQL: Another free, open-source, and cross-platform engine. It is considered one of the most comprehensive and SQL-standard-compliant engines. It supports many advanced relational model features, such as updatable views, triggers, stored procedures, user-defined types (UDT), inverted indexes (GIN), or spatial extensions (PostGIS). It also offers high speed, performance, and scalability. Its main disadvantage is that it can be more complex and harder to configure and install than other engines.
• Oracle: One of the oldest and most prestigious engines on the market. It is commercial and requires a paid license for use. It is very powerful and robust, supporting large volumes of data and complex transactions. It offers many advanced relational model features, such as materialized views, along with advantages like scalability, security, performance, and compatibility with multiple platforms and programming languages. Additionally, Oracle provides administration, development, and analysis tools that make working with databases easier.