B.2. Personal and Freeware Databases

The term personal may be interpreted two ways: by cost and by the size of the target end-user audience. What further muddies the water are vendors from the "big list" in the previous section who have designed their products to run on anything from a cell phone up to large network clusters. When you get down to the cell phone level, however, it's a sure bet that there is some powerful middleware in the mix and a very thin client on the cell phone!

Two examples of personal database platforms are presented here. This list is not intended to be comprehensive but to give an overview of various approaches to solving the problems of an individual or a small work-group that needs more than a spreadsheet to manage corporate data.

B.2.1. Microsoft Access

Microsoft Access is not an easy product to categorize. It is part of the Microsoft Office suite for data management. This self-contained database has powerful query facilities yet lacks the recovery and robust multiple-user support that Oracle and SQL Server have. It can link to any external database that has an ODBC-compliant driver under Windows, which makes it a good cross-platform choice for the individual analyst or small work-groups that don't need 24 × 7 availability or highly flexible recovery options.

More information on Microsoft Access can be found at http://office.microsoft.com/home/office.aspx?assetid=FX01085791.

B.2.2. MySQL

MySQL is billed as "the world's most popular open source database." This product is free under the GNU General Public License (GPL), with technical support being an added cost option. It runs under almost any operating system, including all flavors of Unix and Windows. It is somewhat lacking in some of the features common to commercial databases; however, it is highly extensible and customizable. Its lack of features is offset by its high performance and reliability.

More information about MySQL can be found at http://www.mysql.com/products/mysql/.