While MySQL has its place, it is certainly
not the only option. In the past few years, support for other databases has vastly
grown. I encourage you to keep an open mind throughout this chapter, and weigh all
criteria before making a decision on a DBMS.
Rails supports many DBMSs; at the time of this writing, DB2, Firebird, FrontBase,
MySQL, OpenBase, Oracle, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Microsoft SQL Server, and Sybase
are supported. You will probably know if you need to use a DBMS other than the
ones mentioned here. Check the RDoc for the connection adapter for any caveats
specific to your DBMS; some features such as migrations are only supported on a
handful of connection adapters.
* Informally, DBMSs are often referred to as ???databases.??? Consistent with industry practices, in this book
???database management system??? refers to the software package or installation thereof, while ???database???
refers to the actual data set being managed.
Database Management Systems | 97
PostgreSQL
I list PostgreSQL* first because it is my platform of choice. It is one of the most
advanced open source databases available today. It has a long history, dating back to
the University of California at Berkeley??™s Ingres project from the early 1980s. In contrast
to MySQL, Postgres has supported advanced features such as triggers, stored
procedures, custom data types, and transactions for much longer.
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