The most important point in any database software is its compliance to ACID properties. These are set of properties that guarantees that a transaction ( all the steps right from start to end e.g sign in to sign out) executed in orderly and reliable manner. Say for an example if you have to transfer money from bank A to bank C via bank B. Now if something goes wrong while transferring money from B to C, Bank A will say it already sent the money but Bank C will say It did not received. So the commonly deviced mechanism is either it completes or rollbacks. ACID means:-

• Atomicity refers to the ability of the DBMS to guarantee that either all of the tasks of a transaction are performed or none of them are.
• Consistency refers to the database being in a legal state when the transaction begins and when it ends.
• Isolation refers to the ability of the application to make operations in a transaction appear isolated from all other operations.
• Durability refers to the guarantee that once the user has been notified of success, the transaction will persist, and not be undone

Now lets get to know 2 more powerful opens source Databases

Oracle : The fastest growing middleware

---

Oracle can be dubbed as heavyweight wrestler when it comes to databases. It was the first to roll out SQL based DBMS back in 1979. Since then it never stopped . Now the company rolling out its own version of Gnu/Linux dubbed as Unbreakable Linux its going to give a tough completion to all the open source. Oracle has been know for the lead in middleware solutions. The download is also available.It says “Oracle Unbreakable Linux is a support program that provides enterprises with industry-leading global support for the Linux operating system at significantly lower costs, with indemnification from the world’s largest enterprise software vendor: Read the Top Five Facts About Oracle’s Indemnification for Linux.”

IBM DB2 : Only Database that runs on all hardware

---

Yeah thats what IBM’s DB2 is about, right from mainframes to hand held devices, it supports all of them. This not only makes DB2 unique but also give advantage to run on any popular hardware.

DB2 offers industry leading performance, scale, and reliability on your choice of platform from Linux to z/OS. Learn how customers are transforming their data center with DB2.

DB2 interfaces most of the programming languages with enhanced set of application tools , another key feature of DB 2 is call level interface which allows C language to interface allowing C programmers to use database functionality from C codes. ( This is where it makes hug difference ) Here is a search link if you are really interested to know about it

There are so many others which are still growing, the most amazing part of these databases are they all were small projects which grew into such giants. Database is really not my cup of tea but the mechanism and they ways its implemented is worth studying.

I hope you enjoyed the posts, I would really like to hear some comments on this.If you have missed the previous posts in this series, here are the links :-

• “Database Bulls of Info-Storage on Linux – MySql and PostgreSql”
• “Database Bulls of Info-Storage on Linux – Ingres and Firebird”