Getting Small: Building Lightweight Web Applications with Small-Footprint Databases

f you've done any open-source database development recently, you probably already know that when it comes to selecting a database for your application, you have a plethora of choices. You are no longer limited to commercial products such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle; open-source products such as MySQL and PostgreSQL are viable alternatives, offering similar features at a fraction of the cost.

However, while these products have rich, robust feature sets and reduce costs, they're not small—the latest downloadable versions of PostgreSQL and MySQL weigh in at 12 MB and 57 MB respectively. For small-scale applications that have minimal database needs, using any large feature-rich database products is often overkill; it's often more appropriate to use a small-footprint database instead. Even though small-footprint databases may lack sophisticated features such as triggers, views, and stored procedures, they make up for the reduced feature set by requiring minimal resources and disk space.