About Database Systems

Database systems provide organisations with a central repository of information that can be easily searched or used to generate reports. There are now a wide variety of technologies available to implement database systems – from entry-level tools like Access to enterprise-scale SQL and NoSQL platforms.

MS Access is often the starting point for many smaller companies or workgroups within larger organisations – and it can work well for simple systems. However, Access isn’t really suited for situations where the data is business-critical or needs to be securely shared over the internet.

Traditionally, server-based database systems such as MS SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle have been the backbone of many business applications. While these pure on-premise deployments are still in use, they are increasingly being replaced by cloud-hosted databases such as Azure SQL, AWS RDS, and Google Cloud SQL, which offer scalability, resilience, and lower infrastructure overhead.

The database landscape has also evolved considerably:

• PostgreSQL has emerged as a leading open-source competitor to MySQL, often preferred for its advanced feature set and standards compliance.
• NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Cassandra, and Redis are widely adopted alongside traditional SQL databases, particularly in scenarios requiring high scalability, flexibility, or performance for unstructured data.

Although the choice of database engine is important, the real success of a custom system lies in understanding requirements, designing a sound data model, and creating the forms and reports needed to make the data usable.

Blueberry has all the skills required to deliver a custom database system for your organisation:

• We can create a custom Windows Application to deliver the forms and reports you need directly on your PCs.
• Or we can create a Web-based Application, making your system accessible via any Internet Browser, for any group or user you choose.

You can read here about how we work with you to understand your needs. If you’d like to learn more about the database technologies we use, please continue reading.

Many smaller organisations are used to the way Access works – the database file (an MDB) is placed on a shared drive, and all users can access it via Access forms and reports. By comparison, the server-based approach seems complex and generally needs support from the IT department. As a result, we’re often asked exactly what benefits using a server brings.

There are three main reasons why server-based database systems are better than the shared file approach:

• Data Integrity - Systems like Access provide relatively little protection for the data. If one of the programs writing into the Access database crashes – or is powered off at the wrong time, the Access file can be corrupted.
  By comparison, server-based database systems have built-in protection against such corruption – it’s built into the design of the database.
• Performance - Shared-file databases are much slower than server-based systems, because each user is directly reading the whole data file over the LAN. With a server-based system, the user’s program sends a query to the server, which then computes and returns the answer instead of pushing large chunks of data over the network.
• Ease of Maintenance - Systems like Access are simply not designed for larger projects – and maintenance of Access DBs can be very time-consuming. As more requirements are added to the Access-based solution, the complexity becomes increasingly harder to track and maintain. In addition, Access developers may implement their own solution to a commonly solved problem, whereas they could have used a standard solution in SQL. It therefore becomes easier to train new developers on the SQL based solution as they only have to learn the design of the databases as opposed to the design in addition to any quirks arising from custom Access code.

In recent years, Microsoft has introduced a free version of MS SQL server, SQL Server Express. This eliminates cost as a reason for choosing a shared file approach. Because of this, Blueberry recommends server-based databases for most customers.

Note – there are applications where database functionality is required within an installed program – this is termed an embedded database. In this case, server-based solutions are not appropriate. Please see below for more on embedded databases.

There are a huge number of database systems on the market, but most attention focuses on the top three systems:

• MS SQL Server - Microsoft’s flagship database product – available in a number of editions ranging from free to expensive.
• Oracle - The major competitor to Microsoft – and in some ways the original database. Oracle is generally used for larger systems, because most commercial customers tend to go with Microsoft SQL Server.
• MySQL - An open source (free) product that has established itself as the de-facto standard for Linux applications.

Blueberry has used all three of these products on live projects, but we generally prefer to use MS SQL Server – and we recommend this to customers due to its ease of configuration and debugging thanks to the bundled tools, in particular SQL Server Management Studio. MySQL has only recently become a serious product – earlier versions omitted data security features that we thought were essential. Oracle is generally seen as more expensive than Microsoft – and most of our customers are far more familiar with MS SQL Server.

We are of course happy to discuss the choice of database on any project with the customer.

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