Your New Development Database
Posted by christopher on September 3rd, 2006
Anyone who is still using Microsoft Access or MSDE for thier development (or even production) database, it’s time to re-evaluate your setup. Oracle and Microsoft have both released very impressive database systems for us that are completely free. You read it right — free. Not evaluation, not trial, not time expiring, free. Are there catches? Sure, but we’ll get into that later.
The first one I’ll discuss is Microsoft’s solution to our problem, Microsoft SQL 2005 Express Edition. This new Express Edition is a replacement for MSDE as MSDE will not be supported on Vista. The upside of this solution is that if your production server is Microsoft SQL Server, you can use this on your development box and not have to tweak your SQL because you’re using another free solution, such as Microsoft Access, MSDE, MySQL, etc. Unfortunately I have not done anything with Microsoft SQL since it moved up to version 2005, so it was not completely obvious to me how to setup an administer it. I was poking everywhere looking for Enterprise Manager, or Query Analyzer, but decided inside to look at the competition.
That brings me to the second solution, which was quite surprisingly easy to setup and administer for me. Enter Oracle’s solution, Oracle 10g Express Edition. Perfect for me because most of my production databases are Oracle 9i or 10. According to Oracle, the express edition came right from their 10g code, and I have yet to find anything I cannot do in express edition that I can do in my production database. Installation was as simple as executing the setup, then logging into the web based administrator and creating a user. I was then able to connect with all my DBMS tools, as well as ColdFusion. Remember, this means that you’ll either need the JDBC drivers, or the Oracle Client installed on your development machine to connect to the database.
I’d like to add that both of these applications allow you to redistribute them to customers if you are using them for applications you are writing. Oracle seems to allow you to do it without question, however Microsoft seems to want you to apply for it. See each vendors website for details, I make no claims that my information here is accurate.
Now for the gotcha. Neither system will use more than 1 CPU, use more than 1 gig of RAM, or allow a database to grow larger than 4 gigs. While this will not limit most of us in a development environment, it’s definitely worthy of mentioning. In my experience with Oracle XE, I have found it to be a resource hog, so plan accordingly, and shut down the database when you’re not using it.
I’d like to take a moment to tell you how I’m using this for my ColdFusion development. Since my production servers are again, Oracle, I’ve installed Oracle XE on my laptop along side ColdFusion Developers Edition. I’ve already had installed my favorite management and editing tools, so now I can now be completely portable in my development work. From the road, with no Internet connection, I can sit there and work on my database schema, or tweak my CFM files. It’s been a huge help in many of projects I’ve worked on.
Good luck setting up your new development database! For some of the non-database specifics about setting up a good dev environment, take a peek at Creating a Great Dev Environment over at the AjaxCF blog.
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