I need a small database to store low thousands of records in a couple of tables. In the past I've uses Access and SQL server for things like this, and to be honest either would do. Trouble is my company corporate MS office doesn't include Access.

Please recommend me an easy to administer database system for me…

Work IT is Linux / Samba / PC workstation based if it makes difference.

thanks in advance

OpenOffice BASE or MYSQL?

MySQL, Postgres, CouchDb (if you're feeling adventurous), SQL Server Express (if you have an urge to run the DB under Windows). Probably best with MySQL.

Go with what you're used to, for that amount of data it won't make much difference.

I'd use (because it's what I'm used to):
SQL Server
Oracle XE + SQL Developer

Out of interest, any particular reason you can't use Excel?

MS-SQL Server Express does most things and is free…

oops just saw note on infrastructure, ignore me

I'd go with SQl server express, but I don't have a windows server to host it. I could do it on my own PC, but I guess that will be frowned upon.

mogrim – when I arrived they were using many disparate excel files and were not able to properly compare results across products.

Is it possible to build a proper relational database within excel??

As the place is excel based I will probably want to load data from excel so maybe a MS based product would be better?

Much easier to use SQL express if you can as you want to work with Excel data, but this article suggests that you can find tools to help with an import into MySQL from Excel.

You could always try exporting the data from Excel to XML and import the XML into MySQL…

Or can you write a script to read each line of the spreadsheet and write it to the database?

JulianA

The problem is that there are 100's if not 1000's of excel sheets that have the useful data spread over them.

It will be quite a task to build the history in the DB, but once that is done a simple task to upload any new entries in the excel files into the DB.

It looks like i'll go down the SQL express route as I know it. All I need now is to get corporate IT to allow me to install it….

SQLite fits the bill perfectly by the sounds of it.

http://sqlite.org/

Good luck! Should keep you busy for a while 🙂

Welcome to the 20th 21st century 😉

Wow, never used sqlite before but just downloaded the mac binary and within 2 minutes I'd created a DB, table and inserted a row. Piece of piss. And all you need is a single binary and somewhere to write out a file.

Is it possible to build a proper relational database within excel??

In order to implement a relational database you need to use keys. Because your data has been stored in excel (and from what I know of how users implement excel) – it's highly unlikely your data has got keys.

You'll have to retrospectively apply primary/foreign key to get it to be relational. Which means a certain amount of data manipulation to get it right.

If you can take the excel files off-site and import them into an access database for build and data manipulation you might make things easier. And then export the tables to a format that you can use in another database.

Surfr – It's decent for small stuff but you're still better off with a "proper" DB if you're going to put much load through it.

atlaz oh absolutely. I'm usually a MySQL guy but dabble in Postgres and Oracle when required, but for a pared down relational DB with SQL and no daemon requirements, this looks awesome.

Take a look at CouchDB if you want something a bit different.