Selecting a Database Management System

Database Management System Incentives

As Wedium is designed to be large-scale forum, the amount of data stored would be substantial. Being able to efficiently store the database and retrieve specific data presents itself as a bottleneck for the performance of the backend. As a result, it was decided to utilise a database management system to handle this; the decision therefore allows for Wedium to be more scalable, and improves the performance of Wedium for the end users.

Furthermore, as the group's intention was to make Wedium publicly accessible upon completion of the assignment, having a database management system better allows the group to monitor and maintain the data held within the website

Database Management System Options

• MySQL (fast, secure, cumbersome to setup on all development devices)
• SQL Server Express (fast, secure, provides .NET integration)
• Mongo DB (dynamic, scalable, not ACID compliant)
• SQLite (lightweight, fast, not as scalable)

SQL Server Express

SQL Server Express was chosen as the database management system primarily due to the easy integration options with .NET projects (i.e. scaffolding). It provides great tooling/ORM support with Entity Framework, and thus allowed for easier data manipulation from the backend API.

Additionally, SQL Server Express is fast, scalable and secure. It offers very few drawbacks; the greatest drawback was a heavier setup process but this inevitably led to greater security.