Choosing the right database system for a Django web application

Question

I am currently in the planning stages of building a simple Django web app (for learning proposes). Basically, teacher’s can login, input student grades, and then the students can login and view their grades. Each class has a group number.

Here is a template of a user:

Username: Johny098
Password: Y98uj*?877!(
Name: John Doe
Gender: Male
Group: 32
Secondary: 5

Taking into consideration that I am starting with django and web developpement in general, I find confusing the number of database systems that are available to me: MySQL, CouchDB, MongoDB, SQLite, etc. And I am having a hard time deciding which database system to use for my purpose (I have no prior experience with databases).

After some research I found Couchdb (and SQLite) which seems fairly simple to pick up and fun to use, but that's just me, and that's why I need help. I know there are numerous debates on SQL vs NoSQL, but I don't really know if this will have an impact for my use of the databases. Ideally, the database system should integrate well with django and be easy enough to pick up in a couple of days.

So, coming back to the question: What database system should I use for my web app?

Any resources would also be appreciated.

Thanks,

-Raphael

Answer 1

The Django website has a page that lists the database backends supported. However, Django's database access layer is designed to work more or less the same no matter which database backend you're using. There are some differences described on the page I linked, but they shouldn't come up in normal usage if you're writing just a basic web app. So as far as effects on how you write your web app, among the choices listed it really doesn't matter.

Note that all the database backends Django supports are SQL-based, I believe. Accessing the database through Django does eliminate some of the security issues that I believe prompted the NoSQL movement... in any case, NoSQL is something you can pretty much ignore for now.

In your case, I would suggest picking SQLite, simply because it's easier to set up, and you don't want to spend time worrying about how to configure the database when you should be worrying about how to build your web app. The difference between SQLite and most other DBMSs (database management systems) is that SQLite stores each database in a regular file, and the SQLite client works directly with that file. Other DBMSs (like MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc.) have a central location for the databases, a server to manage them, and a client that connects to the server and handles all the database access. A server-based DBMS works well for a busy web app, because it has features to handle many simultaneous requests to the database, but since you're just using this as a learning project, you don't need those features.

Answer 2

For learning purposes I'd recommend SQLite: no setup, no background daemons running, everything is bundled with Python, it's SQL (so it maps well with Django ORM), and it's a very simple DBMS. In fact, some people use SQLite for prototyping and then switch to MySQL/PostgreSQL in production.

As for NoSQL, I would not recommend to use it unless you know exactly why and for what purpose you need it.

Oh, and one last thing: store password hashes (md5 or sha1), not the raw passwords. It's not necessary in your case, but in real-world apps it's mandatory.

Answer 3

I would go for MySQL ... why? because among the ones you named, it is the most popular and, better than that, it will give you more credit when looking for a job (for instance, you can go to monster dot com and find how many jabs require you to know MySQL vs how many SQL-Lite).

Also, MySQL is simple and easy to learn, there are many GUI clients (some of which are Open Source) and it has pretty good documentation.