★ wanayoo — archive 1999 http://wdvl.com/Authoring/DB/Intro/client_server_databases.html

Client/Server Databases

August 16, 1998

As we said before, most databases that you will come across these days will be relational databases. However, there are many types of relational databases and not all of them will be useful for web applications.

In particular, it will be the client/server databases rather than the stand-alone packages that you will use for the web.

A client/server database works like this: A database server is left running 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week. Thus, the server can handle database requests at any hour. Database requests come in from "clients" who access the database through its command line interface or by connecting to a database socket. Requests are handled as they come in and multiple requests can be handled at one time.

For web applications which must be available for world wide time zone usage, it is essential to build upon a client/server database which can run all the time.

For the most part, these are the only types of databases that Internet Service Providers will even provide. However if you are serving web pages yourself, you should consider many of the excellent freeware, shareware or commercial products around. I myself like postgres for UNIX since I prefer a UNIX-based web server. However, there are plenty of good applications for PC and Mac as well.