MySQL and mSQL

PostgreSQL

The current incarnation of the Postgres Object-Relational Database Management System is known as PostgreSQL (a.k.a. Postgres 6). While Postgres has had SQL capabilities for only three years, the system itself is over a decade old. In the early 1980s, Dr. Michael Stonebreaker of the University of California at Berkeley designed a database system that pioneered many of the concepts found in today’s relational database systems. This database engine was known as Ingres (later University Ingres). Ingres was a free, university funded project that quickly gathered a following among other computer scientists around the world.

One company saw the business potential in this academic product and it eventually trademarked and commercialized Ingres as a product. The original, free version of Ingres was renamed University Ingres and its development continued independent of the commercial version.

After a period of time, Dr. Stonebreaker’s research led him further away from the original design goals of Ingres. He decided that it was time to design a completely new database system that extended the ideas of Ingres and went beyond into new territory. The database system became known as Postgres for Post-Ingres.

Postgres, like Ingres, was a university funded project that has been free to the public. Also like Ingres, the commercial sector took notice of Postgres and the commercial product Illustra^[11] was born. Free Postgres has continued on and ranks up there in popularity with MySQL and ...