Best free database management system for beginners (with capability for 20gb DB)

Question

Hi,

I'm trying to "open" (?) a 20gb database with a .sql extension and can't find any documentation for beginners that doesn't already assume database access. I think as a first step I need some database management system. It don't need to have any development type capabilities - just the ability to compile (right word?) SQL.

Any suggestions?

Thanks, Erin

Answer 1

The best RDBMS system to use as a beginner is probably going to be either MySQL or SQLite.

MySQL is an excellent database system and is capable of holding an extremely large amount of data. The data however is not stored in a movable file as you have described here.

SQLite is also an excellent database system and is capable of creating database files that you can move from one machine to another quite easily. The downside is that for a data set that large, you will likely have performance issues.

Based on the size of the file you mentioned, it sounds like what you have is a file with a whole bunch of SQL statements in it. Without seeing the contents of the file, it is extremely difficult to say which RDBMS it came from, but at the very least you should install MySQL and learn how to use it.