EDIT: You don’t have to answer for my specific purposes, if you use a database for any purpose yourself then please share and tell what and why.
I’m not planning to host any fediverse or mastodon instances just yet, but maybe a private email server and porting a discord channel to matrix might be in my future.
What do you use and why? Is it limited to a specific OS, and if you were on a different OS then what would you be using instead? Do you think server hardware is required for most operability or can a good desktop computer and internet speed suffice as long as downtime isn’t a problem?
The only database I have worked with is MariaDB/MySQL, I use it as a database to a temperature logger that logs the temp of water at a swimming hole and uploads the data to website.
The logger is ab rpi zero, with a timer and a DS18B20 under water temperature probe.
The timer will turn on the rpi once every 30 min, I set up a bash script that gets the temp data, formats it, checks for errors, if found, checks again, up to three times in total if needed then using curl connects to a webpage to send the data (Name, Temp and Status), waits 30 sec, then shuts down the rpi, shortly before the timer cuts power.
The script is run a on startup as a systemd service, the reason for the 30 sec wait before shutting off the pi is to give me time to logon to the pi and stop the script if I need to do maintenence on it.
The website it built in PHP and MySQL/MariaDB, and runs on a webhotel, there are a few pages, one to upload data, one to get a list of the latest 40 readings, snd one mobile page that shows the current temp in larger font and a graph of the temperature changes.
I bet the swimmers really take that reading for granted, that’s the work of some truly competent people and we thank you.