Now that Oracle has bought Sun and MySQL, the future of MySQL is in serious doubt.
Has anybody spent time with Unity and other databases?
I am actually learning MySql right now, its a great tool. I suppose once I get into Unity, I will use it a lot.
If it is still around. Most of the Sun stuff has been fully re-branded and Oracle pushes their own entry-level version as Oracle Database XE (Express Edition). Supposedly, it will live until at least 2015, but in the commercial and governmental world that is practically around the corner. In theory, we should be able to easily switch to MariaDB, but I have not yet heard of anybody making that switch just yet.
I’ve always preferred Postgresql over MySQL as far as free databases go. There are also “community” or “desktop” versions of all the major databases.
I guess it depends on what you want to do. If you are looking for a small database to embed in your game, for instance, one I really like is H2. It’s a nice small, quick, embedded database written in Java (but they do have an ODBC driver). It’s very easy to use and lightweight. We’ve used it on several projects with great results (Java projects, haven’t tried the ODBC yet).
I think that to hedge our bets, we should probably give PostgreSQL plugins a shot.