The setup procedure for external databases is covered in Chapter 18.

PaperCut NG supports Microsoft SQL Server (32 and 64-bit, and Server Express), Oracle and PostgreSQL out-of-the-box. PaperCut NG's framework is designed to support about 10 other database systems. The main reason why we don't support all these databases out-of-the-box is simply "time". Each database we add adds a few days of testing to each release and may require custom upgrade scripts, additional documentation, and other procedures. The policy we've defined on external databases is as follows:

• PaperCut will support an internal database + two commercial + one open source as standard. (i.e. Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and PostgreSQL) We selected MS SQL Server for the commercial database as it is the most popular with our existing customers. PostgreSQL is our free open source option, selected because it offered the best performance for PaperCut's transaction based usage.
• We can support other database systems on request. This is covered with a once-off cost combined with the initial standard license price.
• Once 5 or more customers have subscribed to the alternate database, we'll promote it to a "standard" database option and make available to all customers. (Oracle is an example of this policy in action. It was added as a standard option in April 2008 after 5 customers of our larger Corporate and University customers subscribed to Oracle support.)
• Support means both support between PaperCut and database vendor versions, and technical assistance where required.

If you have any questions about support for an alternate database, please contact our development team via the support email address.

Current status for other databases:

• Oracle: Complete. Now an official database option as of April 2008 after 5 implementations through 2006 and 2007.
• MySQL: 2 implementations to date.
• IBM DB2: No implementations to date only informal requests.

Why did you select PostgreSQL over MySQL as the free open source option?

We'd love to support every database out there, but there is a lot of overhead in supporting each database type. We chose PostgreSQL over MySQL because the MySQL licensing did not allow us to distribute the driver with the application. Given that PostgreSQL doesn't have this limitation and it's equally as good (or better) than MySQL for PaperCut data (transaction type data on growing tables) we chose PostgreSQL. We have a number of large PaperCut users running on PostgreSQL and the experience has been very positive with great performance and reliability with default configurations.

MySQL is a supported database option but is currently an option rather than standard and will remain so until we have enough implementations as explained in the policy above.

Categories: Databases, PaperCut NG and PaperCut ChargeBack 7+

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