OTRS is an open source trouble ticket system for easily managing support requests in a multi-agent interface.

The application can auto-convert e-mails into tickets (e-mail piping) which "eliminates the need of using the web interface" for customers.

OTRS is used by large organizations like Opera, MySQL AB, BitDefender, Suse & has very nice features like:

• transfer of tickets between agents
• auto-calculation of hours worked on a ticket
• powerful reporting
• canned responses
• multilanguage support
• themable web interface
• role-based user management
• & much more..

OTRS is built with Perl & can work with different databases (e. g. MySQL, PostgeSQL, Oracle, DB2 and MSSQL).

It has one-click installers for multiple operating systems (including Windows).

Almost every web developer has a favorite database that he/she feels comfortable working with as all the tricks & gimmicks are already experienced.

It can be one of the popular databases below:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• MSSQL
• SQLite
• MS Access

or even simpler ones like XML, text, etc.

It is understandable why these databases are frequently used; they are well-documented, have a community behind them, integrated with most popular CMSs', easy-to-use, offered by most of the hosting companies ,etc..

But there are also many other databases which are getting popular day-by-day & may have advantages over what you're already using.

Here are 25+ open source alternative databases that you may consider using in your next project:

MongoDB

It is an open source, high-performance, scalable, schema-free & document-oriented (JSON-like data schemas) database.

There are ready to use drivers for most popular programming languages like PHP,Python, Perl, Ruby, JavaScript, C++ + more.

Hypertable

Hypertable is a high performance distributed data storage system designed to support applications requiring maximum performance, scalability, and reliability.

It is modeled after Google's BigTable and mostly focuses on large-scale datasets.

Apache CouchDB

A document-oriented database that can be queried and indexed in a MapReduce fashion using JavaScript.

CouchDB offers a RESTful JSON API which can be accessed from any environment allowing HTTP requests

Read the rest of this entry »

Crystal is a database toolkit for PHP which aims to help developers build & scale reusable, database-dependent, framework-agnostic applications.

It has 3 independent components:

• Database wrapper – for CRUD operations
• Validation module – provides a comprehensive data validation
• Database manipulation module – used for creating databases, tables, etc.

The queries written with Crystal are database-independent which currently supports MySQL & PostgreSQL (SQLite is on the way).

For anyone who is familiar with SQL, learning Crystal wouldn't take no more than 5 minutes.

And, for many developers, it can be an option against framework-specific database layers like Zend_Db and Codeigniter's active record library or complex ORM's like Doctrine.

InDefero is an open source software forge application, built with PHP, that enables anyone to create a multi-project Google Code/Sourceforge-like system to manage their codes.

It eases tracking bugs, providing downloads, documentation and having an easy overview of the code base both for you & your team.

Also, it makes communicating with the user-base possible which is vital for a healthy development process.

InDefero has other powerful features like:

• every user has their personal dashboards
• code browser with git, Subversion & Mercurial support
• project timeline
• powerful search engine
• diff visualization of the commits
• inline display of text files from the repository with syntax highlighting
• & much more..

It requires a webserver supporting PHP as module or fast-cgi & PostgreSQL, SQLite or MySQL 4.1+ as the database to run.

Last week, a post had announced the giveaway of a Navicat Premium license ($369/value) to a lucky WRD reader. The winner is selected. But before that, to remind:

Navicat Premium is a cross-browser database admin tool which can manage MySQL, PostgreSQL & Oracle within a single application.

Data & tables stored in any type of supported databases can be converted into another very easily which makes working with multiple database types so easy.

The application also comes with the standard & handy features of other Navicat products like:

• advanced import/ export wizard
• query builder
• report builder
• data synchronization
• backup
• job scheduler
• & more

Special 50% Discount to WebResourcesDepot Readers:

Navicat is offering a 50% discount to WRD readers for Navicat Premium. To get the discount, you need to choose the "Shareit" as the payment option and use the coupon code: webpre50.

Note: Discount will be available for 1 more week (until 17 July 2009).

The Winner Of Navicat Premium License Giveaway:

The query below is used:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=1028 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

& the winner is "aj (comment #58688)". Congratulations to the winner & thanks to everyone for joining the giveaway.

Navicat, an impressive database admin tool which has versions to manage specific databases is now offering an unique tool named Navicat Premium which can manage:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• Oracle

within a single application with amazing features.

Navicat Premium allows you to control these 3 database types like they are the same & saves you too much time. You can:

• drag’n drop tables from Oracle to MySQL, PostgreSQL to MySQL and vice versa
• schedule operations for different databases such as print report in MySQL, backup data in Oracle and synchronize data in PostgreSQL to run automatically

The application comes with all the nice features of the Navicat family:

• advanced import/ export wizard
• query builder
• report builder
• data synchronization
• backup
• job scheduler
• & more

For anyone who works cross-database, Navicat Premium is a must-have software that removes all the headache of working with multiple applications & compatibility problems between databases.

It is available for two platforms – Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X.

Special 50% Discount to WebResourcesDepot Readers:

Navicat is offering a 50% discount to WRD readers for Navicat Premium. To get the discount, you need to choose the "Shareit" as the payment option and use the coupon code: webpre50.

Note: Discount will be available for 2 weeks starting today (until 17 July 2009)

One Navicat Premium License Giveaway (How To Win It?)

To get a chance to win a free license ($369 value) of this beautiful application, simply comment to this post with your thoughts. The winner will be selected randomly on 10 July 2009 (1 week later) randomly via the query below:

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=1028 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 1

Good luck.

RT (Request Tracker) is an open source support ticket software that helps managing user-submitted tasks, issues easily.

Users can submit tickets via e-mail (e-mail piping) or from a web-based interface.

Tickets can have priorities & admins can assign them to each other if needed. And, it tracks critical information like time spent per action, due dates, and estimated time to completion.

From one installation, RT can track multiple projects for multiple teams. The application is written with Perl & works with MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle.

For a full list of features, click here.

Tracks is a web based, advanced & open source to-do-list (getting things done) application built with Ruby on Rails.

It comes with a built-in web server (WEbrick) which makes it easier to run on your own computer or it can be installed to any Ruby on Rails enabled web server.

Application has a very slick interface & offers a high usability with drag’n drops & Ajaxed actions.

Tracks is a multi-user to-do-list application where everyone can have their own tasks.

Items can be categorized, proritized, scheduled & starred (for reaching them easier).

With a chart-supported statistics page, you can see the progress of your tasks, analyze them better like finding out which are your productive days, which task took more then expected & more.

The application has a powerful feed support (text, iCal and RSS). You can subscribe to a list & get status updates for them.

Tracks also makes it possible to getting integrated with other apps. with its API. And, it provides a lightweight interface for mobile phones at  http://tarcksurl/mobile/.

VFront is a dynamic front-end for MySQL & PostgreSQL databases written in PHP and Javascript.

It is not a database administration tool like phpMyAdmin and not replacing it: interface is for basic user working on data. Think about VFront as an interface tool for database, similar to MS access, but taking the lead with an easy access via web.

Using VFront, masks for managing your data in AJAX style, different rules and privileges for groups can be created.

It has reporting features in XML,HTML,PDF, statistics and much more.

To run this application, the database must be MySQL 5+ or PostgreSQL 7.4+.

Sphinx is a standalone search engine application that can be integrated with your data sources to provide fast, size-efficient and relevant fulltext search functions.

To clear how powerful it is, Sphinx is already used in BlogCatalog, Joomla & phpBB community forums and more.

Sphinx currently supports:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL
• XML Pipe mechanism that allows indexing of XML data

Some features of Sphinx:

• high indexing speed (up to 10 MB/sec on modern CPUs)
• high search speed (avg query is under 0.1 sec on 2-4 GB text collections)
• high scalability (up to 100 GB of text, upto 100 M documents on a single CPU)
• supports distributed searching (since v.0.9.6)
• supports phrase proximity ranking, providing good relevance
• supports any number of document fields (weights can be changed on the fly)
• supports different search modes ("match all", "match phrase" and "match any" as of v.0.9.5)