Best Database type for Revit data

[Anonymous]

Hi all,

This is my first post to this forum, so please don't shoot me if I'm not following some rules 100%.

My question is about choosing a database type for exporting my Revit data.

I'm not a database expert, but I know that the following types exist: MySQL, PostgreSQL and NoSQL.

I would like to program something that exports my data from Revit to a database for further use (creating BoQ, ...)

However, I don't know which database type is best suited for exporting my data to?

Should I use MySQL, PostgreSQL or NoSQL?

You're probably thinking "well it depends on what you want to do".

But the thing is that I can't tell all the future use cases at this time, I just want to have a database with all of my Revit data so that I can do pretty much what I want with it in the future.

Any advice on this topic?

Thanks a lot in advance!

Nick

[jeremytammik · Accepted solution]

Dear Nick,

Welcome to the Revit API forum. No shooting expected here.

Good question! Thank you! 

The best database for storing a Revit BIM model is the Revit database in the RVT file format.

Unfortunately, you have no direct access to the underlying data, so that won't help resolve your question.

You are basically answering your own question quite well, I think.

It depends on what you want to do. It also depends very much on your past experience, your personal preferences and your future plans.

I am not a professional programmer or a database expert, so you should take any advice I give with many grains of salt.

I would advise: avoid traditional SQL! 

Unless you are an expert on that or have other pressing reasons to choose it.

Instead:

Go for the much more modern, scalable, minimalistic, low-cost, simple to use, web-adapted NoSQL options instead.

Here is my main argument:

https://github.com/jeremytammik/FireRatingCloud

Best regards,

Jeremy

[Anonymous]

Dear Jeremy,

Thank you for the quick reply!

The only issue I'm having is that we would also like to link some of our internal databases to the Revit database.

The internal databases are MySQL, so is it possible to link a NoSQL database to a MySQL database?

Kind regards,

Nick

[jeremytammik]

To me, that sounds like a good reason to choose MySQL after all.

Poor you, you will not be learning anything new...