What I intend to design basically boils down to a list of users, organisations, events, addresses and comments which could quite easily be maintained in a RDBMS such as MySQL. However, if the project takes off I want to add another aspect which is resources - i.e. files, videos, images etc which can belong to either a user, organisation or event. This instantly raises the question of whether to use a RDBMS and store a reference to an external file through a table related to each of the categories previously mentioned or whether to use a Doc/Obj ODBMS such as MongoDB to store these items.
But I also want to be able to link users, organisations and events. i.e. User A owns Org 1 and Org 2. User B owns Org 3 and Org 4. User C owns Org 5. Org 1 has an Event X, held at Addr M on Date R, which Org 3 will also be at. User C intends to attend Event X. Org 2 also has an Event Y at Addr M but on Date T. etc etc. As such, I would suspect that a Graph DBMS such as OrientDB would be the best solution. Either that, or I would have a lot of tables in a RDBMS with a lot of joins, and potentially a lot of queries, or a very strange structure in a Doc/Obj DBMS.
I've looked at InfoGrid, which is a Graph database that can connect to MySQL, which could be a potential way to skin this cat. Has anybody else attempted anything like this? What are your thoughts on how to implement such a system, which needs to be scalable? Suggestions are greatly appreciated.
