Data storage for a small lumberprocessing company in Sweden

Abstract: The world is becoming increasingly digitized, and with this trend comes an increas-ing need for storing data for companies of all sizes. For smaller enterprises, thiscould prove to be a major challenge due to limitations in knowledge and financialassets. So the purpose of this study is to investigate how smaller companies cansatisfy their needs for data storage and which database management system to usein order to not let their shortcomings hold their development and growth back. Tofulfill this purpose, a small wood processing company in Sweden is examined andused as an example. To investigate and answer the problem, literary research is con-ducted to gain knowledge about data storage and the different options for this thatexist. Microsoft Access, MySQL, and MongoDB are selected for evaluation andtheir performance is compared in controlled experiments. The results of this studyindicates that, due to the small amount of data that the example company possesses,the simplicity of Microsoft Access trumps the high performance of its competitors.However, with increasingly developed internet infrastructure, the option of hostinga database in the cloud has become a feasible option. If hosting the database in thecloud is the desired solution, Microsoft Access has a higher operating cost than theother alternatives, making MySQL come out on top.