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For a project in History and Political Science, I am collecting tons of electoral data, including Names of each, Votes cast to each, Turnout, Rejected Ballots... they've never been digitized yet.

The data spans: - at least 70 years of elections - more than 600 constituencies, evolving over time - various voting methods were in use

First of all, are all major DB types or softwares able to include this? Which ones? I am fully new to this.

Second, I intend to produce 1) a website 2) a book.

What good database system could automatically complete of both my book and my website data pages? OpenOffice Database? Microsoft Access? MySQL? Anything I ignore? thanks.

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  • 1) No database system will automatically complete both my book and my website. You need intermediate data structures and programs to output those, filled with your data. You may have a small advantage there when you use an software package like OpenOffice or MS Office, because then the integration could be easier.
    – user416
    May 20, 2015 at 10:06
  • 2) Any modern database can handle the amount of data you specify. What is vitally important is that you study database normaization so that you build a properly normalized database (at least 3rd form) in whatever DBMS you use.
    – user416
    May 20, 2015 at 10:09
  • Given my previous remarks I'm voting to close your question as 'too broad'. You are in the stage 'how do I tackle this project' and 'what kind of software should I use' which does not exactly make your question a software recommendation that people can give meaningful answers too. Almost any DBMS answered here will do.
    – user416
    May 20, 2015 at 10:11
  • Any database can do this. To make your question less broad, please ask "what software?" instead of "what database?". Also, please describe what the resulting website should look like: Read-only view of the data? Collaboration features? Also, do the website&book need to show graphs/statistics, or just the raw data?
    – Nicolas Raoul ♦
    May 21, 2015 at 9:07

2 Answers 2

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I would strongly suggest using Pandas data frames for this.

  • Free
  • Handles huge data sets
  • You can manipulate your data to produce the views that you are looking for.
  • You can output as web page(s) easily by using iPython which mixing data, tables, formulas, code, etc.
  • The ipython can be saved as HTML, HTML presentation slides, LaTeX, PDF, ReStructuredText, Markdown, etc.
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  • If I might add to this: For the website, you could use pythons django web framework. It is powerful, has a database interface (Postgresql, MySQL, MondoDB, you name it) and you can use pandas in your views etc. Here you should find out whether django is a candidate for you or not.
    – j-i-l
    May 20, 2015 at 11:19
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Since you want a web-site later, make this a criteria, even at the initial phase when you are scanning documents.

MySql seems like a good way to go. Well established, stable, free, tons of support, books & examples, easy to use and integrated very well into PHP.

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