The evolution of the Greenbone Vulnerabillity Management data model and data management will soon take a significant leap. Currently, gvmd directly supports two database backends, PostgreSQL and SQLite3. Support for the latter is going to be dropped!
Supporting two backends leads to more code for the same functionality and absorbs valuable developer resources. Greenbone’s next generation sensors no longer require a lightweight database because they do not need any at all. Which means we can drop the costly support of a second database backend, remove all related code, and free development resources.
If you are working with the master branch, please prepare to switch from SQLite3 to PostgreSQL if you haven’t done so already. For the actual GSE users this will come into effect only when GVM-11 is released (October 2019). Naturally, Greenbone customers will not need to care about this - it will be all solved internally.
We are aware the Open Source community will have mixed feelings about withdrawing SQLite3 support as they have often opted for its use when integrating our technology. We do understand this since it is an easy-to-handle, quick solution for the database backend. It is used for simplicity in most third party integrations. But to address the demands of our customers, we need to focus on a single database backend which offers an extensive feature set. PostgreSQL is our choice.
As part of our product evolution we are seeking for an alternative to help keeping third party integrations simple. If you can or want to wait for this, we recommend to continue using GVM-10 and not switch to GVM-11 for the time being. We are hoping to have a solution for GVM 20.04, but this can’t be taken for granted yet.
If you want to speed up the evolution: the limiting factor is work force, consider Greenbone’s job offers.