Because both Discus Freeware and Discus Professional store their data in text files, a back-end database (such as MySQL or Microsoft Access) is not required.

Discus Freeware and Discus Professional 4.0 (and greater) provide optional support for MySQL to store various data. Using MySQL for this storage can give greater reliability, especially if there are many posts or many users on a board. However, all functions of Discus Freeware and Discus Professional will work properly, even if the database option is not turned on.

In Discus Professional 5.0, which is unreleased as of the time of this writing, certain features will require the MySQL database back-end. This means, if a customer is not connected to a MySQL database, some features may be unavailable. The list of features not available without the database will be published upon the release of this software.

DiscusWare continues to evaluate support for other database back-ends, including free products and commercial offerings. We are currently evaluating support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL server. This page will be updated accordingly should a version of Discus be released that is compatible with one of these database engines.