🗄️ Database Starter

Manage portable MySQL, MariaDB & PostgreSQL instances on Windows — without traditional installation.

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📋 Overview

Database Starter is a WPF desktop application that allows you to install, start, stop, and uninstall portable database servers directly on your local machine — without administrator privileges and without Windows services.

The application manages standalone, portable instances of the following database engines:

Engine	Supported Versions	Default Port
🐬 MySQL	9.5.0, 8.4.7, 8.0.44	3306
🦭 MariaDB	12.2.2, 11.8.6, 11.4.10, 10.11.16	3307
🐘 PostgreSQL	18.3, 17.9, 16.13, 16.3, 15.17	5432

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✨ Features

• One-Click Installation — Downloads the official portable distribution and extracts it automatically
• Version Selection — A specific version per engine can be selected before installation
• Start / Stop — Database processes are started and stopped directly as local processes
• Uninstallation — Cleanly removes all files of an instance from the system
• Progress Indicator — Download progress in percent with status display during installation
• Live Status — Colored status indicators (🔴 Not installed / 🟡 Installing / 🟢 Running / 🔵 Stopped)
• Log Output — Integrated, expandable log per database instance
• Settings — Configuration (paths, ports, versions) is automatically persisted in settings.json
• Graceful Shutdown — When the application exits, all running servers are shut down gracefully
• Localization — Available in German and English (auto-detected from system language)

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🖼️ Screenshots

The application uses a modern dark theme in Catppuccin style with cards for each database engine.

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🛠️ Prerequisites

• Windows 10/11 (x64)
• .NET 10.0 Runtime (or SDK for building from source)

ℹ️ No administrator privileges are required. All database files are stored under %LOCALAPPDATA%\DatabaseStarter.

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🚀 Installation & Startup

Option 1: Download Release

1. Download the latest release from the Releases page
2. Extract the archive to any directory
3. Run DatabaseStarter.exe

Option 2: Build from Source

# Clone repository
git clone https://github.com/<user>/DatabaseStarter.git
cd DatabaseStarter

# Build
dotnet build -c Release

# Run
dotnet run --project DatabaseStarter

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📖 Usage

1. Select Version — Choose the desired database version from the dropdown
2. Install — Click 📥 Install to download and set up the portable distribution
3. Start — After installation, the server can be started with ▶ Start
4. Connect — Connect with your preferred client to localhost and the displayed port
5. Stop — Stop the server with ⏹ Stop
6. Uninstall — Remove the instance with 🗑 Uninstall (only possible when the server is stopped)

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📁 Project Structure

DatabaseStarter/
├── DatabaseStarter.sln              # Solution file
└── DatabaseStarter/                 # WPF main project
    ├── App.xaml(.cs)                # Application entry point with controlled startup & config validation
    ├── MainWindow.xaml(.cs)         # Main window (UI)
    ├── Converters/
    │   └── Converters.cs            # WPF Value Converters (Status → Color, etc.)
    ├── Data/
    │   └── database-versions.json   # Version catalog per engine incl. download URLs and extract folders
    ├── Models/
    │   ├── AppSettings.cs           # Persisted application settings
    │   ├── DatabaseDefaults.cs      # Loads and validates the external version catalog; provides defaults and helpers
    │   ├── DatabaseEngine.cs        # Enum: MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL
    │   ├── DatabaseInstanceInfo.cs  # Instance configuration (path, port, version, …)
    │   ├── DatabaseStatus.cs        # Enum: NotInstalled, Installing, Installed, Running
    │   └── DatabaseVersionInfo.cs   # Version information incl. download URL
    ├── Resources/
    │   ├── Strings.resx             # Localized strings (default / English)
    │   ├── Strings.de.resx          # Localized strings (German)
    │   └── Strings.Designer.cs      # Auto-generated resource accessor
    ├── Services/
    │   ├── IDatabaseEngineService.cs    # Interface for engine-specific operations
    │   ├── MySqlEngineService.cs        # MySQL implementation
    │   ├── MariaDbEngineService.cs      # MariaDB implementation
    │   ├── PostgreSqlEngineService.cs   # PostgreSQL implementation
    │   ├── DownloadService.cs           # HTTP download with progress reporting
    │   ├── ProcessService.cs            # Process management (start/stop)
    │   └── SettingsService.cs           # JSON-based settings management
    └── ViewModels/
        ├── MainViewModel.cs         # Main window ViewModel
        ├── DatabaseViewModel.cs     # ViewModel per database card
        ├── ViewModelBase.cs         # INotifyPropertyChanged base class
        └── RelayCommand.cs          # ICommand implementation

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⚙️ Configuration

Database Starter uses two JSON-based configuration files located next to the application output:

• settings.json — persisted user settings such as base path, selected language, versions, ports and install locations
• Data/database-versions.json — central version catalog for MySQL, MariaDB and PostgreSQL, including download URLs and extract folders

settings.json

User settings are automatically saved in settings.json in the application directory:

{
  "BasePath": "C:\\Users\\<User>\\AppData\\Local\\DatabaseStarter",
  "Language": "en",
  "Instances": [
    {
      "Engine": 0,
      "Version": "8.4.7",
      "InstallPath": "…\\mysql",
      "DataDir": "…\\mysql\\data",
      "Port": 3306,
      "IsInitialized": false
    }
  ]
}

Field	Description
BasePath	Base directory for all database installations
Language	UI language (en or de)
Engine	0 = MySQL, 1 = MariaDB, 2 = PostgreSQL
Version	Selected version of the engine
InstallPath	Installation directory of the portable binaries
DataDir	Data directory of the database
Port	TCP port the server listens on
IsInitialized	Whether the data directory has already been initialized

Data/database-versions.json

The available database versions are configured in Data/database-versions.json and loaded at startup by DatabaseDefaults.

{
  "MySQL": [
    {
      "version": "9.5.0",
      "displayName": "MySQL 9.5.0",
      "downloadUrl": "https://cdn.mysql.com/archives/mysql-9.5/mysql-9.5.0-winx64.zip",
      "extractFolder": "mysql"
    }
  ],
  "MariaDB": [
    {
      "version": "12.2.2",
      "displayName": "MariaDB 12.2.2",
      "downloadUrl": "https://archive.mariadb.org/mariadb-12.2.2/winx64-packages/mariadb-12.2.2-winx64.zip",
      "extractFolder": "mariadb"
    }
  ],
  "PostgreSQL": [
    {
      "version": "18.3",
      "displayName": "PostgreSQL 18.3",
      "downloadUrl": "https://get.enterprisedb.com/postgresql/postgresql-18.3-1-windows-x64-binaries.zip",
      "extractFolder": "pgsql"
    }
  ]
}

Each engine entry contains an ordered list of versions. The first entry is treated as the default/recommended version.

Field	Description
version	Technical version number used for matching and persistence
displayName	Human-readable label shown in the UI
downloadUrl	Download URL of the portable archive
extractFolder	Expected top-level folder name after extraction

At application startup, App.xaml.cs triggers an early validation of Data/database-versions.json. If the file is missing, malformed, or contains invalid entries (for example an invalid URL or empty engine list), the application shows a startup error dialog and exits cleanly.

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🏗️ Technology Stack

• UI Framework: WPF (.NET 10.0)
• Architecture: MVVM (Model-View-ViewModel)
• Language: C# 13
• Persistence: System.Text.Json
• Localization: .resx resource files (German & English)
• Design: Catppuccin Mocha Dark Theme

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🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here's how:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch (git checkout -b feature/my-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'Feature: Description')
4. Push the branch (git push origin feature/my-feature)
5. Create a Pull Request

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📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.

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⚠️ Notes

• The downloaded database binaries are subject to the respective licenses of the vendors (Oracle/MySQL, MariaDB Foundation, PostgreSQL Global Development Group).
• This tool is intended for development and testing purposes — not for production use.
• The database processes run as local user processes, not as Windows services.