In order to provide the data that is needed for this application, we will store and retrieve data from a traditional database. We will provide a REST endpoint for each of our database tables that we will need. Node supports a wide variety of databases, including traditional relational databases such as Oracle or SQL Server, or object databases such as MongoDB or CouchDB. For the sake of this exercise, we will use Sqlite3 as a backing database.

Sqlite3 is a very small, fast, and self-contained database engine. It supports SQL language queries and standard table structures, and is contained within a single file on disk, or even as an in-memory temporary database. It can be installed on Windows, Linux, and macOS, and has a very small footprint. Sqlite3 also has some very simple, yet powerful, GUI tools to help with database design and data input, such as DB Browser for SQLite (http://sqlitebrowser.org/).