Do I have to provision a paid database in IBM cloud in order to use Watson OpenScale's features?

Watson OpenScale provides free internal database in the tutorial. However, if I want to monitor my own models, do I need to provision a paid database in IBM cloud to do the payload logging?

If not, does the free internal database also support the payload data analytics?

You can use freely the internal database for monitoring of any model type with the limitations listed at: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/services/ai-openscale?topic=ai-openscale-connect-db#cdb-lite.

In summary:

• The free database is hosted, and is not directly accessible to you.
• The database capacity is limited to 1GB.
• IBM® Watson OpenScale will have full access to your database, and thus will have full access to your data.
• The database is not GDPR-compliant. If your model processes personally-identifiable information (PII), you cannot use the free database.