Welcome to db4objects' January 2006 Newsletter!
Articles in this issue:
E V E N T S
1/18/06 - Roadshow - Sydney, Australia
To watch the free, archived Webinar "How to Get the Most Out of db4o for Your Applications," follow this link.
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
We wish all our users and customers happy holidays and a wonderful and successful new year 2006!
A R T I C L E S
-- VERSION 5.0 UPDATE RELEASED --
After a successful release of db4o's 5.0 production version on November 14, the development team has worked hard to accommodate pending user requests and missing bits, which are now available for free download as V5.0.018, an updated production release, from the db4o Community Zone.
The Update features:
The db4o team is very happy with the response to the V5.0 release featuring Native Queries: With 33,500 downloads in November and now close to 10,000 registered users, db4o has achieved new record levels. The numbers demonstrate the strong user adoption of the db4o's object database -- only 1 year after being open sourced in November, 2004.
The release of db4o V5.0 and Native Queries has been covered globally by the press and sparked vivid discussions in the community, such as on TheServerSide. At the end of this newsletter we have compiled some user sound-bytes for your enjoyment.
V5.0 UPDATE : SUPPORT FOR .NET 2.0 GENERIC COLLECTIONS
Version 5.0.018 comes with support for .NET 2.0 generic collections. db4o can now store all common .NET 2.0 collection classes like System.Collections.Generic.List and System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary. The new implementation uses the existing built-in collection translation algorithm to provide SODA querying for collection contents and consistent activation behavior.
-- V5.0 UPDATE : ENCRYPTION WITH XTEA --
Version 5.0.018 also features a new encryption algorithm that realizes "eXtended Tiny Encryption Algorithm" (XTEA) for File I/O. XTEA is ideal to meet user needs for a tiny but very fast encryption algorithm which is as secure as DES or IDEA. XTEA's block cipher operates on a 64-bit block size with a 128-bit key and cycles less than 32 rounds.
Db4o.configure().io(new XTeaEncryptionFileAdapter("password")) allows you to add this new encryption functionality to the ObjectContainer. For further information about this new feature please refer to the updated tutorial which is available with the download.
-- V5.0 UPDATE : HARDWARE CRASH SIMULATOR --
db4o has released an IO adapter to enhance the stress test capabilities for db4o in zero-administration environments. The new IO adapter allows database "writes" to be interrupted at any given point in time, simulating what would happen if a computer loses power. Users can now more extensively test db4o and find out for themselves that the operating system cache and db4o transactions work together to ensure failsafe, ACID transactions.
ACID stands for " atomic, consistent, isolated, durable" and represents the state-of-the-art data consistency level for a database "commit" transactions. ACID transaction capabilities are extremely important for an embeddable database, where a DBA is assumed to be absent and therefore the system has to recover by itself from any incident including the unlikely event of a hardware crash in the middle of a "commit" transaction.
The new test case assumes the worst case which could stem from the operating system's file cache capabilities: The tracked "writes" are used to assemble a set of database files, one for each write operation, where all writes between flushes are applied the wrong way around, last one first, first one last. The test makes sure that every single one of the generated sample files is in the correct state. The test is supplied as source code with the download in com.db4o.test.acid.CrashSimulatingTest.
A transaction "commit involves" four steps, isolated from each other with a hard filebuffer flush that makes sure that writes go through the operating system cache down to the storage media:
(1) new objects written to unused space, pointer redirection log written to database file
(2) database file to commit mode
(3) pointer redirections applied
(4) database file to operating mode
In case of an abnormal system halt during commit and before (2), the database will be in the state it was before transaction commit. If a system is stopped between (2) and (4), the commit will resume and complete the next time the database is used.
-- DEVELOPMENT ROADMAP 1st HALF OF 2006 --
In Silicon Valley in early December, the db4o core team finalized the product roadmap for the 1st half of 2006. Top focus in the next months is to provide a "stable" version 5 for shipment. In addition, certain product features are addressed to round out db4o's completeness as an embeddable native OO persistence solution.
While db4objects does not, as a matter of policy, announce planned release dates, we are happy to share the major areas where db4objects is investing and the current order of priority:
- db4o - RDBMS replication, enabled by Hibernate
- Improved defragmentation
- Improved ObjectManager V2.0
- Fast Collections
- Visual Basic tutorial
- J2ME CLDC/MIDP platform support
- Transparent activation
If you feel that these priorities do not reflect your personal preferences, we are happy to learn more and discuss your needs. However, changes to the roadmap will need incentives from your side - be it either your free community contribution or a commercial framework, depending whether you can more easily invest time or money. Contact sales for further discussion.
The plans beyond June 2006 will be established at db4o's first joint User Conference and Global Developer Conference, planned for June in London, UK.
-- NEW dDN MEMBER PORTAL RELEASED --
In an effort to provide even more value through the db4o Developer Network (dDN) membership subscription, db4objects has released an entirely rewritten and extended member portal, available (to members only) on www.db4o.com/commercial/memberzone/. Non-members can peek at a screenshot to learn more about this powerful tool to enhance the db4o developer experience.
The new portal, which is integrated into db4o's website, offers the ability to view your account information such as address, contact details, and contract details. You can now report online the number of deployed db4o runtimes each quarter and review runtime shipments with the push of a button. The dDN portal now also works with a single and consistent login process together with the community zone and the forums.
The most important feature of the dDN is the ability to log user cases to receive case tracking and a 24 hour response guarantee. Powered by heavy-duty backend systems, any user case is automatically routed to the correct point of contact, including criteria such as language preference and technical properties. Users can view the status and the history of current and historical cases at any time.
The portal access is included in the db4o Developer Network (dDN) membership subscription, which is db4objects' solution for companies that have decided to develop software with db4o or run a db4o-based application in house.
Apart from the dDN portal access and its direct support facility, the membership package includes:
- A lock-in of any negotiated rates and conditions for all future purchase of dRT db4o runtime licenses, thus allowing fixed budget assumptions in your product planning;
- Free updates on any previously purchased or distributed volumes of dRT db4o runtime licenses;
- An unlimited number of non-GPL developer licenses within your organization.
We encourage to subscribe to the dDN for each of your db4o developers to give them access to their own dDN portal. The dDN is reasonably priced at US$1,200 per member per year and can be purchased by contacting sales.
-- db4objects PARTNERS WITH MASCON GLOBAL FOR MIGRATION SERVICES IN INDIA --
db4objects entered into a strategic marketing alliance with leading IT service provider Mascon Global Ltd. to help customers quickly and affordably migrate from older legacy systems to db4o's new, more powerful and cost-effective native object-oriented technology.
The alliance was formed in response to strong demand for a one-stop application refactoring and migration service from customers wanting to switch to today's OO paradigms - including db4o's native Java and .NET persistence solution - but who are constrained in development capacity and budget to undertake a major code cleanup.
Mascon Global Ltd., headquartered in India and the U.S., develops and implements end-to-end IT solutions for clients ranging from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups in an array of industry segments. Established in 1998, Mascon has become a leader in IT outsourcing services and was recently named "Fast 500" by Deloitte & Touche financial analysts for its strong growth in the U.S. Mascon is ISO 9001 certified and was awarded SEI CMM Level 4 for its strong emphasis on software quality.
"We are very proud to be the first IT provider to go to market with db4o-related service offerings," says Sandy Chandra, CEO and Chairman of Mascon Global. "Having experienced the huge benefits of db4o's native and embeddable persistence solution in customer projects, we were immediately convinced that this smart approach will offer huge business potential. Customers currently struggling with non-native persistence solutions can realize enormous cost savings with db4o. They can break free from technologies built on concepts originating in the '80s, which spur huge maintenance costs stemming from a technology mismatch and the creeping effects of closed-source product pricing. Our vision is to make our customers fit for competition in the digital age - and db4o is the right building block to accomplish this."
"Teaming with Mascon Global is a perfect match with our objective to provide the leading embeddable persistence solution for Java and .NET," says Christof Wittig, CEO and President of db4objects Inc. "While we focus on providing an easy-to-use, affordable product and technology platform, Mascon adds the power of 1,200 global IT professionals to the equation. Together we can provide customers with a one-stop offer to keep their products in line with recent technology leaps even if they lack the bandwidth to make the switch themselves. db4o's low-cost open source product and Mascon's affordable, high-quality turn-key IT offerings help IT managers equally to cut development cost and time - especially when it comes to the maintenance of Java and .NET software products, software-enabled devices, or real-time control systems."
If you are interested in Mascon's migration services please contact sales for further information.
-- USER FORUMS NOW ALSO IN SPANISH, PORTUGUESE, AND GERMAN --
db4objects has expanded its language specific offerings to the Spanish, Portuguese and German language by providing respective free user forums for peer exchange and support. This development comes in response to db4o's fast growing international community and the positive feedback we received upon launch of the Chinese and Japanese language forums earlier this year.
The links to the forums are:
With 6 language forums (including English) the db4o community now covers languages spoken by more than 90% of the users in the 190 countries that are listed in db4o's download statistics.
L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R
We asked for your feedback - and got it! Let us share some of the juiciest sound-bites of the last month with you:
"I am really impressed with db4o. The database is so easy to use - especially for embedded applications. db4o doesn't require any administration. It just works! And db4o's native object support makes it very easy to integrate with my Java applications"
--Marlon Machado, Senior Enablement Architect at IBM
"WOW! Native Queries in C# 2.0: Will you take a look at that. This is about the coolest thing that you are going to see until C# 3 & lambdas will arrive. ... Great job, and wonderful idea"
--Blogger Ayende Rahien, 11/17/05
"Regarding a Really Good Idea in Persistence: It's time for me to write about a really good technical idea. ... Things are changing. This doesn't necessarily mean that the core idea of native queries -- that we don't need SQL or other specialized query languages -- is right. In the end, it doesn't matter if the idea is right. What matters is that the idea will be right, eventually. Probably soon"
--Blogger Chris Smith, 11/8/05
"db4objects - i am in love"
--Blogger "Hasan", 12/10/05
"db4o is pretty interesting ... No reasonable person is going to claim that db4o is the silver bullet of persistence but it is interesting stuff and probably makes a lot of sense for a lot of applications. If nothing else, it is a good thing to be aware of"
--Blogger Jeff Brown, 12/5/05
"I have a dream(like Martin Luther King:P), one day db4o will be the #1 in dbase systems... That's my dream so i am the part of the dream so that, i try to do something as much as i can, advertise db4o to people as many as possible. When people ask me "whats that", i tell them it is the best in db system and will change your habits. Maybe you wont believe me but, before i sleep, i think of db4o..."
--User "Tehlike", 11/17/05
"for me DB4O is a dream finally becoming true"
--User Gustav Trede", 11/15/05
Is your feedback missing? Email us! Please let us know what you are thinking, and how we can help you. And please don't forget to share your db4o success stories with us!
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With best regards
The db4objects team.
www.db4o.com
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)
Christof Wittig ยป db4objects