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IBM Donates Java Database App. to Apache Foundation
the_pooh_experience writes "IBM has announced that it will open up Cloudscape by giving it to the Apache Software Foundation. Cloudscape, a small footprint Java database, is primarily used for small scale websites and point-of-sale systems. Its new, opensource name will be 'Derby.' Cloudscape (originally created by Informix, and purchased by IBM in 2001) has been valued by IBM at $85M."
Geez is the NYT dumb. Putting something in the "public domain" means you relinguish control. It's owned equally by everyone. Choosing an "open source" license means you keep control. If you're careful about how you do it, you can even change the license terms a bit later. MySQL is constantly tweaking their terms because they're the sole copyright owner. Sure, it's available under the GPL, but they can tweak the terms for preferred customers. And they do! That's still their perogative because the code is NOT in the public domain.
Cloudscape is hardly dead - it shows up prominently in Websphere Application Developer as the default embedded DB for EJB data. It feels a lot like MS Access - simple, quick, and dirty.
The Cloudscape homepage: Cloudscape
And more details with links to PDF documents: Features and Benefits
I would guess that mysql would be faster for simple stuff, but Cloudscape could give it a run for it's money with support for more complex SQL.
Wouldn't know how it compares agains postgresql...
//TheToon
While I haven't used Cloudscape in a very long time, I imagine this is more competition to other Java open source databases like HSQL, Axion, or McKoi.
Most of these databases are used by "embedding" them into an application (something not uncommon in Java programming), not as a standalone database server like Oracle or Postgres. Of course, like I said, it's been a long time since I looked at Cloudscape so it could have changed to be more of a standlone server.
I'm also surprised I haven't heard more about this in Apache, but I imagine it will first go through the Apache Incubator to sort out any legal issues and then end up somewhere in the Apache Database project. If anyone has more info, I'm interested to know.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
I think that Slashdot runs MySQL. So saying that MySQL cannot run big webapps is a bit of an underestimation :-)
Anyway, personally, I see it more as a competitor to hsqldb, which is also an embedded java DBMS. Or sqlite, although the latter is written in C++. It has the potential to become popular as a DBMS embedded in applications, but I don't think it is usable as a real stand-alone DBMS, such as MySQL.
Cloudscape was originally crated by Cloudscape, Inc. (I contracted for them at one time), which was later acquired by Informix.
At the time, it was a fairly complete and well-performing database with some nifty multi-database synchronization features, so even though I'm not involved in Java programming anymore this can turn out to be a quite interesting addition to Joe. A. Opensourcecoder's toolkit.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
You obviously haven't used java within the past 3 years or so.... Its speed on every platform I've developed on is no different then native speed, and in many scenarios its faster because of the many optimizations that java makes to your code and also from years of optimizing their own algorithms. This could be debated well... forever, but anymore if you need something faster then java then you should probably be using assembly. Speed and overall performance has only gotten better with the new 1.5 VM as well (It's now known as 5.0, and its still in beta but very useable).
Regards,
Steve
I've been using Cloudscape 4.0 in a web environment for a couple of years now, with no database failures of any sort. Cloudscape has a good selection of utilities (bulk loader, CLI and GUI, etc.) It's picky about ANSI SQL, and it supports most of the SQL that I'm interested in, like nested queries, stored procedures, etc. I'm using it as an imbedded database (just presenting data, not writing anything while in production), so I can't speak to the speed in an OLTP environment, but for my purposes, I'm absolutely delighted with it.
Funny how the word Apache in the article is linked to the stock ticker for APA. (Or may be not so funny) For the record - The Apache Software Foundation is a registered non-for-profit 501 c3 corporation incorporated in Delaware, and as such it does not have stock but rather can hand out membership to make one a stakeholder.
Just remove your slashdot cookies and all is well again... go figure.
Regards,
Steve
P.S. Anyone know what the hell is going on over at Slashdot HQ?
It's hardly a dead technology. Cloudscape is to be used as the local data store in the next generation of IBMs messaging products (e.g. Workplace which is built on eclipse RCP - see www.lotus.com)
Lotus say that the Notes client will 'converge' with the Workplace client in the version 8 release timeframe so that'll put an eclipse runtime and cloudscape DB on most every corporate Notes desktop in the next 2-3 years.
What you're seeing is IBM seeding the developer marketplace with technology (Eclipse, Cloudscape) in order to reap dividends in the form of an established base of technologists familiar with the underpinnings of their commercial products.
You getting the picture?
Another interesting, open source Java database is McKoi SQL Database, a GPL-licensed Java database with all kinds of nifty features.
Things are getting interesting for JBoss developers: JBoss ships with HSQL, supports McKoi nicely, and now we get Cloudscape thrown into the mix. Sweet.
MORTAR COMBAT!
We are a successful enterprise software ASP and used Cloudscape during our first 1.5 years before switching to a more robust database. Cloudscape powered our applications for 40+ customers globally. While it performed well given its small footprint, a huge problem for us was the fact that it does not release unused space -- the only way to do this is to run COMPRESS. With growing transaction volume we began running into random database balooning problems where the size of Cloudscape grew from 100MB up to 30 or 40GB depending on how long it was running. The fix required a COMPRESS command which takes anywhere from 1 to 48 hours depending on the size of the database and the amount of physical memory available.
Switching to Oracle and SQL Server eliminated this problem entirely. In addition, performance has been increased literally ten-fold just from the switch (no changes were made to our code or schema when this performance increase was measured).
While I would recommend Cloudscape for smaller, non-critical applications, it is not ready for real-world enterprise apps. I look forward to the improvements the open source community might bring -- from a cost perspective I'd certainly like to see us switch back someday.
Regards,
Matt
> MySQL is definitely ready for heavy loads
heavy transactional read loads for non-critical apps perhaps.
- Not heavy DSS/OLAP read loads though (where indexes don't work well and you want partitioning to bypass 95% of your rows). See Oracle, Informix & DB2 to see how this is done and the results it achieves.
- Haven't seen a proper benchmark but antecdotal evidence points to problems that MySQL has scaling to meet much write traffic. Postgresql, Firebird, etc on the inexpensive/free side appear to be better choices for this kinds of applications.
- Aren't online backups unavailable except through separately-licensed (and expensive) products?
- Then you've got the entire managability issue - on larger projects in which you desperately want the kind of functionality that MySQL AB has claimed that 95% of database applications don't need and which they've failed to support well: like database-enforced data quality constraints (referential, uniqueness, and check constraint declaratives). Add to that the lack of flexibility that comes from various missing features like views & stored procedures. Add to that the problems porting their non-standard SQL. Lastly, add to all of the above their massive list of exception-handling problems - in which errors silently fail.
Nah, MySQL is a nice little database. But unless 'heavy loads' means non-critical, read-only, index-oriented loads - I think that there are about a dozen better options available.
Oh yeah, and no - cloudscape isn't a competitor for mysql in general. They each bring different strengths to the table.