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."

Comments

Anybody used it?

[btrapp]

Can anyone comment on how it performs?

Re:Anybody used it?

[not_a_product_id]

Obviously I haven't RTFA (this being /.) but I'm guessing they're not aiming at the Oracle/DB2 market. Plenty of times when you don't need anything that beefy.

Re:Anybody used it?

[mauryisland]

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.

Re:Anybody used it?

[Brando_Calrisean]

Just like my Honda Civic is no match for a Formula 1 Racecar, right?

Come on, this was modded 'Informative'?

Re:Anybody used it?

[Anonymous Coward]

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

Re:Anybody used it?

[splante]

We've been using it in our ZyrOSS product (video conference billing/reporting) for more than a year. It performs great for our needs. It has a pretty full SQL and is really maintenance free. It's great for a Java application because it's pure Java, so you don't need a platform dependant piece to complicate installs. Actually, there is no separate "install"--you just include a few extra jar files with your application. We had tried instantdb and mckoi, but they weren't robust enough. We've been very happy with it.

Re:Anybody used it?

[Anonymous Coward]

What version of Cloudscape were you using? I've used Cloudscape on and off for prototyping various things and I've noticed that Cloudscape 4.0 uses space much better than previous versions. Also, I also suspect a 'storage leak' like that would definitely have been fixed since IBM began shipping it with Websphere and the Workplace suite.

It's cool to see there's a new version out for public consumption and contributing the source to Apache makes it even better.

CloudScape

[TheToon]

Good! This is quite a nifty little SQL engine with a lot of features. Will be exciting to follow the progress of Derby, could provide competition for mysql and postgresql.

Re:CloudScape

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloudscape (originally created by Informix, and purchased by IBM in 2001) has been valued by IBM at $85M.

Actually, Cloudscape was originally created by a
company called Cloudscape & the company was
bought over by Informix. Then Informix was bought
over by IBM.

Re:CloudScape

[dabneyd]

"Will be exciting to follow the progress of Derby" Yes it will! Follow my progress! -Michael Derby

"public domain" is not the same as "open source"

[samuel4242]

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.

Value

[Anonymous Coward]

"...has been valued by IBM at $85M."

Now, it's free, so it's worthless.

Re:Value

[NETHED]

Not true. I'm sure this can be written off as a tax deduction. Something akin to a donation.

Re:Value

[Anonymous Coward]

the word is priceless.

Re:Value

[Tassach]

It may well be worth $85M, but how much would it cost IBM to maintain it? Besides, it would only be worth that much if they could find a buyer, and it's pretty unlikely that they'd find someone to buy it at that price.

An $85M "asset" isn't worth much if you have to spend $16M a year maintaining and supporting it. Also, remember that IBM has several other database products this would be competing against. The fact that they released it as Open Source is a very good thing for everyone, considering that they could have just abandoned the code and kept it locked away. This way they get good publicity, reduce their maintenance costs, and get a nice tax break.

Another point that IBM really isn't in the business of selling either software or hardware anymore -- they sell SOLUTIONS. Nowadays, most of Big Blue's revenue comes from sending consultants out to tell customers what hardware and software they need to run their business, and then putting all the pieces together for them so the whole thing works. While they'd prefer to sell you IBM hardware and IBM software, they're pretty agnostic in that regard. Having their own pet OSS database allows them to offer an IBM-backed solution for lower-end projects which don't have the money for a DB2 license.

Re:Value

[eddy_crim]

Cloudscape comes packaged with a lot of IBM's WebSphere product suit including their JSR 168 portal solution. Its just doesn't scale to production level but its trivial to swap out cloudscape and swap in DB2 (and others).

I guess since IBM are bundling it with a lot of things it is actually worth a lot too them. HOWEVER since nobody would ever JUST buy cloudscape it would be good strategy to widen its use by the OSS community.

basically

1. people use cloudscape in their solutions
2. solutions grow big and don't scale too well
3. people buy db2
4. profit.

Re:Value

[jschottm]

Why would you be sure of that? Charitible donations are deductable. Actual business expenses/failed investments are deductable. Opening the source of something is not.

Re:Value

[jrumney]

I know from when I used to work for the R&D arm of a large multinational, that patents donated into the public domain can definitely be written off against tax in the US, so I wouldn't be surprised if copyrights could too, and if donating them to a non-profit that kept them for the public good was treated the same as public domain for tax purposes. I don't see any other reason for IBM to put a value on Cloudscape right before they give it away.

MySql Competition?

[Ckwop]

Is this designed to compete directly with MySql or is it like an open source version of Microsofts MSDE. Suitable for a small web app but not for hosting something like slashdot or Amazon? It's cool to see IBM once again support the OSS community.

Simon

Re:MySql Competition?

[jaaron]

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.

Re:MySql Competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:MySql Competition?

[jusdisgi]

You could have also said Google. But I concur...MySQL is definitely ready for heavy loads.

Re:MySql Competition?

[NineNine]

MySQL is definitely ready for heavy loads

You're right. After all, it performs so well for Slashdot...

Re:MySql Competition?

[hattmoward]

(Holy crap, I'm aggreeing with an AC)

That's about what I was thinking, it looks like it's more oriented towards embedded databases, rather than client-server ones. Maybe the OP has heard of Microsoft's Jet database engine used with VB or FoxPro? A very nice combo for storing a small data set in a regular fashion. SQLite is very handy also, in the open-source world. Actually, isn't SQLite in the public domain? Good stuff.

I think it may be possible to use MySQL for a heavier embedded database... hence the dual-licensing, in case your company embeds MySQL, but doesn't want to GPL their product.

Re:MySql Competition?

[BarryNorton]

More interesting to some of us - how does it compare with MySQL in the areas that's not ready for... like providing for the use of some of the more interesting stuff in the SQL standards (subqueries, views etc.)?

(No, I'm not going to say triggers and stored procedures - I think there was just a story about this... and, btw, apologies if I'm behind on what MySQL does and doesn't implement since last year...)

Re:MySql Competition?

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than MSDE, wouldn't it be more of a hit against Microsoft's SQL Server 2005 Express that they released to beta a month or so ago..... ;)

Re:MySql Competition?

[Frums]

Remember the "NDA Submission" discussion in the incubator recently which ended in a "handle it vase by case"? This is why. Target is the db project, and has been voted to be accepted there, so once it satisfies incubator, wheee =) -BrianM

Re:MySql Competition?

[bigirondawg]

I believe this could be a direct competitor to MySQL, though it has many applications, including embedded use. For example, WebSphere v5 automatically uses Cloudscape as its internal configuration database. The DB is automatically set up and configured for you, with no SQL or db knowledge needed (as opposed to previous versions which required you to know how to set up and configure DB2 or some other DBMS).

This could be a interesting move by IBM... let the open source community continue to improve and maintain a component of at least one of your flagship applications. (I'm sure they'll still have people working on it, but the open source comm. will be doing at least some of their work for them...)

Re:MySql Competition?

[kpharmer]

> 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.

Re:MySql Competition?

[BarryNorton]

Answering my own question (since no one else seems to have bothered about this issue all day), IBM claim Cloudscape does have all these SQL92 features and many SQL99 ones to boot.

If it's efficient and stable I'll definitely be pushing students this way rather than letting them use MySQL (with which I've been massively disappointed, having been a 'real' - i.e. pre-Web - database apps developer)...

Re:MySql Competition?

[Tony-A]

If it's efficient and stable I'll definitely be pushing students this way rather than letting them use MySQL (with which I've been massively disappointed

For your purposes, probably better.
A toy is something you can play with. Desirable for students.
Industrial-grade, due to factors such as sheer volume, has non-toy aspects.
A PC lives in a big-computer, small-problem world. You do things on a PC because you want to.
A mainframe lives in a small-computer, big-problem world. You do things on a mainframe because you have to.

At any point in real time, MySQL has exactly ONE system state. This state is advanced by atomic SQL statements. This means that readers and writers DO interfere with each other. This also vastly simplifies the overall system as there is never a system-induced rollback due to two or more concurrent versions of the system depending on incompatible uncommitted updates. The penalty is that you need to know what you are doing.

Where readers do not interfere with writers, there must be concurrently more than one system state to accomodate the forked state of the system. An update within a transaction may conflict with an update in a different transaction. Depending on when cognizance is taken, something that thought it completed successfully will be informed that it did not. Now what? As a general rule, the world of error recovery is an order of magnitude more complicated than normal and will be permitted an order of magnitude less resources with which to accomplish its requirements. SOP with flakey Windows systems is to kill power. Do not "Shut down". Do not "Log off". Coming back up from a power failure has been pretty well tested and debugged. Saving and restoring whatever strange state you got the system in has probably never even been considered for testing, let alone doing anything about it. Whatever brain damage is currently in memory do not give it a chance to make it permanent.

It's nice and easy to set up and a lot of easy stuff can be done without thinking, but MySQL is not a toy. What would be intersting would be to see a comparison of the hardware base from a maxed-out MySQL to a "real" DBMS capable of handling the same load.

Probably better. The MySQL system is consistent with atomic SQL statements
The design of MySQL is (at least was) to have a SQL-looking interface to a system that

Re:MySql Competition?

[BarryNorton]

If you move from a toy to its real counterpart, though, you expect it to have at least the same capabilities.

If you play with a toy fire engine and someone tries to persuade you of the benefits of a 'fire engine' without a siren, hose or ladder, you're hopefully in a place to tell them that that's not the tool for the job.

I appreciate and support OSS, but I hope my students would not pick MySQL over Oracle without a lot of thought (and about more issues than licensing cost and politics)...

Re:MySql Competition?

[Tony-A]

benefits of a 'fire engine' without a siren, hose or ladder
I'd be more interested in the pump and the tools to connect to an available fire hydrant, without which the stuff that looks like fire engine isn't going to do much good. There's lots of fires where a grown-up version of a toy fire engine is pretty much useless.

Re:MySql Competition?

[afidel]

Uh, MySQL falls over about once a month on slashdot. You know it's happened when any link you visit comes up with a static version of the home page. Slashdot is not what I would call a glowing example for the stability of MySQL.

Re:MySql Competition?

[BarryNorton]

More interested - that's the point: perhaps you'd be happy with a seemingly powerful pump, but no hose... I wouldn't!

Re:MySql Competition?

[Topher TheRead]

For the record, I used to work for Informix and still use what was the Informix flagship, Informix Dynamic Server (IDS)*, which is still technologically superior to most enterprise RDBMS's.

Cloudscape, which was not designed but purchased by Informix, is a small DBMS designed to be embedded in an application. It was touted as the first all-Java database engine, and probably was.

At the time Informix bought it, the big vendors were all scurrying to offer "Java in the server" which boiled down to stored procedures written in Java. IDS was the first to offer this, beating Oracle, the only competition Informix really cared about*. However, the first implementation sucked quite badly, as the performance of the Java stored procedures was not only far slower than the C, C++, or SPL procedures already offered, but even slower than an external JDBC app.

At the same time, Informix had repeatedly tried to come up with a small database engine for those customers trying to embed in an application or for those who needed small datasets but wanted to sync to a parent database from time to time. After several tries going from worse to ridiculous (and I'm thinking of IDS Personal Edition), Informix gave up on this and bought Cloudscape.

The first thing Informix did was enjoy the liquid assets which made the sale a bargain. The second was to effectively doom Cloudscape by taking much of the Java development expertise and task them with fixing IDS Java in the server. Finally, Informix started one of those brilliant marketing campaigns for which it is so famous*.

These steps led to the announcement that, although Cloudscape is great technology and a wonderful app, Informix really could not do anything with it*. Since Informix owned six other databases and was still losing marketshare, it was hard to disagree.

Informix was sold to IBM, which reportedly found many great uses for Cloudscape, internally, but was not going to sell it.

Releasing Cloudscape to Open Source, as mentioned, is a nice PR move, and probably a tax write-off. I imagine the $85 million is the value on paper. I also believe that there is much benefit to future users of Derby.

This will not change the database world, though, or put MySQL out of business, or threaten the big database vendors in any way. Derby will have strengths and weaknesses, like any other. OSS developers will improve the code or find an alternative database, several of which have already been mentioned.

Footnotes:
* IBM bought Informix for $1 billion, and IDS is now part of the DB2 brand. The best technology is being absorbed into DB2 UDB, while IDS settles into obscurity. Let this be a lesson to anyone who believes that building a better mousetrap is all you need for success.

Tax Reduction?

[Lust]

A win-win scenario for IBM: donate a software application at an inflated price for a big tax break while also looking good to the open-source community. At least that's how I assume it works in the US.

Compared to the alternative of supporting or shelving a dead application, can you blame them? Perhaps at least this will serve as a good model for other companies that still consider dead software as a corporate asset.

Re:Tax Reduction?

[Grullie]

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.

re: tax reduction?

[ed.han]

say what you like about IBM: they're open source opportunists, they're patent barratry thugs, etc, but you gotta give 'em kudos for making a smart move here.

ed

Re:Tax Reduction?

[jusdisgi]

That's precisely the way I read it...they don't see a need for this in their 'for money' software portfolio. Kept proprietary, there isn't really any way it would be profitable; this isn't something they can sell as a product...they might be able to embed it in hardware sales, but they can still do that. So, they just farm it out to the "free geek labor" and forget about it. It still has all the utility for them it did before, now they don't have to pay development costs, and furthermore they can write it off on both their balance sheet and their taxes. And the price they get to write off? Astronomical.

Re:Tax Reduction?

[michaelggreer]

I guess I don't see any problem with the fact that they benefit from this decision, nor am I surprised. The most powerful argument for open source is not a political one, but a business one: cheaper, more secure, fewer bugs. Since IBM has moved its business into service, open-sourcing their tools makes good sense. And, they only get "free geek labor" if the tool is actually useful to people, in which case its a win-win.

Re:Tax Reduction?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apache Software Foundation is a private operating foundation that is registered as a non-profit, charitable organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code. This means that, for individuals within the U.S., donations to the ASF should be tax-deductible.

Re:Tax Reduction?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Tax Reduction?

[browncs]

"Insightful" is the mod rating on this piece of garbage post? Lust has obviously not done the SLIGHTEST bit of thinking before posting.

Number one: WHAT TAX BREAK? Since when is Apache a charitable donation?

Number two: WHAT DEAD APPLICATION? Had you read the IBM press release, you would have noted that Cloudscape is currently shipped in DOZENS of IBM products, and IBM intends to continue shipping it.

Mods... please take action here, don't validate drivel like this.

Re:Tax Reduction?

[Marillion]

And just like MS has an "upsize path" for Access to SQLServer, IBM is explicitly stated in it's release notes that this release uses DB2 syntax so that applications can easily be ported to DB2 should the need for "Enterprise Quality" arise.

Perhaps loss-leader might be a better description of what this is.

None the less, it's still cool!

Re:Tax Reduction?

[Tablizer]

And just like MS has an "upsize path" for Access to SQLServer, IBM is explicitly stated in it's release notes that this release uses DB2 syntax so that applications can easily be ported to DB2

MS-Access is NOT very compatible with SQL-Server. MS-Access was originally designed before MS purchased SQL-Server from Sybase, and has done little to make them more compatible since.

Re:Tax Reduction?

[Marillion]

I should have added some remarks about Access to SQL Server being a not very easy upgrade path. None the less, Microsoft has White Papers on the subject and handy dandy "Wizards" to migrate the data.

Foot in the door?

[frostman]

I had a look at the IBM product page and found this:

Supports complex SQL, transactions and JDBC so that your applications can be migrated to DB2 UDB when they need to grow.

...which makes me wonder whether this is part of a strategy to get the foundation and community to do the work maintaining something that may not have been profitable but was something their service division could get people using as a baby step towards DB2.

In any case it's cool they donated it. Being a database developer myself, I'm extremely wary of the "you don't need a DBA" claim, but regardless of the hype it looks like an interesting product that will fit in well with the Apache lineup.

Re:Foot in the door?

[rjstanford]

In any case it's cool they donated it. Being a database developer myself, I'm extremely wary of the "you don't need a DBA" claim, but regardless of the hype it looks like an interesting product that will fit in well with the Apache lineup.

I've never used Cloudscape, but coming from its Informix roots I trust this - to a certain extent, of course. If you never used Informix, it absolutely rocked in terms of stability and ease of maintenance. We had one Informix DBA for every 100 or so installed machines (with many installed instances per machine) for product support at my last company. It never got the press that Oracle did: they made the classic (beta, Xerox, TI, ...) mistake of assuming that just because they were technically superior that people would just flock to them. That, and you don't get the Informix consultants recommending the product like you do with Oracle - mainly because you don't need 'em around. 95% of the standard "Oracle add-on" products and services were either built in or not needed.

So since this was their most "simple" database, I have some pretty good feelings about it. One thing that would be interesting is that this will open up the code to their SQL optimizer. That's one area where Informix always truly rocked compared to pretty much everyone else outside of a lab situation. I don't know how much of it got into Cloudscape, of course.

Re:Foot in the door?

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed... Informix rocked.

Even installation was an easy, no-brainer operation.

The documentation was also particularly excellent. IDS blew Oracle out of the water.

Re:Foot in the door?

[drinkypoo]

If it uses SQL and JDBC, then there's no reason you can't migrate to postgres, oracle, or anything else later, provided you don't use any proprietary SQL statements. Even if you do it doesn't make it impossible to migrate, only more difficult.

Re:Foot in the door?

[Tablizer]

If it uses SQL and JDBC, then there's no reason you can't migrate to postgres, oracle, or anything else later, provided you don't use any proprietary SQL statements. Even if you do it doesn't make it impossible to migrate, only more difficult.

Unless you consciously work to keep your SQL vendor-neutral, it is easy to drift into vendor lock. I believe that SQL needs to be overhauled into more of a functional (FP-like) approach so that differences can be fixed by writing your own version of a missing relational function. SQL's syntax is too complex to do something equivalent.

NYT

[13Echo]

Leave it to NYT to misinform people. The article says that IBM put the code "in the public domain". The license by which the Apache foundation will distribute this is certainly NOT public domain. It later says "Apache will hold the licensing and intellectual property rights to the Cloudscape code."

I wish people would stop mixing these things with public domain. Apache's license, GPL, etc., are forms of copyright, and are NOT public domain.

Re:NYT

[B_tace]

Let's all thank NYT for such an inaccurate article.

I have been watching Cloudscape for a while. I believe it was originally developed by a few folks who left Oracle. I am pretty sure it was the first pure-java Object-Relational database, even though Instant DB claims it was the first one. Once the folks at Cloudscape couldn't make enough sales, they sold the company to Informix. In turn, Informix was sold to IBM. IBM bundled the Cloudscape database with some of their tools such as Websphere and some obscure version of Notes. In their usual fashion IBM really didn't know what to do with such a unique product. Funny thing is that, now IBM supports Instant DB with Websphere. That decision must have came from the pointy haired boss himself.

Finally, IBM is releasing Cloudscape to Apache. As a DBA/Developer, I think a decent product like Cloudscape can really help the Apache suite of FOSS products become even more Enterprise ready.

Re:NYT

[poot_rootbeer]

Leave it to NYT to misinform people. The article says that IBM put the code "in the public domain".

While many at Slashdot have caught this mistake, relatively few at the New York Times are likely to.

Instead of/in addition to posting about the error here, why not send off a note to the Times to let them know about the important flaw in their coverage of this story?

If there is one observation that can be made about the surging popularity of blogs in the past few years, it's that Media is able to function better when it gets feedback from its readers.

Re:NYT

[13Echo]

Heh. I already did. It then dawned on me after I sent it that I must actually be one of those "opensource zealots" that everyone talks about.

I guess that I never thought I'd take software licensing so seriously. ;)

Don't worry. The response was informative and well-mannered (for coming from an opensource zealot). ;)

Re:NYT

[droleary]

Instead of/in addition to posting about the error here, why not send off a note to the Times to let them know about the important flaw in their coverage of this story?

Better, why not put the note on a page that requires someone at the Times to register in order to read the correction? :-)

Re:NYT

[f0rt0r]

I would alert NYT about the error in their article, but they require that I register on their site to do so. No thanks.

Yes Virgina, this is a joke.

Re:NYT

[RDPIII]

Instead of/in addition to posting about the error here, why not send off a note to the Times to let them know about the important flaw in their coverage of this story?

I know for a fact that several people sent letters to the Times. It worked. The Times posted a correction today.

Re:Database written in Java?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't want to be a Java troll or anything

Well, I hate to be the one to break it to you...

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[13Echo]

Heh. You beat me to my own rant a few threads down. ;) Glad it's not just me that was annoyed with their wording and poor understanding of copyright.

More techincal background

[TheToon]

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...

Re:More techincal background

[bwt]

I was rather impressed with Cloudscapes features:
- store serializable java objects in table fields
- java stored procedures, functions, triggers
- hash joins in addition to nested loops
- subqueries and views
- transactions, four isolation levels
- row and table level locking (default = row)
- deadlock detection
- custom aggregators
- blob and clob data types
- cost based query plan optimizer
- multicolumn B-tree indexes
- query and lock built-in performance monitoring

To me, this feature set seems superior to MySQL.

Registration Required Link

[Patrick Lewis]

Here is the registration required link. Don't even think you can pull that "parnter=rssuserland" crap around here, buddy.

Re:503 : DELETE YOUR COOKIE

[Anonymous Coward]

delete your cookie and you can visit the site, it seems whoever touched the slashcode last, broke it somewhere in the login section (or the db is b0rken)
hmm no wonder its free

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[jusdisgi]

Nope...they won't put anything in without you signing the copyright over.

Mckoi

[Guillermito]

There are other DBs written in Java , for example Mckoi SQL .

Mckoi SQL is quite usable, supports a great deal of the SQL 92 standard, and the performance is not bad (of course, talking about the range of database sizes for which it makes sense using an embedded sql engine

Does anyone have experience with Couldscape. How does it compare with Mckoi?

Re:Mckoi

[Mad_Rain]

Does anyone have experience with Couldscape. How does it compare with Mckoi?

Well, first of all, Cloudscape has a prettier-sounding name than Mckoi, which will appeal to pointy-haired bosses everywhere...

Re:Mckoi

[duggy_92127]

Does anyone have experience with Couldscape. How does it compare with Mckoi?

Favorably. I can pronounce "Cloudscape".

Doug

Comparisons?

[tetranz]

How will it compare to other free databases such as Microsoft SQL Express

Re:Comparisons?

[bheerssen]

First off, Cloudscape runs on nearly every system in current use. MS SQL Express requires Windows (2000 or XP). It also requires a fairly beefy sytem for a light database. Check out the system requirements. Note that specialized MS platforms, such as MS Windows 2000 Datacenter Server (of all things) are not supported.

Finally, that MS crap is still beta software whereas Cloudscape is well tested, enterprise ready code.

Re:Comparisons?

[germinatoras]

We're talking about software that's free-as-in-speech, not free-as-in-your-first-cocaine-hit.

Re:Comparisons?

[afidel]

The reason that Datacenter Server is not supported is that NOTHING is supported on Datacenter Server unless your OEM supports it and has tested it. Things don't just get installed on DCS, they get tested and retested before you even think about deploying them. The support list for MS products on DCS is basically just a first point to see if you should even bother asking your OEM to check it out. Besides noone in their right mind is going to run Express on something the size of DCS, you're already paying hundreds of thousands to millions for the box and support, the MS-SQL licenses are not going to be much of a factor.

Performance

[DuncanE]

Not really sure how it compares to mySql or postgres, but I loaded a 50+ million row table with a non index timestamp field to Cloudscape and MSSQL. Both took about 3 seconds to return a query returning a unique row (ie a row updated on a specific date and time) on this field on a 2ghz intel machine with 1GB RAM.

Firebird SQL was about the same. Next Im going to try HSQL.

I would be interested in anybody elses experiments?

Re:Performance

[hallucination]

What is the point of this unrealistic benchmark? If you desined & built your database properly, there should be an index!

Re:Performance

[cmeans]

IANADBA.

Seems like a simplistic attempt to compare raw i/o as it's just comparing simple table scans.

Not a bad approach for a simple comparison at this level.

Re:Performance

[johnnliu]

I don't think that's a very good test.

In real life, you either add an index, or you don't query a non-index unique field on a 50+ million table.

I'd think some sort of inner query is a better test for this.

Re:Performance

[Anonymous Coward]

raw i/o : in other words, you're testing how fast your computer is. Only if somebody coded something braindead slow will there be any interesting results..

Re:Performance

[killjoe]

Do some complex joins, mass updates and deletes and subqueries too.

Re:Database written in Java?

[the quick brown fox]

I'm pretty sure databases spend a lot more time I/O and network bound than CPU bound. Besides, Java is pretty fast these days.

On the other hand, it's still a (relative) memory hog.

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[samuel4242]

Yes, I think this has some value for such a monolythic project as MySQL. Plus, it's clear that such a program would have made life a bit easier for the Linux kernel team after the appearance of SCO. I don't know about most contributors, but I'm more interested in getting a working tool than keeping copyright of some snippet of code. So it doesn't bother me much.

CloudScape is primarily used in websphere

[castlec]

Maybe it's just me, but I believe cloudscape is primarily used inside Websphere to ease development of ejbs by making the database local. I can't see it being incredibly useful outside of that... only as development, not as anything deployed. i could be wrong....

Re:CloudScape is primarily used in websphere

[Luminari]

Maybe it's just me, but I believe cloudscape is primarily used inside Websphere to ease development of ejbs by making the database local. I can't see it being incredibly useful outside of that... only as development, not as anything deployed. i could be wrong....

Embedded databases are very useful for applications that are intended for a small number of users or a small database (just look at Microsoft's Jet Engine as an example, that is used all over the place). There are many instances where you want the use of a database for a stand-alone application, but don't want to have to install a stand alone database. Imaging creating a CD-Catalog program and telling the user they have to download mysql just to use it. With cloudscape (or any of the other embedded databases) you don't have to do that.

Re:CloudScape is primarily used in websphere

[cching]

Yes, I believe you're right about it being used primarily in the WebSphere app server. I *think* it's there because the J2EE spec requires that you have a 100% pure java database for use with the product (not a J2EE expert, but I thought that's what I heard from IBM developers).

Most people use DB2 in conjunction with WebSphere, but Cloudscape is apparently a very usable part of WebSphere if you're so inclinded.

Re:CloudScape is primarily used in websphere

[znaps]

It has a lot of uses. It's nice and small, and can be distributed as an integral part of a Java application without requiring a separate installer.

One use could be a local backup DB for a remote client application. When your net connection goes down, just perform all the changes locally and then synch up with the remote DB when your connection comes back up.

From the features page...

[Anonymous Coward]

...sounds much like SQLite to me!
But it's probably MUCH more mature. :) And slower. :(

Re:From the features page...

[cching]

Unfortunately (depending on your point of view), SQLite doesn't have java bindings (that I know of). If someone does know of java bindings for SQLite, I'd be interested!

503 Service Unavailable

[stavrosfil]

Great!!!

Maybe slashdot can used it to stop the 503 errors :)

Re:503 Service Unavailable

[stavrosfil]

or do they already used, hence the errors?

Re:503 Service Unavailable

[LnxAddct]

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?

Kinda similar to Berkeley DB for Java...

[CitizenDan]

Of anything out there I think Cloudscape is most similar to Berkeley DB for Java (an in-process DB). The comment about it being a stepping-stone to DB2 could be made about any JDBC-compliant DBMS...IBM just happens to favor theirs ;-)

Re:Kinda similar to Berkeley DB for Java...

[Ragica]

Does anyone who voted the parent insightful have even the slightest clue as to what "SQL" means.

Wake me up when there's an SQL interface to DB.

Re:Kinda similar to Berkeley DB for Java...

[MyHair]

Wake me up when there's an SQL interface to DB.

Wake up! mySQL is a SQL interface on top of Berkeley DB.

However I agree the grandparent post is wrong in comparing BDB to Cloudscape.

"Open Source Name"?

[ceeam]

Good thing it's Derby and not Firebird.

Anyway - why bother renaming and what is "Open Source Name"?

Re:"Open Source Name"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Renaming is good for differentiating the products. One has a comercial license and the other is free. The first probably provides some kind of support or other benefits not included in the free-licensed one. By renaming it the previous owners avoid problems. For example someone could claim that he was misslead to believe that he was using the "old-licensed" product and can claim damages or support or something similar. Whith totaly different names there is no serious way this can be claimed.

Re:"Open Source Name"?

[cant_get_a_good_nick]

Anyway - why bother renaming and what is "Open Source Name"?
Your Open Source Name is Pinto.
Why Pinto?
Why not!?!!

Correction

[cdegroot]

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.

Re:No competition, way overpriced.

[sog11]

because DBD::XBase isn't included in over 70 internal IBM projects, ;)

Yawn.

[SatanicPuppy]

I can't count the number of times I've needed a silly ass database app to store a tiny amount of needed data on a site that has no other need for databases. These things are useful in their own right, because you don't want to HAVE to set up Oracle or DB2 when all you need is this.

Nice to see IBM giving to opensource, even if it is only a minor product.

Re:Yawn.

[Phil John]

What about eclipse...they open sourced that too.

Re:Yawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

Use sqlite: http://www.sqlite.org/. Maybe java beeing slow is a myth, but sqlite beeing fast is definitly not a myth.

eT

Re:Yawn.

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

Another fast, small Java database is Hypersonic SQL.

hsqldb is a relational database engine written in Java, with a JDBC driver, supporting a rich subset of ANSI-92 SQL (BNF tree format). It offers a small (less than 160k), fast database engine which offers both in memory and disk based tables. Embedded and server modes are available. Additionally, it includes tools such as a minimal web server, in-memory query and management tools (can be run as applets) and a number of demonstration examples.

Another interesting, open source Java database is McKoi SQL Database, a GPL-licensed Java database with all kinds of nifty features.

Mckoi SQL Database is an SQL (Structured Query Language) Database management system written for the JavaTM platform. Mckoi SQL Database is optimized to run as a client/server database server for multiple clients, however it can also be embedded in an application as a stand-alone database. It is highly multi-threaded and features an extendable object-oriented engine.

Things are getting interesting for JBoss developers: JBoss ships with HSQL, supports McKoi nicely, and now we get Cloudscape thrown into the mix. Sweet.

Re:Yawn.

[Hognoxious]

I can't count the number of times I've needed a silly ass database app to store a tiny amount of needed data on a site that has no other need for databases.

I've got a few uses for a lightweight database to run on a desktop machine. If this means I can avoid Access, I'll be as chuffed as a dog with two dicks.

Re:Yawn.

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

fyi, you can use MS Access as an ODBC database without actually installing (or owning) Microsoft Access.

1. Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Data Sources (ODBC)
2. Create a User- or System- level data source.
1. Add
2. Select "Microsoft Access Driver" and click Finish
3. Provide a name and use the 'Create' button to create an MDB file.
3. Connect to the ODBC database using your program of choise (Java, VB, TCL, whatever knows how to talk ODBC -- Java includes a JDBC/ODBC implementation) and create tables, enter data, etc.

This of course works only on Windows. If you're trying to provide a cross-platform tool with a DB, use something like HSQL (if you are programming in Java), or SQLite, Berkeley DB, etc.

Using PHP 5 as a development language, you would gain built-in access to SQLite and Berkeley DB anyway, I'm pretty sure Perl has all kinds of database stuff, and TCL definitely can talk to Berkeley DB (most of my toy cross-platform projects that need a DB are TCL/Tk and Berkeley DB).

Re:Yawn.

[afidel]

Dear god don't use Access for anything. At the very least use JET, or preferably use the freely downloadable and redistributable MS Data Engine, it's basically SQL Server Lite.

Re:Yawn.

[alannon]

By default, MS Access uses JET as its back-end. Always has.

Can I do that as well?

[houghi]

donate a software application at an inflated price for a big tax break

If that were possible, what stops companies and people saying something is gazilions worth to them and then give it away.
It also gives the final missing point and prove that free software can make you money.

1) Write any code
2) Put extreme high price on code
3) Give code away
4) Profit!!

Or am I missing something?

Re:Can I do that as well?

[Tassach]

Am I missing something

Don't think so. If tax savings >= projected revinue, then they'll show more money on the bottom line by giving it away then they would by selling it.

Re:Can I do that as well?

[aoteoroa]

1. Write any code
2. Put extreme high price on code
3. Give code away
4. Profit!!

Or am I missing something?

Yup. You're missing the fact that that IBM didn't write the code. Cloudscape wrote the code. Informix bought it, and then IBM bought Informix.

The $85 million price tag is not an abitrary figure but is the actual cost of the code when it was purchased in 1999.

Re:Can I do that as well?

[ahdeoz]

Quite unlike the arbitrary figure attached to pressed CDs given to schools for advertising purposes in lieu of cash fines for their anti-trust violations?

Now if IBM wants to get really nasty with Sun.....

[ShatteredDream]

They should donate their JVM to the Mozilla Foundation. Having a high quality, open source JVM would further undermine Sun's position in the Java market AND it would create a buffer against Microsoft's .NET. However, I don't think it would do much good against those that want to build on Mono.

Re:Database written in Java?

[Tassach]

Java's reputation for slowness is based on a few factors, none of which is applicable here:

1. The GUI, partiuarly AWT, is horribly slow. This is unavoidable because there's no good (fast) way to do platform-independent graphics. However, since a database engine has no GUI components, this won't be a factor.
2. A lot of the perceived slowness of Java comes from the time it takes to load and initialize the JVM. This is a factor when launching a desktop app written in Java. However, since a db engine is a long-running (daemon) process, this is also not applicable in this case.
3. Early JVMs, particuarly before JIT (just-in-time compilation) took off, were indeed slow. Modern JVMs with JIT, once loaded, run (non-gui) Java code at a speed comperable to compiled C++. This is just 8 year old FUD that needs to die.
4. A database is almost never CPU bound. The very nature of databases causes them to be I/O bound -- I/O bandwidth (especially disk throughput) is almost always the limiting factor in database performance. Modern CPUs are so vastly over-powered for database work that even if it took twice as many cpu cycles to run the Java code as it would to run comperable C++ code, you'd still only be using a small fraction of the available CPU cycles. Excessive CPU consumption in a database is almost invaribly caused by user error -- poor schema design, missing indexes, poor SQL coding, etc.

You gave RTFA a whole new meaning! hehe

[urbieta]

Yep, The article explains all of that, congratulations, you have proven to me that you do NOT RTFA!

so, please, RTFA! hehe

Re:Database written in Java?

[LnxAddct]

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

What would be good....

[Phill Hugo]

If someone could develop and release an Open Source / Free Software Java Object Database that can house live java objects and provide searching and modification on these objects. Zope built atop Python provides just this for Python users and is used to good sucess on many web sites (Zope provides through the web editing of Python/Zope objects and has a very nice search interface for finding that object you require). Everything in Zope is a Python object and is stored in a fast, low resource object datbase - this includes all your web site and the methods to run on them. Its great, free and fast and is available from www.zope.org.

Re:What would be good....

[MemoryDragon]

Ok giving that I havent used OODBs in years. There used to be a OODB standard, the ODMG standard for java. Believe me the standard was disastrous. Missing standardization left and right, no conrol over the object scope, now handling of mass data on a sane level, the OQL was not really good for real world purposes etc... There were implementations of this standard, but you ended up always with code only geared to one OODB. Most java programs nowadays use OODB-RDB mappers, I assume Zope does the same. There are excellent ones, like Hibernate (which basically solves every problem the ODMG back than didnt) give one of these a try. Sun also comes out with something, done by former ODMG people, JDO, I dont know how this one stacks up to Hibernate, but I assume there arent too many mappers which come close to it or can surpass it. The third one I know is Torque from the Apache Projekt, mediocre at its best. The EJB also do this to a certain degree because part of their layer is direct object database mapping, but in my opinion they are total overkill.

Re:What would be good....

[SamSeaborn]

It's not free, but check out Borland's Java object database
JDataStore

Re:What would be good....

[good-n-nappy]

How about something like prevayler. I haven't actually used it yet, just have it on my radar as something to check out later.

Re:503 : DELETE YOUR COOKIE

[duncanatlk]

I have only had this problem with Firebird. IE works fine.

Re:503 : DELETE YOUR COOKIE

[Ronin Developer]

I think you mean FireFox. Firebird is the Open Sourced (and enhanced) version of Borland Interbase.

As for the 503s - Glad to see that I was not the only one getting them. Like you, I initially saw them in Firefox only. Then, when I switched to IE, it, too, started exhibiting the same problem. For a while I thought work was blocking me from reaching /.

What about Cirrus ... ?

[kabz]

Let's hope Microsoft haven't patented naming database software after clouds !!

(MS Access' project name was originally Cirrus)

Apache Corporation?

[gtrubetskoy]

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.

An opensource alternative to Pointbase

[Anonymous Coward]

This product does not compete against MySQL. It competes with HSQL, Pointbase, JDataStore, and any other pure Java database solution. It can be used with Java Webstart, to distribute a configuration free local database with your Java applications. I think this can also be used with Java Enabled Phones, and PDA's.

Re:An opensource alternative to Pointbase

[bwt]

Why do you say this? It seems like it would compete just fine (and do well) against MySQL. The fact that you CAN embed it doesn't mean you have to. This guy actually has a lot of standard database features that MySQL is deficient in.

Opens Souce business model

[femto]

Anyone get the feeling that IBM's new busines model is to donate any unused code to an open source software foundation and claim a corresponding amount ($85M in this case) on tax?

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[jonathanduty]

That seems strange to me since everything at Jakarta is under the "Apache License". I wonder if this is a mis-print or will jakarta really host a project that is not under their license?

Now if only Microsoft

[CrackedButter]

would open source their OS, then the community would have their own OS to contribute to... oh wait.

Competition, not Tax

[SparklesMalone]

Both IBM and the analyst mentioned in the article say this is about competition; undermine MS SQL Server while boosting Websphere. If some small-scale apps are developed in Cloudscape/Java instead of .NET then when/if those apps grow up the natural evolution would be to migrate to DB/2 & Websphere. And maybe it isn't even about making more profit on Websphere but just slowing the penetration of MS into the back office.

Re:Now if IBM wants to get really nasty with Sun..

[Golthar]

No no no, bad idea, no twinkie.

IBM signed a contract with Sun and is sharing code with Sun (For example, the licence states that Sun gets to use VM enhancements from other vendors..hence them getting the VM sharing that Apple made)
My bet is that Sun would drag them into court by their balls and win.
Since IBM did pledge support to open source Java and if they owned their own VM, what would be stopping them?

Right..

Cloudscape was not written by Informix

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloudscape was bought by Informix. Which was later bought by IBM. IBM was after Infomix's customer base. Cloudscape was probably not interesting for them. Anyway it is a win-win senario for IBM and open source. IBM offloads a technology they probably do not want to maintain. In return they get a lot of goodwill publicity from it. Opensource gets a decent embeddable SQL database.

Nowadays, people know

[Anonymous Coward]

the price of everything and the value of nothing.

"Picture of Dorian Gray" - Oscar Wilde.

Ownership in Question

[Bob(TM)]

Don't touch it with a 10 foot pole - it is most likely tainted!

Any moment now, I'm sure we'll hear how SCO (through an ownership rationalization chain that will make Rube Goldberg pack his bags and head to the nether regions of shame) actually owns this (without having actually coded a bloody thing) and that IBM has no rights to give away anything it developed.

Save yourself the grief, expense, and the ensuing barrage of Slashdot rants about SCO! Just say 'NO'.

Availability

[krgallagher]

Anyone know where or when this will be available for download? I see there is a free eval on IBM's site but I want to wait for the truly free version.

Re:Hsql

[lokedhs]

We use Hsql, and it is indeed turly a good database. The greatest trength lies it its speed. It's incredibly fast as long as the database is small enough (so that it holds everything in ram).

The biggest problem we have had with it is that the only transaction level it supports in READ_UNCOMITTED, and that it doesn't support multiple parallel queries.

Naming?

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

This is just silly. Why not just call it "Cloudscape" for sh* sake. And if you're not going to call it Cloudscape, call it something similar to "Cloudscape" (Apache Tomcat vs. IBM Bobcat) -- not "Derby" which oh yeah makes me think of a Cloudscape-like database...

Re:Naming?

[SamSeaborn]

Agree. Something like 'Datascape' would have been better.

Re:Naming?

[chiph]

I think they want to hold onto the trademarked name "Cloudscape".

Look for another product under that name in about 4-5 years.

Chip H.

Re:Naming?

[MORTAR_COMBAT!]

Which is fine, but why 'Derby' is the main question. Bobcat=>Tomcat, Cloudscape=>Derby ?

Cloudscape, not Informix, developed Cloudscape

[Anonymous Coward]

Cloudscape (the DB) was developed by Cloudscape (the company). Informix bought it, and IBM later bought Informix.

Re:Database written in Java?

[upsidedown_duck]

OpenGL in an API, not a software package like the JDK. As far as implementations go, I suppose Mesa would be the "Java equivalent" in OpenGL-land, as it mainly does rendering in software -- just like the AWT. The fast OpenGL implementations out there are custom-tuned vendor-provided libraries which are very fast but technically cost real money to use (you buy OpenGL with the video card or commercial operating system).

Even with AWT/Swing, graphics is so sensitive to bandwidth of the graphics chip that true platform independence might be impossible. For good AWT/Swing performance, some econo-laptop chips are just inadequate (like I saw with a SiS630 once; it uses system memory for video RAM).

Re:Database written in Java?

[maraist]

Add to this some context.
* Most web applications are not written in C++/C
* More and more client-applications are being written in Java/.Net due to maintainability
* There is an impedance mismatch between OO systems and RDBMS systems
** Bridging this gap often involves very non-performant abstractions:
*** wrapping bean-objects around rows
*** storing intermediate copies of beans for caching
*** making copies of beans for transactional purposes.
*** redundantly applying data-constraint rules

Essentially re-inventing the RDBMS wheel.

Thus, if you're already going to write the application in Java, then there is a tremendous advantage to avoiding the performance bottlenecks of the impedance mismatch.

Think of what a c/c++ database does in the best case.. It compiles a SQL script, loads internal relationships to columns/rows.. Accesses the in-memory indexes, and then formats/serializes the in-memory rows for output.

Java has to deserialize the text-stream, instantiate numerous objects; possibly unicodifying the data. Then whatever abstraction layers may be applied to the raw object-array result-set have to be applied.

If the data was locally available, then it could be stored in such a way that, for read-only access, it might be possible to avoid copying, and merely have it return a wrapper for the raw data. Zero latency, and practically zero additional extra work. While this is effectively the same as cached data, here we only store the data once on disk and once in memory.

"hsqldb" is an example that pretty much does the above. You still get a SQL interface if you desire though. Only catch is that hsqldb isn't as feature-rich as many RDBMS systems yet. I'm sure the IBM java-database is merely a feature-rich sister of hsqldb.

And don't forget that many java API's still use raw c-code to do intensive or tight-data-structure work.

Re:Open Source business model

[M. Baranczak]

Maybe I should try it. I've got a bunch of half-finished programs sitting on my hard drive that I haven't even looked at in years; I can probably convince the IRS that several half-finished programs add up to one fully functional $85 million "enterprise-grade software solution". Hell, why be greedy - we'll say $8.5 million.

Seriously though, does anyone know how IBM arrived at that figure? My gut feeling is that some middle manager just pulled it out of his ass, but I'd like to hear how exactly it was justified.

$16M to maintain?

[melted]

One employee is roughly $250K per year including all benefits and everything else. So you're saying this product takes 64 people to maintain? :-)

Re:$16M to maintain?

[Big Sean O]

Benefits aren't everything. You cost a lot more to the business.

There's the cost of rent, utilities for your office, your desk, your phone, your work cell phone, your work blackberry, the fax line, the copier, the copier paper, property taxes, the cost of keeping your parking space free of snow. Some communities charge an employment head tax. Oh, and don't forget hiring a janitor to keep your toilets clean. And some places you need to hire 'overhead' (ie: management) just to keep the yahoos in line.

When I was in consulting we charged the client roughly 2.7x what we were making per hour. (Of course, that was in the rough-and-tumble heady days of consulting (the early 90s).

Your standard IBM programmer probably makes $70K, add in another $40K for benefits, and double it for all the costs associated with hiring the person and you're at $220,000, almost the $250,000 the grandparent claimed.

Re:$16M to maintain?

[melted]

Exactly. There's A LOT of cost that's not obvious to the employee. You will cost your employer $200-250K per year if you make $80-100K.

Two other news sources without registration.

[ninejaguar]

No registration.

= 9J =

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[Delphiki]

If it's put into the public domain, what's stopping them from putting their own license on it? They can't stop people from distributing the version ibm released into the public domain, but they can license their new code however they want, if I'm not mistaken.

Re:IBM Services

[bstil]

Let's not forget that IBM generates a lot of revenue from consulting services. I doubt the Cloudscape revenue was even close to IBM consulting services revenue.

Adabas anyone?

[minkwe]

What was the difference between OpenOffice and StarOffice again?

Re:Database written in Java?

[Glock27]

OpenGL in an API, not a software package like the JDK. As far as implementations go, I suppose Mesa would be the "Java equivalent" in OpenGL-land, as it mainly does rendering in software

OpenGL is an API, but the hardware OpenGL drivers are just as much implementations as is Mesa (NVIDIAs Linux/X driver for instance). Mesa can also be hardware accelerated, IIRC. I think it has a DRI interface.

-- just like the AWT.

Nope, AWT (like SWT) uses native peers. You're thinking of Swing/JFC, where everything is rendered using software. Neither AWT or SWT is particularly slow, and in fact Swing isn't necessarily all that slow either.

Even with AWT/Swing, graphics is so sensitive to bandwidth of the graphics chip that true platform independence might be impossible.

Horse-pucky. There are loads of decent cross-platform GUI APIs, including GTK, Qt and wxWidgets. Some worked quite successfully when systems were 10x or more slower than today's. AWT/SWT should do fine on almost any current hardware (given sufficient memory of course).

Standards Compliant - Lower TCO

[WamBamBoozle]

I ported a CloudScape DDL to Oracle once upon a time. Since CloudScape is so standards compliant it was very easy.

Those who administer J2EE applications resist new databases. Having an embedded one like this is a selling point since it leads to lower maintenance costs. Maybe.

Small Footprint -- Really?

[Nom du Keyboard]

From the Register: IBM is donating half a million lines of code from its Cloudscape database to the open source community...Cloudscape is a small-footprint Java database, designed to be embedded in handheld computers or point-of-sale terminals.

And just how does .5M lines of Java code translate to "small"?

Or is this a new usage of the word "small" of which I was not previously familiar?

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[Slime-dogg]

This type of program doesn't apply at all to the Linux kernel. The GPL is strange, in that instead of signing control of a copyright to a singular entity, you keep it... but what you wrote is "free." Free as in, you can't dictate to other people what to do with your copyrighted code, with exception of enforcement of the GPL. You've agreed to allow everyone to modify it, copy it, sell it, barf on it, etc.

The Kernel does have a group of controlling entities, most obviously Linus. Then comes all of the branch maintainers. Other than that, the "official" linux branches don't get modified without their approval.

The appearance of SCO would have affected Linux regardless of what license they are using. If IBM signed over the copyright to Linus, then SCO would still sue them. If someone decided to sign over copyrighted code written by me to someone else, I'd probably be upset too. Then again, SCO doesn't own any of the code that was placed into Linux, so the point is moot.

Re:Database written in Java?

[AuMatar]

If memory is cheap, want to buy me as much as I want?

No?

Then being a memory hog i still a bad thing.

Access Killer?

[Snap E Tom]

The main thing I've felt that has been holding Star/Open office back is a need of a database as easy as MS Access.

I know it's a different language, but work with me for a second.

Yes, Access sucks as a DB, but it's good for three things. First, it's a quick and dirty way to store data. Secretaries and analysts use it, dump their data in a little file, put it on a floppy, bring it home, work on stuff at home, and bring it back on a floppy the next day. That is the ultimate selling point of file based databases. Even with Open Office's database tools, I have to know something about being a DBA - starting mysqld, db security, etc. Second, our DBAs love it because it's a graphical frontend to ODBC datbases. It gives semi-cluefull non-techs a way to see data. Finally, you can actually drop it onto a webserver and drive databases with it. Biases aside, it did gather them a following in the late 90's when everybody was a "developer" doing websites.

Any sort of MSOffice competitors have taken a while to solve these three needs elegantly. Looking at the IBM site, it looks like Cloudscape, with the embeded and network connectivity features, can be a foundation for something that can fill all three needs.

Re:Access Killer?

[Corporate Gadfly]

I think it could be an Access killer if you could build pretty GUI applications that sat on top of Cloudscape easily. (Think VBA sitting on top of Access).

Re:Access Killer?

[bwt]

Since you can store java objects in the database, I see no reason why you could not simply add something like Jasper Reports to it, for example. When the JSR for standard java IDE plugins gets finalized, you could simply support that and you'd have it all right there.

Unused Code? Parden Me?

[TrueSpeed]

Calling Cloudscape "unused" code is very ignorant. Clouldscape is now the embedded DB in all WebSphere Application Server V5+ products.

Re:Absolute bullcrap

[sbrown123]

Fox toolkit, FLTK and the list goes on.


I tried an app written Fox. Slowwwww. I actually watched it take several seconds to render the window on my desktop. I looked at a few sample FLTK screenshots and vomit came to mind. "Light" speaks volumes there. WxWindows, which I tried in the past, showed no performance advantage over SWT, a native widget lib in java by IBM. Do you have something decent to support your argument or is that pile of crap the best you got to offer?

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[Accipiter]

So why aren't you e-mailing the NYT? Bitching about it on Slashdot isn't going to do a whole lot.

Tell THEM about it.

Re:Now if IBM wants to get really nasty with Sun..

[Wesley Felter]

IBM already released an open source JVM (Jikes RVM), but please let's keep it away from the Mozilla Foundation -- they're busy enough just mismanaging Mozilla.

IBM vs. Sun

[_randy_64]

Notice how IBM is responding to competition by offering something to the community, while Sun's response to competition is to take something away (Novell/SUSE). I know, I know, it's GPL, they can't really take it away, but I think the point is still valid. Sun's response to competition should be to GPL Solaris and/or Java, not try to lock things up. Rather than try to improve themselves, stupid Sun's trying to compete by trying to hurt the competition instead - which will backfire.

Re:IBM vs. Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

a)Sun taking over Novell is a load of uncritical press hysteria that less reputable news sourcces, and mere news relayers such as slashdot, use to whip up 5 million 17yo children into a foaming rage. It's not happening.

b)Sun are GPLing Solaris. They have also GPLed OpenOffice, NFS code, a whole lot of java stuff such as netbeans. A recent study showed that 17% of the code in any given linux distribution was originally freed by Sun.

c)Stop being an uncritical IBM fanboy like those twats at groklaw. They are just as evil as any other corporation.The reason they want Java open sourced comes down to a desire to do evil: they want to fork java into their own incompatible version. Ask IBM if they would do this and all you will hear is an ominous silence.

d)Sun shoudl doubtless get its act together in a lot of ways, but half the criticisms on this site are absurdly wide of the mark.

Derby similar to Berkeley DB??

[ChiaBen]

Hrm, I could have sworn that they said Derby/Cloudscape is SQL92 compliant... I think that's enough reason to say, "No. It is not similar to Berkeley DB. In fact it is most definitely dissimilar".

First off, SQL92 compliancy would infer relationships, and ability to have more than two columns per table, which Berkeley DB does not do. It is not queryable as such, and definitely not with SQL. It also only allows two columns per table; a key:data pair. There is some ability for relationships... kinda. But not the way you are thinking.

They are both lightweight, and from what I hear cloudscape is nice to work with (I only have direct experience with Berkeley DB), so in that way they are similar.

Facts? We don't need no stinking facts! :)

Re:Absolute bullcrap

[MemoryDragon]

Ahem... Fox routes to opengl and does not use something cpu intensive, it basically does only boxes and lines nothing more. As for wxWidgeds (formerly wxWindows) this is just a meta library depending on an underlying toolkit. It is comparable to SWT in this regard. If the underlying toolkit is fast then SWT or wxWidgets is fast, if not, then nothing can help. The funny thing is, that in the latest Blackdown JDK inkarnations (blackdown 1.4.2 - RC1) there seems to be some similar mechanism installed the drawing is heavily accelerated, the result, Swing is faster than GTK2 on my machine in Linux. The rendering speed of a gui library is always heavily dependend on the fact whether a hardware accelerator can be used or not. The speed of the language is secondary in this regard. In Windows Swing became fast the time the started to use DirectX... Expect similar effects for GTK2 and other toolkits once they start to use Cairo and cairo is rooted directly into opengl.

Just Installed It...

[CyNRG]

Downloaded it, installed it, created a database, then table, inserted data into table, all within 15 minutes. Not bad. It looks pretty cool. Of course DB2 is all over it, and I noticed a tool to migrate to DB2 when this isn't big enough.

It has a transaction log, row level locking, locking isolation levels, deadlock detection, etc. This really is a full featured database like DB2, Oracle, or Sybase. NO it isn't comparable, but it has the basic features. I deal with mutli-terabyte databases every day, and would love to have the time to create and torture Cloudscape on that level. Oh well, never anytime to play.

Re:Database written in Java?

[MemoryDragon]

Swing starts to become slow as soon as it has to bypass the hardware acceleration functions entirely. Even using volatile images for double buffering in java2d can help immensely once the volatile images can be handled by the graphics adapter. You could see that in windows with the speed increase once you moved from jdk 1.3 to 1.4 it almost was five times faster. Alas the unix version was a little bit behind because using backbuffers and directly using the graphics cards ram is not that trivial in plain X, you have to bypass X or go the OpenGL route. Newere JDKs (1.4.2 rc1 from blackdown and 1.5 from Sun go that route)

Re:Database written in Java?

[AuMatar]

Great. Now pretend I'm a purchaser for a company. Are you going to buy all the ram for all my systems?

No?

Then being a memory hog is stilla bad thing. It may be less of a factor now, but all things being equal I go with the less resource intensive program.

Microsoft's MySQL??

[duckHole]

Cloudscape is intended for use as a simple database that resides inside a software application instead of as a full-fledged database program that runs on its own in corporate data centers as Oracle, I.B.M.'s DB/2, and Microsoft's SQL or MySQL do."

Seems like the big story here is Microsoft's acquisition of MySQL...

Pretty cool

[vipvop]

d/l this and been playing with it, it seems pretty cool so far. The one thing I can say though is that the sample app it comes with (SimpleApp.java) has some of the worst formatting I've ever seen - you'd think IBM would clean it up a bit before selling it to people as a reference app...

That being said, this will be great if you want to make a open source java app and don't want to require end users to have a particular DB installed (and don't want them to have to create tables , etc).

Re:Pretty cool

[khuber]

(SimpleApp.java) has some of the worst formatting I've ever seen

It's just formatted with mixed spaces and tabs and your editor is probably converting the tabs to 8 spaces. XEmacs loads it okay if your tabs are set to 4 spaces, then you can select the text in the buffer and do a M-x untabify.

Otherwise, something like this should work

perl -ne 's/\t/ /g;print' SimpleApp.java > SimpleAppNew.java

There are supposed to be four spaces inbetween the / / .

Re:Open Source business model

[splante]

"Does anyone know how IBM arrived at that figure?"

From the article:

The $85 million value that I.B.M. placed on its code contribution is the price Informix, a database company, paid in 1999 for Cloudscape, a small start-up company. In 2001, I.B.M. acquired Informix for $1 billion.

really informative

[seringen]

just wanted to say thanks for an actually informative post

Removed functionality to be compatible with DB2

[splante]

I have to preface this by saying I really like Cloudscape, and I think it's great IBM is giving this to the community.

I do think it's interesting that one of the features of the new version 10, aka the Open Source version, is that it will have the same SQL as DB2, so you can more easily migrate. Unfortunately, it seems that means in almost every case, reduced SQL Functionality.

Luckily, as a current user, I can't think of any instances where I was using the removed functionality. It speaks to how strong a product the existing Cloudscape is, though. Also, it would have been nice if they'd improved the DB2 SQL rather than trimming back Cloudscape.

Not really Informix

[PCM2]

I've never used Cloudscape, but coming from its Informix roots I trust this - to a certain extent, of course.

Fair enough, because after all its Informix roots only go so far. Informix didn't invent this product, it bought it. Strange that nobody has mentioned this before now.

Cloudscape has a relatively small market share among SQL databases, but it is popular in certain niches. It came bundled with Sun's reference implementation of J2EE at one time, too; I don't know if that's still the case.

Re:Not really Informix

[Joseph Lam]

Sun switched to PointBase in their recent J2EE SDK.

503 Theories

[sbszine]

Anyone know what the hell is going on over at Slashdot HQ?

See this thread for wild speculation. Short version: there was a change to Slashcode that included making all of Slashdot available as a single RSS feed (rather than one feed per section as used to be the case), and on the hour RSS aggregators hit this single feed and somehow cause a 503 for logged in users.

Wild speculation, remember. Any actual solid info appreciated.

Re:Absolute bullcrap

[sbrown123]

I have to take back my "vomit" comment for FLTK. I can see where such a light weight gui is totally practical. Not easy on the eyes but, hell, neither am I. :)

Cloudscape is supported for OS X server

[jfaughnan]

From IBM's site on supported platforms:
[http://www-306.ibm.com/software/data/ cloudscape/r equirements.html]

Mac OS 10.3.3: JDK 1.4.2
Mac OS X Server 10.2.8: JDK 1.4.2
Power Mac G4
Apple xServe

So this might be a nice positive for the OS X platform, where there's been a smaller set of supported databases than for Wintel.

NYT Correction...

[burnsy]

NYT Correction...

"A headline in Business Day yesterday with an article about I.B.M.'s decision to make some software code more widely available to programmers referred imprecisely to its plans. While the code will be contributed to an "open source" software group, it will not be in the public domain. The group, the Apache Software Foundation, will hold the licensing and intellectual-property rights. "

Re:"public domain" is not the same as "open source

[jusdisgi]

You are off here. The GPL doesn't say one way or another whether you sign your copyright over. In fact, the GNU project, like MySQL (which, by the way, is GPL itself), does require this. The originator of a project is free to choose whether he wants to require everyone to sign their copyright over or not, and it has nothing at all to do with the GPL.

Furthermore, Eben Moglen (FSF Lawyer) says Linus made a big mistake by not requiring the copyrights be signed over (he also says contributors should be required to sign something saying they have rights to do so). He says the way it is now makes it much more difficult to track whose copyrights are actually in the kernel, and verify that the contributors actually own those copyrights.

Re:Database written in Java?

[the quick brown fox]

I hate the "all [other] things being equal" argument.

All things being equal, you would choose the DBMS whose executable takes less space on your hard disk.

All things being equal, you would choose the DBMS vendor that is located closest to you (in case they need to fly someone out).

All things being equal, you would choose the DBMS with the shorter name (less to type in at the command prompt).

All things being equal, you would choose the DBMS with the nicer looking logo.

I'm going to hazard a guess that you don't consider any of these when choosing a DBMS. In the same way, it is not unreasonable for someone to not consider the Java memory footprint penalty.

I'm obviously hyperbolizing, but, all things are usually not equal. The poster's point was that memory consumption is no longer a great reason not to use a Java-based database. Whether you agree with that is a matter of your particular set of needs and constraints, but the whole "Memory still costs a nonzero amount of money" argument is just annoying.

Re:Another nail in Borlands coffin

[mikera]

Hmmm.... don't think IBM's doing it to damage Borland per se. Borland is just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

IBM is trying to build an ecosystem around Java development and Linux. This needs there to be a low barrier to entry for developers, which requires readily available, high quality, free tools. Hence IBM is kickstarting the open-source process in these fields by donating Eclipse and the lick.

Re:Another nail in Borlands coffin

[mikera]

The lick, of course, being a very high quality tool at IBM labs which has yet to be announced..... er.....