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E V E N T S
July, 10 and 11 - db4o User Conference 2006 - London, United Kingdom
Seats are limited and selling fast! Register before 6/20/06 and save 25%!
C A R E E R S
db4objects is now hiring.
In particular we are looking for developers in Greater China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia.
K U D O O F T H E M O N T H
I have been using db4o a LOT lately, and I don't expect I shall return [to relational databases]. I can say without question that it has increased my productivity by at least 1 million times."
--Travis Reeder 5/18/06
A R T I C L E S
-- V5.4 : PERFORMANCE LEAP WITH NEW B-TREES AND MARSHALLER --
db4o Version 5.4 focusses on the #1 concern of most developers in our community:
Performance - and its two siblings - low memory consumption and scalability.
The new release, now available in development status from the db4o Download Center, features two major architectural changes, that result in a dramatic performance leap:
(1) a new B-Tree index architecture, and (2) a new object marshaller.
As a result, with V5.4:
- You can store up to 250 million objects with a constant RAM consumption of less than 40 MB and a constant insert performance of 8,000 objects per second -- measured on a slow hard disc! Previously, Version 5.2 had shown drastic insert performance drops and RAM consumption over 300 MB once one attempted to commit more than 10 million objects, which consequently marked the boundaries for the feasible scalability of version 5.2.
- 100,000 objects have been stored successfully with a constant RAM consumption of less than 2MB, a scenario typical for handhelds, making db4o one of the most powerful and best-performing persistence solutions on resource constrained devices.
- Measured with 10 million objects, commit performance of class indexes is now even 11x faster than with version 5.2, running at 400 milliseconds instead of 4.5 seconds on a slow hard disc!
The new B-Tree architecture was written from scratch to achieve maximum performance and scalability at constant low memory consumption. It currently supports class indexes and will also support field indexes in near-future releases. Please note, that the B-Tree improvements only kick in only for large class indexes (> 100,000 objects per class) since smaller class indexes are constantly held in memory.
The new marshalling format writes and reads all strings and all arrays with their parent objects, achieving the best possible clustering for IO. Depending on the number of strings and arrays in your classes, the benefit of this change for your application will be anywhere between unnoticeable and dramatic. Collections also benefit from this update, because they are internally mapped to arrays. In a simulating test case for multiple strings we saw, on average, twice the performance!
All changes will work transparently: Just open your database file and db4o 5.4 will automatically update to the new B-Trees and Marshaller. The database file size will grow considerably and the speed improvements will only apply to newly stored objects, until you run a defragment, which removes all old indexes. As usual, you are requested to backup your database before you make the update and not to ship into production with a development status version of db4o!
More about V5.4 in the Product News Blog.
-- V5.2 : VERSION 5 ACHIEVES THE HIGHEST LEVEL OF STABILITY --
db4objects has now declared version 5.2 stable and hence ready for shipment. It is the first version 5, featuring Native Queries and other exciting features, to be declared stable since stable version 4.5 in October 2005. It is available from the db4o Download Center for immediate download.
Version 5.2 has seen a total of 35,000 downloads since its first release 3 months ago, and seen plenty of user feedback in real production scenarios. The core team now decided to recommend this version's last build for shipments.
Together with version 5.2, we have also released the ObjectManager, the UI to browse and edit objects in a db4o database file, into its very first stable state dubbed V1.7.1.
db4objects distinguishes three different release status of db4o to help users select the right version matching their own development and release schedule:
- Stable: Ready for shipment
- Production: Ready for product development
- Development: For testing and preview only
-- COMMUNITY 2.0 --
db4objects is currently working hard to provide an enhanced structure to facilitate interaction and contribution in the community of more than 15,000 registered db4o developers, which is already the world's largest user community for object database technology. At the db4o User Conference in London in July, a new infrastructure platform ("Community 2.0") will officially be launched, which upgrades db4o's existing forum platform as a single stop for all db4o developer community members.
Regular visitors of the forums will have noticed elements being added steadily over the last weeks. So far, an expanded download center, a new documentation section, a variety of blogs and the blog roller www.planetdb4o.org have been added to the public forums in currently 7 languages.
In July, Community 2.0 will also include an extensive WIKI section, which will provide the platform for any community member to post their own projects and proposals, comment and edit others, and contribute to the fast growing library of documentation and articles.
-- db4o USER CONFERENCE IN LONDON --
The db4o User Conference (dUC) will take place in London from July 10 to 11 and the preparations are under way. The dUC is the first event of its kind, where the entire core contributor team and the members of the db4o community meet under one roof.
The conference features keynotes from Carl Rosenberger, Ted Neward, and Christof Wittig, workshops to learn best practices about db4o, and a discussion of the db4o product roadmap for 2006/07.
During this event, the "db4o Most Valued Professionals" (dVP) program will be launched to recognize individuals with expertise in the db4o product and who actively participate in our community to share their knowledge and expertise with other db4o users. We will award this prestigious title to a selected group of 30 nominees. We identified top ranked dVPs and invited them with free flights and conference passes to attend the dUC. The full list of the 2007 nominees will be made public at the db4o User Conference.
More information about the dVP Program here.
At the conference, we will also reveal the results of the db4o User Survey 2006, in which more than 1,000 respondents participated to share their thoughts about db4o and to vote on their preferences for the db4o product roadmap 2006/07. The winners of 5 flights to the dUC in London, 20 db4o books and 50 db4o golf shirts have been notified by mail.
Email us if you have questions regarding this survey.
At this stage, we have registrations from individuals in Australia, Japan, Singapore, Israel, U.K., Norway, France, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Brazil, Ecuador, Argentina, and 6 different states of the U.S. and Canada.
If we're still missing yours, don't waste time. Receive a 25% discount for signups before 6/20/06 -- register now! More event information and registration for the dUC here.
-- CREATING REPORTS AGAINST db4o : OPTIONS FOR JAVA AND .NET --
A common interest for db4o users is the ability to create reports against db4o database files. Unlike SQL , where a wealth of reporting products has been available for years, there were until recently only few (if any) feasible solutions to create reports against objects.
This situation has changed dramatically, as object-oriented programming and object databases have seen much more adoption lately. There are several great products available for Java, which have successfully been used by db4o users: Jinfonet Jreport, Elixir Report, Actuate BIRT and open source JasperReports.
In addition, Microsoft has now released an elegant solution to create rich reports for .NET applications. Included in Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 is a feature called ReportViewer. Not only can this control view a report, as its name suggests, but it also includes full design-time support, a full layout engine, and reflective data expressions. Included are controls for both WinForms and ASP.NET applications.
To get started, just choose "Add Item" from the project menu, and select "Report" from the list of options. Here is a link to a full walkthrough on the MSDN website.
-- db4objects PARTNERS WITH QNX, MAKERS OF NEUTRINO RTOS --
QNX Software Systems, a division of Harman International, offers realtime OS technology, development tools, and professional services for developers of mission-critical embedded systems. With over 25 years' experience, QNX is focused on enabling customer success through innovative technology. QNX's modular, standards-based software platform helps companies build reliable, scalable, secure, and high-performance applications.
Most recently, QNX and db4objects have collaborated to help automotive customers get lightning fast performance for the db4o object database on in-car computing applications. Consequently, db4objects and QNX have entered into a partnership to open their developer networks to each other and work on a well integrated suite of products.
L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R
Press coverage about db4o since the last newsletter:
"Inside the db4o Database - Replication made easy"
Dr. Dobb's Portal, May 16, 2006, by Rick Grehan
"Das ODBMS-System db4objects"
Java Spektrum, 03/2006, by Stefan Edlich (in German)
"Data Management Grows Up"
DSO.com, May 10, 2006, by Nicole Lewis
"db4objects Announces First Global db4o User Conference"
LX.er, April 27, 2006, by Don Parris
"OSS object DB db4o brings global conference to growing user community"
LinuxToday Japan, April 27, 2006, by Naoko Yamakata
(In Japanese)
"Dual-licensed object database conference launches"
LinuxDevices.com, April 25, 2006
"An Object Database for Quartz"
FTP Online, April 17, 2006, by Rick Grehan
Missing the montly KUDOS? It's now too many for the newsletter, so we created a Kudo blog!
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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)