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U P C O M I N G E V E N T S W I T H d b 4 o
11/18/2006 - Itasca, IL, USA
11/23/2006 - Vienna, Austria
11/24/2006 - Bangalore, India
11/28/2006 - Munich, Germany
11/29/2006 - Paris, France
11/30/2006 - Berlin, Germany
12/01/2006 - London, United Kingdom
12/05/2006 - San Francisco, CA, USA
12/05/2006 - Zurich, Switzerland
12/07/2006 - Boston, MA, USA
K U D O O F T H E M O N T H
"db4o offers not only the advantage of a small system memory footprint, but also the advantage of a small 'developer memory' footprint. The API is elegantly simple with a very short learning curve"
--Gordon Milne
A R T I C L E S
-- db4o VERSION 6.0 DEBUTS TO THE COMMUNITY --
db4o Version 6.0 is now available as a development (beta) version for immediate download from the db4o Download Center. This version is dedicated to db4o's rapidly growing user community which now exceeds 15,000 developers. The user community is the driving force in all stages of the project, from the initial requirement gathering in the db4o User Survey to constant feedback throughout the entire delivery process.
Reflecting users' priorities, the key focus of this release includes improvements in performance and memory consumption, both for the in-process as well as for the client/server mode of db4o's database engine. db4o now runs up to 10 times faster than version 5 and consumes up to 90% less memory, leveraging the new B-tree index architecture first introduced in version 5.5.
Other new features include:
db4o version 6.0 comes with updates of the ObjectManager and the db4o Replication System (dRS), now uniformly labeled 6.0, to indicate compatibility with the respective db4o engine. ObjectManager v6.0 is a complete rewrite addressing many user requests especially for handling large data sets and console-based ad hoc queries. dRS v6.0 now supports delete object replication as well as better compatibility to more databases.
Find more details about version 6.0 in this draft release document, which will be finalized as we near production release, estimated to take place by the end of the year.
-- HOW TO CONTRIBUTE TO db4o --
There is always a lot of talk about contributions to open source projects in general and db4o in particular. Often people find it hard to get started because the possibilities are so overwhelming. Or you may refrain from contributing because you think that there may be "better experts" than you.
The whole point of open source contributions is about broadness, not (only) depth. So any contribution, as small as it may seem to you, can be very valuable to someone else in the community. Just describing your use case provides important input for designing an update to a specific feature. A test case will help to drive quality and ensure that your cases are part of the JUnit tests. You can participate in one of the many add-on projects, such as the db4o-Eclipse plug-in, or the db4o-Spring integration(s). These types of contributions may then make you a candidate to work on db4o as a contributor to the core database engine.
All these options to contribute are now described at a glance in the new db4o Contribution Guide for your easy reference.
-- CUSTOMERS SUCCESS STORY: SEAGATE TECHNOLOGY --
db4objects has released a new customer case study on how Seagate's Mirra Personal Servers get a boost in efficiency and performance with db4o. The paper, which is available for immediate and free download, describes how the world's leading hard disc drive and consumer storage supplier benefits from db4o in the company's Mirra line of consumer electronic products.
Bret Savage, chief architect of the Seagate Mirra solution, comments: "I would definitely endorse db4o's use in commercial Windows software due to its performance, both in terms of memory overhead and transactional latency; its scalability in terms of how many items you can put in the database; and its solid reliability. But the overall endorsement comes down to db4o's support, because if you hit a snag, the db4o team works with you to overcome it. That's solid customer support."
-- ROADSHOW 2007 AND OTHER EVENTS --
db4objects has started its Roadshow 2007 on November 8 in Tokyo, where users, customers, and the press had a chance to learn about db4o in general, about open source business, about the product news of version 6.0, and to ask their individual questions on a broad range of topics.
The roadshow continues through Asia to Europe and will hit the US in the first week of December. Registration and more information about the roadshow 2007 here.
Also, db4objects has waged a series of events to bring db4o closer to you. Check out the event page on Ted Neward's "Essential db4o" tour throughout the US and Canada, a broad range of user group presentations, and conferences such as the FOSS.IN in Bangalore on November 24.
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:
"Dual-licensed object database posts major speed gains"
LinuxDevices.com, November 15, 2006
"Objects and Databases: State of the Union 2006"
Dr. Dobbs Portal, November 15, 2006
"Community and Ricoh put db4o into the Mainstream"
LinuxToday Japan, November 14, 2006, by Naoko Yamakata (In Japanese)
"Object database promises performance leap"
EE Times, November 14, 2006, by Richard Goering
"Embedded object database is leaner, meaner and determinstic"
Embedded.com, November 13, 2006, by Bernhard Cole
"The Proper Care and Feeding of Object Databases In Embedded Systems"
Dr. Dobbs Portal, November 13, 2006, by Rick Grehan
"db4o: Banco OO"
iMasters, November 9, 2006, by Eduardo Monteiro
(In Portuguese)
"The 4th Element: Open Source and Globalization" (PDF)
ETH Zurich Visionen, October 2006, by Christof Wittig
"db4o object-oriented database"
IBM DeveloperWorks China, October 23, 2006, by Rosen Jiang, Andrew Zhang, Chris Li Weidong (In Chinese)
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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)