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K U D O O F T H E M O N T H
"I have been using db4o for .Net for about a year and a half, and I have to tell you that you are doing yourself a disservice if you have not tried it ... db4o can save you about 50% of your development time. And that is a conservative estimate."
--Thomas Jaeger, 1/1/2007
A R T I C L E S
-- VERSION 6.1 MAKES db4o EVEN MORE SCALABLE --
Building on db4o v6.0's foundation for a more scalable client/server version, Version 6.1 now brings batching of asynchronized messages, a feature that significantly enhances performance by a factor of 15-20x, for instance, when inserting or deleting a large number of objects.
V6.1's client side batching queues up all actions within one transaction and sends them to the server in a single message. This reduces the number of roundtrips between clients and server, which significantly increases network performance. The new function is user transparent and easy to configure. More details can be found here.
Version 6.1 is available as a development release for immediate download and testing from the db4o Download Center.
In parallel, db4o version 6.0 has been patched to fix a couple of critical bugs as documented in db4o's Jira issue tracking system, and the updated version 6.0 is now recommended for production use (Download).
-- PRODUCT ROADMAP 2007 DRAFTED --
At the db4o Developer Conference in Hong Kong from January 8-12 the core committers and selected dVPs discussed and drafted the db4o product roadmap for 2007, which is now available for feedback, specification, and voting in the Jira issue tracking system of the db4o project.
Major milestones for 2007 are:
- "Canada", featuring transparent activation and fast collections
- "Denmark", featuring unique field constraints and J2ME/CLDC support
- "Egypt", featuring indexed collections and the split of local and C/S core
In addition, there will be several updates for the db4o Replication System (dRS) and ObjectManager, plus better support for simple webapps using db4o.
For the 2nd half of 2007, the team plans to split the db4o distribution into 3 product lines - micro, local, and client/server, to allow better optimization for specific use cases and requirements. A final decision and specifications will be discussed and decided upon at the next db4o User Conference in June or July in San Francisco, CA.
Your feedback to the roadmap is welcome in the db4o Product Developer forum.
An Agile and Collaborative Roadmap
Please be reminded that db4o is an agile project. The product roadmap constitutes a workable draft, based on the information available at the time. The roadmap is not a definitive announcement of new features or release dates, but the current working order of priority for product items. All plans and statements regarding future product features are subject to change based on new insights into technical constraints, new ideas, critical bugs popping up, or user feedback at any time.
If you are waiting for a specific feature, we suggest that you vote for it, provide comments and use case specifications, and subscribe to the RSS feed of that issue to receive automatic notification of any change in plans. If you feel that something that matters to you is not sufficiently prioritized, you can elevate its priority by providing development or money contribution.
Any planned feature will only be released if it passes db4o's stringent quality standards. New features are available with db4o's continuous builds every two hours and announced in the db4o Product News Blog. Releases occur monthly (unless there is nothing worth releasing), starting with a development (beta) version for testing and feedback, and a few weeks or months later followed by a production version for product development and a stable version for shipment.
-- GERMAN VISCUSO APPOINTED TO HOST db4o COMMUNITY --
At the db4o's global developer meeting in Hong Kong, db4objects announced the appointment of German Viscuso as Global Community Host. German manages the db4o Hispanic community (db4oHUG) and has built it into one of the most active non-English user groups. In his new role, he will manage the interface between the db4objects company and the fast growing open source community of the db4o project, which now has more than 18,000 registered users from 120 countries.
"I plan to make db4o's community larger and deeper at the same time," said German. "To achieve this goal, we have established a model for community members to incrementally and easily increase their commitment to db4o and participate in the advance of db4o's cutting edge technology. We welcome more and more community contributions as outlined in db4o's new Contribution Guide, and we expect to grow the registered developer community to over 100,000 members within 1-2 years."
German's first task was to welcome 20 newly nominated db4o Most Valued Professionals (dVP), bringing the total number to 53 for 2007 from 23 different countries. Among those dVPs who attended the Hong Kong conference are Heaven Han Wei from China, Tetsuo Torigai from Canada, and Pieter van Zyl from South Africa. These three have contributed to the db4o community with Chinese localization, community peer support, and database benchmarks, respectively. In appreciation of their contributions, db4objects sponsored their attendance at the developer meeting (picture).
Changes in db4o's Community Policies
During the conference, db4objects implemented several enhancements to the project's community structure:
- The db4o Product Developer Forum is now open for posting to all registered users
- A new dVP Forum is exclusively designed for the exchange of ideas between db4o's most valued professionals
- dVPs may join the company's regular engineering meetings in listen-only mode on a bi-monthly basis (the first and third Tuesday of each month) through the Open Developer Skypecast
- The db4o project will institute a Project Steering Committee (PSC) similar to Apache's to coordinate contributions from db4o's fast growing team of committers
Contact German at community@db4o.com with your suggestions and feedback.
-- NEW dOCL LICENSE WELL RECEIVED --
db4objects has officially announced a third licensing option dubbed dOCL (db4o Opensource Compatibility License) for free/open source projects that want to embed db4o but do not want to (or are not able to) license their derivative work under the GPL in its entirety. Major open source projects that are using or plan to use db4o are Novell's Mono, Redhat's Fedora-Linux, Eclipse (Apogee), Spring, JPOX, Apache-Lucene (Gdata) and Funambol (SyncML).
"The introduction of the dOCL is great news," says Costin Leau, Spring committer and Consultant at Interface21. "It allows easier integration within open source projects which, in the end, will benefit developers and users. I plan to include spring-db4o integration directly in the Spring Modules project and release db4o support in the next SM version (v0.8)."
"I love db4o, but as an Eclipse developer I couldn't work with it because the Eclipse Public License is incompatible with the GNU General Public License (GPL)," says Dave Orme, who in 2003 founded and led the Eclipse Visual Editor Project as the first Eclipse project to be started and led by somebody outside of IBM. "Today, with the dOCL, everything changes. This is huge - it makes db4objects accessible to a much wider range of open-source projects."
In order to receive the benefits from this licensing option, you simply need to register your open source project in the db4o Projects section by mailing community@db4o.com with your acceptance of the licensing terms of the new dOCL agreement.
L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R
Selected press coverage about db4o since the last newsletter:
"Interview with Christof Wittig and Jerry Fiddler of db4objects"
Linux Journal, February 2007, by Nicholas Petreley
"DB4Objects - Parte II - Maos a Obra"
DevMedia, January 10, 2007, by Glaucio Guerra (In Portuguese)
"db4objects appoints German Viscuso as Global Community Host"
LinuxToday Japan, January 9, 2007, by Naoko Yamakata (In Japanese)
"DB4Objects na terra de gigantes do BD relacional com Java - Parte I"
DevMedia, January 8, 2007, by Glaucio Guerra (In Portuguese)
"db4objects Releases Rev 6.0"
Java Developer's Journal, December 25, 2006
"Object Databases for Embedded Applications"
ACTA Newsletter, December 20, 2006, by Rick Grehan
"Major Rev of Dual-licensed Object Database Ships"
LinuxDevices.com, December 18, 2006, by Henry Kingman
"db4o object-oriented database (3)"
IBM DeveloperWorks China, December 14, 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)