Developers requiring high performance and high availability need look no further than Berkeley DB 4.0, an open-source database management system (DBMS) from Sleepycat Software. It includes high-availability, single-master replication, and group-commit support.
The Berkeley DB Data Store version provides B+tree, hashed, and record-based data storage and retrieval. Concurrent Data Store adds multi-use read-write access, while Transactional Data Store includes fine-grained locking, transactional commits, and roll back. All versions share a compatible API and are linked with an application. Applications can be migrated to different versions as necessary. A 300-kbyte footprint is small, especially considering its features and performance. Berkeley DB runs on most embedded OSs, including VxWorks, Linux, and QNX.
Sleepycat owns all the software, so it can license it commercially and allow its use in open-source projects like Sendmail and MySQL. Berkeley DB can be included free of charge in open-source projects where the application source code is also provided.
Berkeley DB can be downloaded from Sleepycat's Web site. The standard license model starts at $25,000 with unlimited distribution. Contact Sleepycat for commercial licensing terms.
Sleepycat Software Inc., (617) 876-0858; www.sleepycat.com.