db4o Newsletter

Newsletter #55: How do you spell relief? "p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e s-t-a-t-i-s-t-i-c-s"

German Viscuso — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 22:01:00 GMT

db4o runtime statistics: Your db4o based application has been in production for a while and now seems too slow, or running out of memory? Finally, Performance Statistics are here to help you monitor and improve the performance of your implementations.
Light is still shining on db4o Silverlight port: We are continuing our commitment to Silverlight with a steady stream of improvements.
New typehandler on the block: System.Guid: By popular demand and triggered by community contribution, db4o now features a new type handler for System.GUID

db4o 7.12 Release is available for immediate download! Check v7.12 release notes
Getting started videos for Java and .NET area available in db4o's on-line channel.

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

New to db4o? Learn & Have Fun!: Check this new series of funny (comic style) db4o blog posts by gamlerhart which make a great way to get you started with db4o (why not having some fun while you're learning?). The blog posts also deal with key issues that you must have in mind if you're new to db4o (activation, object identity, etc).
Take Part in db4o "Cash for Cases" Program: We're always looking for new and interesting case studies of applications that took a leap forward thanks to the db4o technology. But now you have the chance to be rewarded for your submission!
Google Sitebricks demo with db4o: A simple code example by Kristof Jozsa pulled together with maven2, google sitebricks and db4o

Versant - News from the Base Camp
from Versant Website

Versant Launches China Distribution, Partners with Henrhyao: Versant is pleased to announce that Henrhyao Information Technology Co., Ltd ("Henrhyao"), a company specializing in software sales and services in China, will distribute Versant's flagship product, the Versant Object Database. Henrhyao will provide sales, consulting, training and local support for new customers of the Versant Object Database in China (Chinese website is now available)
Versant Object Database (VOD) for .NET released: Versant just launched VOD .NET, featuring a full integration with ADO.NET and LINQ. VOD .NET is a software development kit that supports Microsoft development tools including Visual Studio and .NET 3.x. The software is available for all major Microsoft Windows platforms, including Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Windows Server 2008. The VOD .NET pre-release is available immediately while the generally available version is scheduled for release later this year.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"I realized today that I can't go back to Relational Databases after using db4o"
alosii on Twitter

--------

With best regards

The db4objects team.

http://www.db4o.com/nl/55.ashx/corporate
newsletter@db4o.com
a division of Versant
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065
USA

Newsletter #54: db4o gets safer, smaller and faster!

German Viscuso — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:10:00 GMT

db4o 7.11 Release is available for immediate download! Check v7.11 release notes
Getting started videos for Java and .NET area available in db4o's on-line channel.

Highlighted Contributions
from the Community Projects Blog

Object Manager Community Version Updated (db4o v7.4): Code Commander Gisbert Avellan has just updated the community version of Object Manager to work with db4o v7.4. This is a limited update since it only works with databases generated from Java. It's important to note that OM Community (db4o-om) is not the same as OME (Object Manager Enterprise) which can be found in your db4o installation (in the ome folder). Both are free software now but OME is the official db4o object browser while OM is maintained by the db4o community.

Repository Pattern and db4o (C#): If you're a C# developer an you wrote at least one application where you use a repository pattern for making your domain objects persistent you might want to check Elliott O'Hara's blog post about db4o. Elliot uses a Generic Repository interface and then provides a subclass Db4oRepository. Nice blog to remind us about db4o's simplcity! (source code included)

Versant - News from the Base Camp
from Versant Website

Future-Proof Data Management for Massively Multiplayer Online Games: Versant shows off the benefits of object databases for massive multi-player online game makers. Provides a future-proof solution that supports minimum latency via clustered caching, high performance via parallel processing, high availability and data partitioning for scalability.

Whitepaper: Object Persistence and Agile Software Development: The purpose of this whitepaper is to examine and compare RDBMS with several object persistence methods within the context of Agile Software Development.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"The beauty of [db4o] is that there is NO mapping code since it's just serializing the objects. NONE! [...] Add a property? No changes needed, it just "works"... Yep the test passes! Sorry people, but that's freekin AWESOME!"
Elliott O'Hara

http://www.db4o.com/nl/54.ashx/corporate
a division of Versant
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 232-2431
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065 (USA)

Newsletter #53: db4o does embedded, steps up with Android, Silverlight and more...

German Viscuso — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:13:00 GMT

db4o 7.10 Release is available for immediate download! Check v7.10 release notes
Getting started videos for Java and .NET area available in db4o's on-line channel.

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

BPlusTree: BPlusTree is an implementation of a B+ tree in Java by Christoph Zimmerli. Among this implementation's key features are: Implements db4o's Activatable interface and hence supports TransparentActivation and Persistence, supports generics, supports several entries for the same key.
domr: Project domr by Jin Mingjian provides an RCP version of db4o OMJ (Object Manager for Java). This is the first official release with versions for Windows and Linux.
ScyDev DB4O Viewer: An alternative to ObjectManager or OME (Object Manager Enterprise) by Thluks Sonnenkind. Allows you to view and edit all objects stored in a db4o database.
Apotik: Apotik is a desktop application providing CRUD operations on pharmaceutical items and other features such as buying items from suplliers, selling items to customers and reporting capabilities. It was coded in Java with Netbeans 6.5 and uses db4o v7.7 (with sync via dRS). Only available in indonesian language but 100% open source!
KandaAlpha: KandaAlpha is a VS.NET 2010 Beta 1 solution which provides a sample domain driven design architecture (DDD) separated into Presentation, Application, Domain and Infrastructure layers. Technologies in use are: Visual Studio 2010 Beta, ASP.NET, MVC 1.0, Entity Framework 4.0 and db4o.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"Loved this db4o Silvelight demo. I'm tearing the example apart figuring out what's going on there. Crazy awesome. 10 levels above awesome."
--- Justin Angel, Microsoft Silverlight Toolkit Program Manager

--------

With best regards

The db4objects team.

http://www.db4o.com/
newsletter@db4o.com
a division of Versant
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065
USA

Newsletter #52: db4o enhances its support for Silverlight and LINQ

German Viscuso — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 18:07:00 GMT

db4o 7.10 Release is available for immediate download! Check v7.10 release notes
Getting started videos for Java and .NET area available in db4o's on-line channel.

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Freenet: a piece of free software actively funded by Google which lets you publish and obtain information on the Internet without fear of censorship. In order to reduce memory usage they are leveraging db4o by storing the current progress of uploads and downloads.

Scala and db4o: Software developer Matthew Todd explains in this recent blog post how to code less when dealing with persistence on Scala thanks to both Scala extensibility and db4o simplicity.

Id Generation for db4o: dVP Tuna Toksoz just implemented an explicit POID facility for db4o that doesn't rely on db4o's internal object id system or universal unique ids (UUIDs).

Dynamic SODA: This project aims to provide an instrument that allows developers to dynamically create db4o query strings that can be executed without having to write and compile java code.

SoftwareMonkeys: John Rebbeck from SoftwareMonkeys just released a beta version of some new db4o based projects including trackers for project and issues, requirements planning and roadmap management.

A Q&A with db4o Refcard Co-Author Eric Falsken: In coordination with the recently published db4o .NET Refcard, the guys at DZone interviewed co-author Eric Falsken.

domr, Standalone Object Manager: Project domr by Jin Mingjian aims to provide an RCP version of db4o OMJ (Object Manager for Java). It will be a lightweight, standalone db4o object management tool.

MoneyTracker: dVP Christopher Brind just released his first Android sample app where persistence is handled by db4o (not sqlite). In this app you can specify a disposable amount and then add expense items showing you how much is remaining.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"I've found the object-database db4o, which fits my requirement perfectly. It is really small, less than 800 KB. It is easy, you just store your native objects, done. Retrieving the objects is also easy, because db4o supports LINQ"
Gamlor blog

www.db4o.com
a division of Versant
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 232-2431
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065 (USA)

Newsletter #51: Make your code db4o-ready with one click in Eclipse

German Viscuso — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:48:00 GMT

db4o 7.10 Release is available for immediate download!

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Project Tevere Flow: a light-weight Workflow engine built using the Java technology. Features: Web User Interface using the Ajax technology, Stand-alone application, Fully Transactional, Set of built-in commands available (email, web service invocation, etc.), Auto-resume of failure activities, User and profile management, Activities can be written in Java or using any supported scripting language such as Javascript and Ruby, Integration via Java APIs or WebService.
Rhodes Mobile Framework: A startup called Rhomobile announced the first formal release of its dual-licensed, open-source framework for smartphones. Rhodes 1.0 enables "write-once" development, using HTML and Ruby, of native smartphone applications for iPhone, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and now Android. Taking up about 2MB on a mobile device, Rhodes enables users to work offline with synchronized local data via a local database such as db4o or SQLite.
db4o with JavaFX: A detailed blog by db4o expert patrick Roemer about how to use db4o on JavaFX. On Patrick's own words: "db4o plays surprisingly well with JavaFX, even in the case of multiple inheritance. While Native Queries basically just work out of the box, SODA requires the programmer to make some assumptions about the compiler implementation, and the resulting code certainly cannot be called elegant, but on the bottom line it works"
Live Demo Website Powered by db4o: Jozsef Gabor shows us his live db4o based website. Check out the interview and a small web application demo that can be a starting point for integrating db4o with web applications. If you want to try db4o in a Java based web app this is highly recommendable.
Spring DB4O Extension: Oliver Lietz is now managing the Spring db4o extension. The extension is still in incubation and needs documentation and examples. Some issues have been fixed to get it work in a project running on OSGi/Spring DM.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"When I first found db4o a year ago, I was, and still am, convinced that it answered all my prayers regarding the true object-oriented model"
— Brian Blockhart

--------

With best regards

The db4objects team.

www.db4o.com
newsletter@db4o.com
a division of Versant
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065
USA

Newsletter #50: db4o Supports Latest Android Release and More Object Types

German Viscuso — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:30:00 GMT

db4o 7.9 Release is available for immediate download! For more details please check the release notes.

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Intro to SODA and Native Queries: Check these two nice blog posts that serve as primers to SODA and Native Queries (some parts in Chinese). Check this blog for more db4o entries by the author.
New db4objects Valued Professionals (dVP) for 2009: We're glad to announce the second round of db4objects Valued Professionals (dVP) for 2009. For this second round we have selected 27 new dVPs and decided to make a special mention to the top 5 supporters of the db4o community for 2009 (total number of dVPs now amounts to 152 individuals in 33 countries).
Developer Toolset with db4o: db4o advocate Neil Martin shows us which technologies are a must have when starting a new .NET project. Featured projects: db4o, Nant (Ant for .NET), NBehave (for testing), MOQ (for mocking) and Unfuddle (a service for Git and Subversion hosting).
New "Getting Started with db4o" Video: In this video db4o expert Eric Falsken introduces us to db4o in a quickstart demo using Visual Studio, C# and the free Object Manager Enterprise (OME) tool to browse and query the database in the example.
db4o Performance Tuning Revisited: A must read for any db4oer trying to squeeze out up to the last drop of performance from db4o, this blog post is a follow up on Brad Cross' time series application performance tuning experiments. You'll see recommendations for dealing with: cascading, indexes, weak references and activation depth (with many code examples).
Gathering Common Persistent Model Patterns (Call to Arms!): Did you come up with a nice way to deal with your persistent model that lends itself naturally to object database technology? Do you think that you can contribute a persistent model pattern that can help developers deal with object databases in an elegant way? If at least one of the above is affirmative you definitely want to check the latest ODBMS.org's call for submissions.
New project: Proxy based activation for db4o: Erik Putrycz just shared a library that enables transparent activation and persistence without using any instrumentation. Version 1.0 is compatible with db4o v7.8 and requires only the core

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"I'm tired of fighting the ORM battle, L2S, SubSonic, NHibernate, Lightspeed, etc. They're all great products but painful to use because they are all 'bandages' on the problem of object-relational impedance. So I thought I'd try something different, db4o. db4o is an object database. No tables, no ORM, nada. Just POCO love, it's like the repository pattern on steroids"
- Michael Hall

--------

With best regards

The db4objects team.

http://www.db4o.com/nl/49.ashx/corporate
newsletter@db4o.com
a division of Versant
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065
USA

Newsletter #49: db4o Now Even Simpler with Free Object Manager Enterprise Plugins

German Viscuso — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 08:57:00 GMT

db4o 7.8 Release is available for immediate download! For more details please check the release notes.

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Solving class loading issues with db4o and OSGi: Lukas Neukom kindly contributed a proof of concept (source code included) where he shows two ways to solve class loading issues with db4o and OSGi (by either using fragments or by implementing a bundle extender).

New podcast about object databases and db4o: Alt.NET Podcast just featured db4o in Episode 14 entitled "Object Databases". Guests to the podcast are Rob Conery and James Avery.

Tips on indexing and query optimization: This blog post shows some indexing basics and performance tips by Arne Claassen. Among other things Arne shows you which assemblies to include to make sure your native queries can be optimized.

db4o v7.4 for Mono: Arne Claassen has been playing with db4o under Mono and came up with a DLL for db4o v7.4 that works beautifully across .NET and Mono from a single build (dll available for download).

Using db4o for unit test results verification: The author of "Nails and Hammers" blog shows how to use the TestSpy pattern (described in Gerard Meszaros' xUnit Test Patterns) in combination with db4o. TestSpy is a class that can be â€˜injected' in a tested class in order to instrument and capture its behaviour. In this blog post TestSpy is used to persist objects created in the tested method to be verified at a later stage.

New db4o sample app: BookStore.NET: a digital book management application by Mihnea Radulescu using db4o v7.4 and C# 2.0, targeting the .NET Framework 2.0. It allows the user to manage all of its digital books and articles (pdf, chm, html, doc, rtf, etc.) on the computer in an elegant and effective way (files are stored as binary in the database file).

Follow db4o on Twitter!: db4objects is now broadcasting news and updates on Twitter!

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"I think it might be time to have a revisit of the whole ODBMS scene and see where things are at now. I'll probably start with the db4o database engine as it's an open source native .NET engine with a strong developer community, it supports LINQ for querying and weighs in at a very light 13.5 MB. That's good enough for me :-)"
â€" Richard Banks

--------

With best regards

The db4objects team.

http://www.db4o.com/nl/49.ashx/corporate
newsletter@db4o.com
a division of Versant
255 Shoreline Drive, Suite 450
Redwood City, CA 94065
USA

Newsletter #47: db4o Now Sports Embedded Fast Collections

German Viscuso — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 07:27:00 GMT

db4o Release 7.7 Supports Fast Collections and Pluggable String Encoding

Articles
- Fast Collections are Here for Embedded db4o on Java and .NET
  The new fast collection implementation allows select/update of collection elements without an intermediate "stored-object-db4o" layer. This enables random activation and fast querying, thus providing a considerable performance improvement especially on big collections holding deep object graphs.
- New Addition to Fast Collections: Efficient Handling of Big Sets
  db4o comes with some built-in collections that will work better for specific usescases. In the latest build we have added a new species to this list: BigSet. This is a highly specialized class to hold large and huge sets of references to other first class objects.
- Pluggable String Encoding Enable Smaller, Faster Database Files and Specialized Character Sets for Your Favorite Language
  db4o now includes a new pluggable string encoding interface which allow users to specify arbitrary character sets on the database. By default db4o comes with Unicode string encoding as the standard setting. For smaller and faster database files users are advised to try new built-in UTF-8 string encoding (or provide their own string encoding plugin for specific requirements). The new pluggable interface can also be useful if the application requires persistence of strings with Chinese or Japanese character sets.
- db4o Builds and Runs Smoothly on Mono 2.0
  Mono 2.0 is due in a few weeks now and CodeCommander JB Evain confirms that db4o runs smoothly on it.
Highlighted Contributions
Kudos of the Month
Looking into the Mirror

db4o 7.7 Development Release is available for immediate download!

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

sql4o 1.1.0 released: Right after releasing v1.0.1 with support for db4o 7.4+ the DataNucleus team just made available v1.1.0 which allows the framework to be used with JDKs using JDBC4 (i.e JDK1.6+)
DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0.2 and Access Platform 1.1.0 Milestone 2 released: DataNucleus Access Platform is a standards-compliant Java persistence product. It is fully compliant with the JDO1, JDO2, JDO2.1, and JPA1 Java standards.
New in v1.0.2: JDO has been upgraded to 2.2 final. ASM has been upgraded to 3.1. Fixes to L2 caching have been made. A JDK1.5 method has been removed, allowing use with JDK1.3/4. A fix to handling of URLs with the db4o plugin has been made. A fix to XMLIdRef handling with the XML plugin has been made.
db4o and Jython: A follow up series of blog posts about db4o and Jython by Jim Cassidy: "Jython Goodness with db4o", "Jython Formula One Tutorial" and "Jython Formula One Tutorial, Part2". The last two entries are a mirror of our Formula 1 tutorial but for Jython.
db4o Powershell Provider Challenge - with prizes: The hosts of the PowerShell Podcast are giving away a prize in Episode 46 to anyone who can get db4o working with Windows Powershell. Powershell is the new Microsoft command line/scripting language. It works with an object pipeline instead of text strings like bash or cmd, and has full access to the dotnet framework, com, and wmi.
db4o available in Maven2 compliant repository: db4o is now available via the SpringSource Enterprise Bundle Repository (a Maven2-compliant repository). For more information see this blog post.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"Through a mixture of byte code instrumentation and good design the DB4O folks have achieved a minimally intrusive persistence framework that effectively speeds up development, unit testing, and general maintainability of the code"
- Jim Mochel

Looking into the Mirror
from db4o in the news

db4o First Database in the Industry to Support Optimized LINQ on the Compact Framework
Microsoft Windows Embedded InfoBlast, October 2008

http://www.db4o.com
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)

Newsletter #46: db4o Release 7.6 Supports Generic Collections, LINQ for CF and Powerful Type Handlers

German Viscuso — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 14:20:00 GMT

Articles

Highlighted Contributions

Upcoming Events

Kudos of the Month

db4o 7.6 Development Release is available for immediate download!

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Restlet 1.1 RC2 released: Release 1.1 RC2 of Restlet is out, with all known bugs closed (more than 20 fixed!). In this version db4o was updated to version 7.4.58 (among other changes).
DataNucleus Access Platform 1.1.0.m1 (Rutherford) released: DataNucleus Access Platform version 1.1 extends the 1.0 capabilities aiming for increased stability, performance as well as adding on a more complete feature set for some datastores. This version has been upgraded to support db4o 7.0 and above (among other changes). If you require db4o 6.x please use Access Platform 1.0

Upcoming Events
from the db4o event calendar

Saturday October 25 - Beijing, China
OpenSource Camp

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"db4o is my first choice for fast data storage, it can be set up in a matter of minutes and works great without any additional tuning. No more object-relational mapping to set up and maintain. I use it for embedded applications and as a replacement for existing providers in ASP.NET and ELMAH."
- Simone Busoli

Newsletter #45: db4o v7.4 Now Available for Production Use

German Viscuso — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 06:31:00 GMT

db4o 7.5 Development Release is available for immediate download!

Articles

7.4 Production Release Available

db4o v7.4 is now a Production release and is available for download.
Release notes are available here.
Several fixes for dRS v7.4 are also included.
db4o v7.5 is the current Development release and is also available for download.

Results of Performance Competition are out!

The results are detailed in this blog post.
Three entries are eligible for prizes (6000 USD). We thank Andrew Zhang and Erik Putrycz for their submissions.
Submitted patched consist of:

An improvement in the speed to sort queries.
A UTF-8 string encoder.
A patch to reuse query results in subsequent similar queries.

The improvements have been amazing as you can see by the generated PolePosition graph.

Highlighted Contributions

Solstice combines Flex, OSGi and db4o: Solstice is the first framework to integrate Flex, OSGi and db4o in a single out-of-the-box package. Even though it's still in alpha, it provides a rich set of open source products and technologies, including Adobe Flex, Adobe BlazeDS, OSGi, Eclipse Equinox, Eclipse Equinox Servlet Bridge, JBoss, Felix and db4o.
DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0.0.m4 released: DataNucleus Access Platform is a standards-compliant Java persistence product supporting db4o. It is fully compliant with the JDO1, JDO2, JDO2.1, and JPA1 Java standards. It also complies with the OGC Simple Feature Specification for persistence of geospatial Java types. It allows access to all popular RDBMSs available today, together with db4o, LDAP, NeoDatis, JSON, Excel documents, and XML databases.
Milestone 8a of RSSOwl 2.0 released: Benjamin Pasero has posted milestone 8a of RSSOwl 2.0, an open source RSS/Atom reader written in Java and based on the SWT, db4o, and Lucene.

Paircast of the Month

Custom Reflector with direct field access: In this session Rodrigo and Carl write a custom reflector with direct field access to be able to test the impact of reflection calls on the performance of db4o empirically.

"Paircasts" are video recordings of "live pairing sessions" of db4o core team, designed to provide deep understanding of db4o code and practices. You can download the paircasts or see them on-line and subscribe via RSS, iTunes, etc.

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"db4o is an excellent open source object database for Java & .NET platform by Carl Rosenberger's team. I highly recommend it for rapid prototyping and RAD. It transparently handles object storage and retrieval [...] In db4o you can create an complex objects with other objects as its member and db4o will save them all like a champ with a single set() (now store()) method"
Angsuman Chakraborty

http://www.db4o.com/
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)

Newsletter #44: db4objects Announces Eclipse Plugin for Object Manager Enterprise

German Viscuso — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:36:00 GMT

Articles

Object Manager Enterprise (OME) for Java and .NET Released
Final Month for Performance Challenge with $6000 in Prizes
db4o Welcomes our Most Valued Professionals (dVP) for 2009
Transparent Persistence and Transparent Activation in Practice
OMG Leaning towards the LINQ Way to a OODBMS Standard

Highlighted Contributions
Paircast of the Month
Upcoming Events
Kudos of the Month
Looking into the Mirror

db4o 7.4 Development Release is available for immediate download!

Articles

Object Manager Enterprise (OME) for Java and .NET Released

Object Manager Enterprise (OME) is the database browsing and maintenance tool every professional software shop needs when developing db4o based applications.
"Production Level" version (7.2) of Object Manager Enterprise (OME) for Java with Eclipse plugin is now released. Full OME functionality requires a license (you may contact one of our sales representatives to get one). OME is also usable in "reduced functionality" mode without a license.
Together with the Java version we're also offering a much enhanced "Production Level" version (7.2) of OME for .NET with Visual Studio plugin that can be downloaded under the same conditions.
Plugins for OME for .NET and Java for the current db4o "Development Release" (7.4) are also ready for download.
And remember that non-commercial open source community version of Object Manager (OM) is also available and is actively maintained by the db4o community.

Final Month for Performance Challenge with $6000 in Prizes

Carl Rosenberger, chief architect of db4o is inviting you to participate in the "Performance Challenge"!
A full set of tools to provide for a smooth start and a "leveled playing field" has been carefully prepared for the contestants.
Here are the rules and the tools: Get-started video, Eclipse Workspace distribution and Performance Forum.

db4o Welcomes our Most Valued Professionals (dVP) for 2009

In order to recognize the effort of a group of people whose work has been particularly valuable to the project, db4objects nominates community members each year for the dVP awards. Now it's time for the 2009 nominations!
db4objects would like to congratulate all the nominees and thank you for your commitment and support. The 125 individuals representing 32 different countries are now listed on the dVP 2009 web page.
Three of the 2009 dVPs will be invited to attend the next db4o Global User Conference (date and location to be disclosed soon) among other prizes.
Read more about the dVP Program, its benefits, the selection criteria, and the list of all dVP award recipients in our dVP section.

Transparent Persistence and Transparent Activation in Practice

db4object introduced this year Transparent Activation(TA) and Transparent Persistent(TP). Using byte code instrumentation TA/TP transparently improve performance while eliminating the burden placed on developers to track and specify object graph depth.
Transparency usually has its hidden "surprises". Adriano Verona explains how to safely combine TA/TP with "Signed Assemblies".
Also Rodrigo B. de Oliveira explains how to avoid pitfalls while debugging db4o based applications leveraging Transparent Activation.

OMG Leaning towards the LINQ Way to a OODBMS Standard

Not having a standard query language for object databases has been a stumbling block for OODBMS adoption.
The OMG is working on creating such a standard (see the OMG activities).
In the last meeting in Ottawa in June, the committee has viewed LINQ (on .NET) as the way to go for the standard.
LINQ is a Native Queries approach combining Relational and Object Database Queries into a unified native interface, which has been accepted very enthusiastically by the community.
db4o is full heartedly supporting this direction, and has been first to release an optimized provider for LINQ.
We would like to hear your opinion on the LINQ for Java group.

Highlighted Contributions

A Quick Database Comparison of db4o and SQL Databases through Cayenne: Peter Karich, creator of the gstpl project (Swing Timetable Platform), released this comparison as a PDF file. Note that the fact that activation with db4o has to be always manual is no longer the case after we introduced Transparent Activation.
Users comment on O/R Impedance Mismatch: ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, announced the exclusive publication of a new series of user reports on using technologies for storing and handling persistent objects.
DataNucleus: DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0 M3 is released. The main things affecting usage with db4o are:
- The original JDOQL implementation has been superceded by a new "generic" implementation supporting more of the JDOQL syntax.
- Support for querying via JPQL is added.

Paircast of the Month

"JProbe Profiling Session on Reflection and Read Performance" In this session Carl and Rodrigo use the JProbe profiler to analyse how reflection impacts the read and write performance of db4o for Java. They discover that the impact is very small and find a potential area to tune activation performance. For a list of the latest resources about JProbe please check our JProbe wiki space.

Upcoming Events

Saturday July 19 - Thoughtworks Beijing Office
Beijing Open Party

Kudos of the Month

"db4o is the storage solution that actually saves you time! It's the best time saving tool I've found for developers that need persistent storage in their applications"
Carlos J. Muentes (Software Engineer)

Looking into the Mirror

InfoWorld awards db4o with "Best of Open Source Developer Tools"
InfoWorld. August 4, 2008

http://www.db4o.com/
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)

Newsletter #43: db4o Announces its First Performance Contest - Win $6000 in prizes!

German Viscuso — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:36:00 GMT

db4o 7.4 Development Release is available for immediate download!

A R T I C L E S

db4o Announces its First Performance Contest - Win $6000 in prizes!

· As part of our commitment to improving db4o's performance we're organizing this hands-on contest where community members can contribute and benchmark patches to the db4o core and win out of 6000 USD in cash prizes

· The rules and deadlines are available in the Performance Contest page

· A full set of tools to provide for a smooth start and a "leveled playing field" has been carefully prepared for the contestants (we're providing a "Getting Started" video and a full Eclipse workspace so you can be up and running in no time).

· We encourage you to use the Performance forum for questions related to the contest

Create your own db4o Distribution

· Building a full db4o distribution will allow you to get the same db4o packages as you can get from db4o download center. However, the flexibility of the build project also allows you to get only parts of it, like only java distro, only documentation, only tests etc.

· Now you can learn how to build db4o by yourself. This will allow you to implement enhancements and come up with your custom modifications of the engine.

· The generation of db4o .NET sources is achieved through "Sharpen" which can be used for any application to automate conversion of Java sources to C# - get started using the conversion tool and give us some feedback the Sharpen forum

Read Committed Isolation and Pushed Updates - Revisited

· db4o guarantees that any query will return objects in their most recently committed state - unless they are still in memory on the client (i.e. on the reference cache)

· To help you handle this last scenario we've introduced Commited Callbacks for providing Pushed Updates (i.e. notify a client that objects have been changed via events)

· In this blog we provide code snippets for doing Pushed Updates while using db4o in embedded client-server mode (code is also compatible with the networked C/S mode)

To Flush or not to Flush

· In order to provide consistency a database must flush its data cache frequently (and db4o is no different in this sense)

· db4o used to allow users to disable the flushing via Configuration.flushFileBuffers(false) but we're now discontinuing this configuration switch and providing a brand new NonFlushingIoAdapter which makes the risk of database corruption smaller (as it used to be in db4o 6.1)

· Don't forget that there's always a trade-off between speed and consistency (to disable flushing might lead to a corrupted database file if your system is halted during the commit phase) so use the new IO adapter with care

· This new IO adapter is already available in our latest development version

Improved Read Performance by Profiling with JProbe

· In our latest paircast (a step by step video) you'll learn how to use JProbe to improve performance in your applications

· In this session you'll see how this tool helps db4o developers easily find a way to increase "read" performance by 30%

· If you have any comments about the profiling session or any performance related feedback please don't hesitate to use the Performance forum

· And don't forget that you can test drive JProbe for FREE, see JProbe's on-demand webcast and their weekly Live Demo. You might also want to check the new JProbe white papers

Highlighted Contributions

· func4: func4 allows you to use db4o for authentication through the JAAS spec for Java applications. It has been used for webapps in Tomcat 5 and Jetty 6. Currently it should be considered in beta

· db4oBackup: a community contributed tool to schedule automated backups of a db4o db. Configuration is done through a config.xml file where you specify the source and target directories. More info here (in Spanish)

· DataNucleus: DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0 M2 has just been released with a JDO/JPA API for db4o (read more here). Main things of interest to db4o users in this release are:

o Added support for db4o "embedded server" mode (contrib from Joe Batt)

o Zip file of Access Platform specifically for db4o, including bundled db4o-6.1 (GPL)

· Groovy and db4o: In this blog post, db4o Netbeans plugin creator Gerd Klevesaat explains how to use db4o under Groovy (through a builder implementation by the author). The post includes links to download the builder and source code examples

Paircast of the Month

· "How to Build db4o" (on-line version) takes you step-by-step through the process of building db4o yourself

E V E N T S

· Wednesday, July 2, 2008 - Munich, Germany
Join the training course by db4o creator Carl Rosenberger (in German) sponsored by Ralf Westphal and Zoschke. Training will be .NET-centric, covering topics such as db4o based application development, transparent persistence, queries with LINQ, speed optimization and more...

K U D O S O F T H E M O N T H

[db4o] really is a no-brainer to work with. And yet, it’s not a trite system either. Database experts will be interested to know if db4o offers multi-threading, flexible indexing, atomic transactions and other such things. The answer to these is yes; it is high performance and maintains integrity of its data.

David M Williams, 6/11, ITWire

L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R

"db4o Sharpens its Image"
ITWire.com, May 23, 2008

"Rapid Linux apps using object databases"
ITWire.com, June 11, 2008

www.db4o.com
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)

PRIVACY NOTE: We respect your privacy. If you do not wish to receive our monthly newsletter, please send an email to unsubscribe@db4o.com with "UNSUBSCRIBE" as the subject.

Newsletter #42 - db4o Opens the Coveted "Sharpen" - an Automatic Cross-Platform Translator

German Viscuso — Fri, 23 May 2008 05:19:00 GMT

db4o 7.3 Development Release is available for immediate download!

K U D O S O F T H E M O N T H

"LINQ for db4o is extremely easy to use and very powerful. The learning curve is very low. This article [about db4o and LINQ] only scratched the surface of the possibilities of db4o."

Edwin Vermeer
Senior Software Developer, Mirabeau B.V.

"Embarcadero Technologies' acquisition of CodeGear and the announcement of db4o's support of LINQ are more evidence of the blurring of the lines of application development and database development. Increasingly, application developers want and need better insight and control of the data management aspects of their applications. On the flip side, database administrators are faced with responsibility of ensuring application performance. Common toolsets and better communication can only help both communities achieve their objectives."

Gregory Keller on MetaFrequency
VP-Product Management at Embarcadero Technologies, Inc

A R T I C L E S

-- "Sharpen" Translates your Java Application Sources to C# --

db4o opens its "secret tool" so that everyone can benefit from a super smart db4o created "cross-platform" Java-to-.NET translator. To learn more, and to find the repository, documentation and bug tracking for "Sharpen" read this blog post.
Get started on how to use "Sharpen" with a sample application and short startup guide.
You are all invited to enhance and augment to fit your needs. Please give us your feedback in the Sharpen forum.

-- db4objects' dRS is the First Object Replication on Android --

dRS replication is now working on Android, adding critical value to db4o based Android Applications.
dRS keeps an Android db4o ObjectContainer in sync with another db instance. (either with a server db4o database or a relational database)
Download dRS and try it on Android now!

-- db4objects is Leading a Community Effort to Promote LINQ for Java --

LINQ for Java follows db4objects approach of Native Queries. To know more about this initiative read Carl's blog.
Having a common interface on .NET and Java that is natively supported would create a easy to use, efficient standard for database developers.
To read along or participate in this effort join the JLINQ group.

-- Paircasts - db4objects Innovative Agile Way of Documenting Code, Practices and Design Decisions --

"Paircasts" are video recordings of "live pairing sessions" of db4o core team, designed to provide deep understanding of db4o code and practices. Read more about our paircasts.
A library of db4o "paircasts" is being built for your convenience about specific topics. Check it out, and start downloading here or watch live.
The tagging system on the right helps you find the "paircast" that addresses your topic of interest.

-- Paircast Pick of the Month --

"Working with db4o sources" (live) – this paircast walks you through the fundamentals of working with db4o sources, compiling the project, writing db4ounits test, etc.
This is what you always wanted to know in order to start contributing … let the party begin!

-- JProbe - An Effective Tool to Improve db4o Performance --

Our latest paircast shows how to use JProbe to improve performance for your applications.
In this paircast you'll see how this tool helps db4o developers easily find a way to increase "read" performance by 30%.
Interested in making db4o and your application faster? Please participate in our Performance forum.
Go and get a FREE Trial Download of JProbe.
Check JProbe's on-demand webcast: Best Practices in Java Environment Testing and their weekly Live Demo.
Read the new JProbe white papers: Effective Performance Testing in Enterprise Java Environments and Realizing Continuous Performance Management Best Practices.

-- Highlighted contributions --

ObjectManager contributions: Initial support for working with encrypted databases and saving custom db4o configuration settings has been added to
our community project ObjectManager championed by Gisbert Avellan. Please check the OM Google Code site and/or subscribe to the
OM commits mailing list.
db4o NetBeans plugin author, Gerd Klevesaat shows us how to access db4o databases from Groovy. We welcome your feedback to the db4o-groovy project.
Need to validate your objects before a save/update in a db4o database? Check Dario Quintana's Validator.

-- Events --

May 19, Auburn Hills, Michigan
As an OSGi alliance member db4o attended the OSGi Vehicle Expert Group Workshop where representatives of the Automotive industry gathered to support the OSGi platform as the underlying framework for in-vehicle software. db4objects is the de-facto standard for object persistence.under OSGi and it was well received as a robust, straight forward and lightweight transparent persistence solution for the platform. For more information please check the OSGi Vehicle Expert Group site.
July 2, Munich, Germany
Join the training course by db4o creator Carl Rosenberger (in German) sponsored by Ralf Westphal and Zoschke. Training will be .NET-centric, covering topics such as db4o based application development, transparent persistence, queries with LINQ, speed optimization and more…

L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R

"db4o Open Source Object-Oriented Database Supports LINQ". .NET Developers' Journal. May 12, 2008

"An introduction to LINQ for db4o" by Edwin Vermeer. The Code Project, April 28, 2008

"Just Objects No Limits" (live), Carl Rosenberger's talk at ICOODB 2008 in Berlin (video for download)

--------

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)

Newsletter #41 - db4o Release 7.3 Makes Using LINQ for Object Persistence Easier

German Viscuso — Fri, 23 May 2008 05:15:00 GMT

db4o 7.3 Development Release is available for immediate download!

K U D O S O F T H E M O N T H

"I did not have to do anything to setup db4o to save an object. It just serializes the object to the database. No need to worry about table names, column names or data types. This all comes for free with this engine, allowing a developer to focus on the domain model and the value-add code, rather than data persistence."

-- Eric Hexter in LosTechies.com

A R T I C L E S

-- The efficiency of Transparent Persistence is added to .NET LINQ provider --

db4o features the only optimized LINQ (Language Integrated Native Query) provider for an open source object database > read blog
Transparent Persistence (TP) automatically stores and retrieves just the needed objects > more about Transparent Persistence and Transparent Activation
TP prevents object graph activation issues such as retrieving too many or too few associated objects

-- New "Stable" Release 6.4 is available --

"Stable" releases are of highest quality and stability, suitable for deployment in shipping products. Major highlights include:

Commit time callbacks and pushed updates – to enable client’s object-cache to stay in sync with changes that are committed to the server, and to ensure that certain constraints are not violated
Exceptions - helps developers catch certain conditions and recover from them during execution
Performance – an order of magnitude faster embedded client/server version of db4o

-- New "Production" Release 7.2 is available --

“Production” releases are candidates for "Stable", yet they have more recent features and are recommended for evaluation and development. Highlights of 7.2 include:

Optimized LINQ (Language Integrated Native Query) for .NET
dRS (DB Replication) Collection handling enhancements

dRS now preserves collections’ individual element’s accessibility and integrity after replication on .NET and Java

-- db4o’s Ad-Hoc LINQ Console application offers fun, interactive mode --

Using Ad-Hoc LINQ you can play and experiment with queries and objects interactively
You are invited to enhance it further

-- db4objects Survey results are in --

Our users vouch primarily for performance and scalability.
There’s a clear trend towards more professional db4o users!
Thanks for your participation! The winners are announced (in this blog)!

-- Highlighted contributions --

db4o field generation support > read more
New financial management project with db4o > read more
Maven support for db4o project started > read more

-- Profiling and tuning performance --

Quest Software's JProbe is db4objects' recommended Java profiler, and is used to meet the high demands of db4o users for optimal performance and memory usage.
Go and get a FREE Trial Download of JProbe
Check JProbe's weekly Live Demo
New JProbe White Paper: Best Practices in Java Environment Performance Testing
New JProbe White Paper: Achieving Continuous Performance Management
JProbe's On-Demand Webcasts: Best Practices in Java Environment Testing
Stay tuned to our Paircasts blog for the upcoming profiling paircast featuring JProbe (coming soon!)
To learn about our partners and other technologies used at db4objects see the Partners page.

-- Events --

The db4o User Conference 2008 (Berlin) in March was a big success! > read more

L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R

Select press coverage about db4o since the last newsletter:

Object-oriented database programming with db4o - Part 2 (by Buu Nguyen)
The Code Project, March 25, 2008

When to use an Embedded ODBMS (by Rick Grehan)
TheServerSide.com, April 07, 2008

Polytechnic University in Hannover Germany Rehabilitates Injured Athletes and the Disabled with db4o
SAN MATEO, Calif., April 21, 2008 (Press Release)

--------

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)

Newsletter #40 - db4o 7.2 Features Fast LINQ for .NET

German Viscuso — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 01:44:00 GMT

db4o 7.2 Development Release (Beta) is available for immediate download!

db4o now supports an optimized LINQ interface

db4o supports .NET 3.5 with a uniquely-optimized LINQ interfaces for its object database.
As a .NET standard-of-practice, the LINQ interface for db4o removes risk and leaves net benefit for those using the innovative db4o product.
For some background information about LINQ (“Language Integrated Queries”), see msdn.microsoft.com

Read this story in our db4o developer blog

dUC 2008/ICOODB fast approaching (Berlin, March 10-16)

The dUC is your chance to influence db4o product roadmap, learn about best practices, and socialize with db4o core developers and peers from all over the world.
Learn about other developments in the world of Object Databases at ICOODB (first international conference on Object Databases) held at the TFH Berlin.

Read this story in our db4o community blog.

Focus on Performance

PolePosition benchmarking integrated into our continuous build – 1000x improvement on one use case.
Our new Type Handler interface allows users to easily optimize storage and retrieval performance for any data types. (read more about type handlers in our db4o developer blog.)

Read about the recent performance improvements in the db4o developer blog.

Flexible rollback strategy to go with our Transparent Persistence

User ability to define rollback strategy nicely rounds up our exciting Transparent Persistence feature arrival of last month
Get more hints on using Transparent Persistence.

Read the developer comments about transparent persistence, or

Announcing CodeCommander Program for strategic community projects

db4o rewards project contributions by community members with access to core team and development infrastructure and more...
Current featured projects are ObjectManager and Mono support

More information about the CodeCommander program can be found in the db4o community resources section.

db4o training event (Munich, April 22-23)

Training course by db4o creator Carl Rosenberger (in German) sponsored by Ralf Westphal and Zoschke.
Training will be .NET-centric, covering topics such as db4o based application development, transparent persistence, queries with LINQ, speed optimization and more...

For more information, visit the course information page.

Carl Rosenberger on db4o (interview by Ralf Westphal)

Including topics such as the db gorillas, applicability depending on use cases, LINQ, C++ vs Java/C# object databases, O/R mapping and more...

Read the full interview in the db4o community blog.

KUDOS OF THE MONTH

"I like db4o because it has a very simple API, a small footprint but also allows dealing with complexity. It is as transparent as I imagined data storing should be ... There is no need to modify your domain classes at all."

—Gerd Klevesaat
(Author of Eclipse and NetBeans plugins for db4o)

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

"db4o in the Mirror of JPA/EJB and Hibernate"
.NET Developer's Journal, Feb 13, 2008

http://www.db4o.com/
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)

PRIVACY NOTE: We respect your privacy. If you do not wish to receive our monthly newsletter, please send an email to mailto:unsubscribe@db4o.com?subject=UNSUBSCRIBE with "UNSUBSCRIBE" as the subject.

db4o Newsletter

Newsletter #55: How do you spell relief? "p-e-r-f-o-r-m-a-n-c-e s-t-a-t-i-s-t-i-c-s"

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Versant - News from the Base Campfrom Versant Website

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #54: db4o gets safer, smaller and faster!

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the Community Projects Blog

Versant - News from the Base Campfrom Versant Website

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #53: db4o does embedded, steps up with Android, Silverlight and more...

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #52: db4o enhances its support for Silverlight and LINQ

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #51: Make your code db4o-ready with one click in Eclipse

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #50: db4o Supports Latest Android Release and More Object Types

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #49: db4o Now Even Simpler with Free Object Manager Enterprise Plugins

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #47: db4o Now Sports Embedded Fast Collections

db4o Release 7.7 Supports Fast Collections and Pluggable String Encoding

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Looking into the Mirrorfrom db4o in the news

Newsletter #46: db4o Release 7.6 Supports Generic Collections, LINQ for CF and Powerful Type Handlers

Highlighted Contributionsfrom the community projects blog

Upcoming Eventsfrom the db4o event calendar

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #45: db4o v7.4 Now Available for Production Use

Articles

7.4 Production Release Available

Results of Performance Competition are out!

Highlighted Contributions

Paircast of the Month

Kudos of the Monthfrom the db4o Kudos Blog

Newsletter #44: db4objects Announces Eclipse Plugin for Object Manager Enterprise

Articles

Object Manager Enterprise (OME) for Java and .NET Released

Final Month for Performance Challenge with $6000 in Prizes

db4o Welcomes our Most Valued Professionals (dVP) for 2009

Transparent Persistence and Transparent Activation in Practice

OMG Leaning towards the LINQ Way to a OODBMS Standard

Highlighted Contributions

Paircast of the Month

Upcoming Events

Kudos of the Month

Looking into the Mirror

Newsletter #43: db4o Announces its First Performance Contest - Win $6000 in prizes!

A R T I C L E S

db4o Announces its First Performance Contest - Win $6000 in prizes!

Create your own db4o Distribution

Read Committed Isolation and Pushed Updates - Revisited

To Flush or not to Flush

Improved Read Performance by Profiling with JProbe

Highlighted Contributions

Paircast of the Month

K U D O S O F T H E M O N T H

David M Williams, 6/11, ITWire

L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R

"db4o Sharpens its Image" ITWire.com, May 23, 2008

"Rapid Linux apps using object databases" ITWire.com, June 11, 2008

Newsletter #42 - db4o Opens the Coveted "Sharpen" - an Automatic Cross-Platform Translator

Newsletter #41 - db4o Release 7.3 Makes Using LINQ for Object Persistence Easier

Newsletter #40 - db4o 7.2 Features Fast LINQ for .NET

KUDOS OF THE MONTH

LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Versant - News from the Base Camp
from Versant Website

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the Community Projects Blog

Versant - News from the Base Camp
from Versant Website

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Looking into the Mirror
from db4o in the news

Highlighted Contributions
from the community projects blog

Upcoming Events
from the db4o event calendar

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

Kudos of the Month
from the db4o Kudos Blog

"db4o Sharpens its Image"
ITWire.com, May 23, 2008

"Rapid Linux apps using object databases"
ITWire.com, June 11, 2008