IBM Cloudscape is an open standards small footprint database that tightly embeds into Java apps.Cloudscape aims to be easy to use for software developers and requires zero administration for end users. Here are new articles designed to fill-in all the gaps and answer the question: What’s the big deal about Cloudscape anyway?
Cloudscape 10: A Technical Overview
Cloudscape frequently asked questions
Integrating Cloudscape and Tomcat: A cookbook for adding the database manager into the servlet container
IBM Cloudscape: Understanding Java class path
cloudscape used to be included in the J2EE 1.3 reference implementation as well as other application servers. It was light, embedded and a great database for small things like user preferences or anything that you needed to store in persistent memory for your application. Some prefer flat files/binary files, others prefer XML, but I loved being able to plug in the cloudscape JDBC driver and SQL it.
For lightweight database I find HSQLDB to be quite good.
But anyway the more the better
Cheers
David
the article linked to by the above (technical overview of cloudscape) is good.
why is ibm more active in promoting java and other technologies and sun is shamefully not. surely it should be SUN Developerworks?
IBM is trying to get control over Java, so it need to be more active then SUN.
Just take a look at IBM trying to open source Java (wich I really don´t know if it´s a good thing) and it´s criticism over SUN.
both Cloudscape and HSQLDB are both relational db,
so you still have to do ‘mapping’ between object and table.
if you like to have a real integrated one (coding-wise and deploying-wise), try something like Berkeley DB Java Edition
http://www.sleepycat.com/products/je.shtml
excellent information, i heard of the c++ sleepycat, but this is news to me! And the source is available for both it and cloudscape! I’m shocked.
But as a matter of architecture design, I don’t think embedded databases should require transactional capability. If you need transactional capabilities, you’re talking about an enterprise environment, in which case you’d probably go for a distributed system that doesn’t have one point of failure, etc.
And btw, why is everyone ranting about other databases when the article is about cloudscape only!?
You’ve never used an embedded database in an enterprise environment?
Seriously, Java seems to work well with embedded databases. They lessen the impedence mismatch that tends to pop up when trying to integrate external, non-Java code. I’ve worked with HSQLDB before and I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it. I look forward to trying out Cloudscape/Derby.
As for why people mention other databases, it is because knowledge of similar products is portable to this one. I’ve worked with many database products and, within their genre, they are more alike than different. Most of the technical differences are minor – the major differences come in the management tools.
Now, Cloudscape is reputed to have an excellent set of management tools and self-management infrastructure. It is that which makes its open-sourcing significant, not the addition of yet another embedded Java database to the mix.