At the JavaOne Developer Conference today, Oracle announced the general availability of Oracle® Berkeley DB Java Edition Release 3.0. This is the third major release in three years of the high-performance, pure Java embeddable database and demonstrates both Oracle's commitment to continued development of the Oracle Berkeley DB product family and to the open source community. With Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition Release 3.0, Java developers can take advantage of a new persistence application programming interface (API) that provides more flexibility and new performance optimizations that enable applications to run even faster.

"With this release, Oracle is providing a straightforward means for developers to build Java applications using a small footprint open source embedded DBMS," said Carl Olofson, Research Vice President for Information Management and Data Integration Software Research at IDC. "The acquisition and adoption of Sleepycat's products demonstrates Oracle's interest in broadening their approach to the embedded database market by incorporating an open source component to their strategy."

Embedded databases are becoming increasingly important as organizations across industries include the technology in new enterprise applications, Web services and hardware devices. According to industry research firm, IDC, the embedded database market is growing strongly, forecasted to reach $3.2 billion by year 2009 (IDC, Worldwide Embedded Database Management Systems 2005-2009 Forecast, May 2005, #33449). Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition is quickly becoming the database of choice for open source and commercial developers who need to embed a fast, reliable, transactional storage engine within their high-performance, pure Java applications. The Oracle Berkeley DB family of products is part of Oracle's comprehensive embeddable product offering, which also includes Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database, Oracle Database Lite 10g, Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Application Server 10g, offering tremendous choice and flexibility for customers. Oracle has formed a new Global Embedded Business Unit focused on the diverse and rigorous needs of these customers.

"The new features in Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition Release 3.0 will help us provide customers with more flexibility," said Nick Thomey, President and Chief Operating Officer, ObjectFX Corporation. "Our ObjectFX® SpatialRules™ product analyzes vast amounts of streaming spatial and temporal data. This requires a data store that is fast, efficient and easy to back-up. Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition is an ideal fit for us."

Key Enhancements in Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition Release 3.0

Key enhancements to Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition Release 3.0 include more flexibility for application performance optimization, improved efficiency for hot backup of large databases and additional support for complex object models.

Improved Support of Complex Object Models -- a new Persistence API adds a built-in Plain Old Java Object (POJO)-style object storage model, which provides support for complex object models without compromises in performance. This helps developers avoid development, runtime and administrative overhead associated with storing Java objects and relational databases with object-relational mapping solutions.

Added Flexibility with Deferred-write Capabilities -- a new deferred-write database mode enables pure in-memory operation and gives developers greater flexibility in prioritizing database performance. The deferred-write mode is ideal for situations involving temporary databases, batch updates or other instances where database speed is critical to success.

More Efficient Backups -- the addition of a new backup helper function helps streamline the hot backup of large database environments helping to ensure critical systems are consistently backed up with the most up-to-date information.

"The rapid delivery of this latest release of Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition is a testament to Oracle's commitment to the active development and support of the Oracle Berkeley DB product line" said Mike Olson, vice president of Oracle. "With the addition of Oracle Berkeley DB products to Oracle's world-class embedded database line-up, Oracle now offers customers a more complete technology portfolio, including leading open source options."