Can a pure Java product offer the performance that customers are used to from their databases?
San Mateo, CA (April, 30 1998) — While established relational database companies such as Oracle Corp. and Sybase Inc. are retrofitting their databases with Java virtual machines, and other Java enhancements, some smaller companies are taking a more daring approach: writing their entire product in the Java programming language.
The strategy has drawn skepticism; industry observers question whether a pure Java product can offer the performance that customers are used to from their databases.
Object Design and Cloudscape offer small-footprint databases written entirely in Java. Netiva has a hybrid database, called Netiva, with Java on the client and C++ code at the server.
Oracle, however, prefers to leverage its two decades of experience in database development rather than rewrite its product in Java.
“The place for Java is making it work effectively in the database,” not rewriting the database in Java, says Mark Jarvis, vice president of systems products at Oracle (Redwood Shores, CA). The Oracle database is written in C, but it will include a JVM by the year’s end, enabling Java applications to be executed within the database. Informix and Sybase have similar plans.
Oracle does not believe a pure Java database would offer enough performance, Jarvis says. Naturally, newer companies disagree. And despite the small-footprint nature of the better-known Java databases, such as Cloudscape, vendors say they still can manage multiple gigabytes of data. At Object Design, which just shipped its ObjectStore PSE Pro 2.0 Java database, the company believes its object database offers advantages over traditional relational approaches.
The single-user database, priced at US45 per developer and 5 per user, doesn’t require mapping of objects to rows and tables in a relational database, says Pat O’Brien, Object Design’s director of Java products, in Burlington, MA. The database’s footprint is less than 500 kilobytes.
Users of Java databases say they are more portable and easier to administer.
“What we really like about it is zero administration,” and portability, says Ken Carson, account manager at SoftCom (Iselin, NJ) a developer of a multimedia learning application called SoftCom Learning Net. SoftCom embeds the Cloudscape JBMS database in the application.
Also, Java databases are smaller because they comprise collections of small programs, says Cloudscape Chief Technology Officer Nat Wyatt. JBMS doesn’t feature its own JVM, but uses the JVM inside an application or OS.
Developer ISX (Westlake, CA), uses Object Design’s ObjectStore Java database in a military planning application, with the plan schema stored in the database.
Though one ISX official says he is pleased with the performance of the product, he acknowledged some people may find a language such as C++ would be preferable for performance of some operations.
“For me, there haven’t been any [instances] at all,” says Nicolas Nemil, lead software engineer at ISX.
Netiva’s Netiva relational database features a Java client and a server portion with portions based in C++ and others in Java.
“When we first started on this, on the server side that was the most appropriate way to go for performance reasons, primarily,” says Rod Tansimore, Netiva marketing director, in Campbell, CA.
