IBM to Release Java Database to Open-Source Group

By Lisa Vaas
August 3, 2004

IBM has bequeathed to the open-source movement something it desperately needs: a full-featured, enterprise-ready Java database.

The company on Tuesday announced it is releasing its Java-based Cloudscape database to the Apache Software Foundation.

The embeddable database, acquired when IBM purchased Informix in 2001, represents a sizable slice—$85 million—of the $1 billion IBM paid for Informix. The full-featured Java database is the first full, commercial product donated to open source, and definitely the first fully functional Java database—something sorely needed in that community, said Paul Rivot, director of Database Servers and Business Intelligence at IBM.

"It's the first, fully functional Java database in open source," said Rivot, in Somers, N.Y. "[The community had access to] ISAM [indexed sequential access method], which was rudimentary, just above a file-system database, not a full Java database. … [which] is desperately needed in this area."

IBM is contributing more than half a million lines of relational database code within "Derby," the name it's giving to its current Cloudscape product. Rivot said that Derby is a play on the word "database."

IBM is of course casting the move in an altruistic light, saying in a release that the move was motivated by the hope of accelerating innovation around Java applications, "which will in turn create new business opportunities based on a broad spectrum of applications, including those that use embedded databases and those for small businesses."

Article continued at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1630856,00.asp