Community News

Become an official "fan" of db4o!

2008-08-18T19:52:00Z

Help us spread the word about db4o! Now you can also do that by interacting with our db4o Facebook Page and showing your support as “fans”.

Not only the Page is an excellent resource to keep up to date with db4o related activities, but also, as more fans interact with it, we'll see more opportunities to generate interesting social stories. A Facebook Page thus will help us generate awareness, connect with db4o followers and build relationships. Note that the page is interactive and it allows you to post your own db4o fan videos, photos, etc.

Best regards and thanks for your constant support.

Solstice: combines Flex, OSGi and db4o

2008-08-14T04:46:00Z

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.

So far it provides the following:

An OSGi 4 compliant container with Flex-based management console.
A platform for deploying modular Flex applications as OSGi bundles.
Rich server functionality using Blaze DS to expose OSGi services as remote objects.
And db4o support =)

http://www.arum.co.uk/solstice.php

db4o Most Valued Professionals 2009

2008-07-30T07:51:00Z

db4o is what it is thanks to the contribution of many individuals. We would like to recognize the effort of a group of people whose work has been particularly valuable to the project. We are very proud to announce the distinguished list of

db4o most Valued Professionals (dVP) 2009

The selection is based on many different factors - contributions can be code related such as feature creation, bug fixes and contributions to Projects but can also be in form of Blog posts or Forum contributions - anything that helps share knowledge and expertise with other db4o users.

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.

Our current dVP family is located in the following countries:

Three of the 2009 dVPs will be invited to attend the next db4o Global User Conference (date and location to be disclosed soon) where they will be able to meet other db4o users, the db4objects team and discuss product design and priorities (some pictures of previous conferences).

Read more about the dVP Program, its benefits, the selection criteria, and the list of the dVP 2009 award recipients here.

Once again: Congrats and THANKS dVPs for your contribution to the db4o Community!!!

Users comment on O/R Impedance Mismatch

2008-07-09T19:26:00Z

ODBMS.ORG, a vendor-independent non-profit group of high-profile software experts lead by Prof. Roberto Zicari, today announced the exclusive publication of a new series of user reports on using technologies for storing and handling persistent objects:

http://www.odbms.org/downloads.html#odbms_ur

11 user reports have been published, from the following users:

Gerd Klevesaat, Siemens
Pieter van Zyl, CSIR
Philippe Roose, Liuppa
William Westlake, SAIC
Stefan Edlich, TFH Berlin
Udayan Banerjee, NIIT
Nishio Shuichi, ATR Labs
John Davies, Iona
Scott Ambler, IBM
Mike Card, Syracuse
Rich Ahrens, Merrill Lynch

Prof. Zicari asked each users a number of equal questions, among them if they had an "impedance mismatch" problem. Each time data models, e.g. relational models, are used to persistently store data and the program language used, e.g. in object-oriented Java, are different, this is referred to as the "impedance mismatch" problem.

Users confirmed in different ways the existence of such a problem.

Enjoy!

Enhanced db4o support in latest DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0 M3

2008-07-06T23:24:00Z

DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0 M3 is released (see the announcement). 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.

New Performance Contest - help us make db4o ultra fast!

2008-06-27T23:03:00Z

We invite you to participate in the db4o performance contest which will give away 6000 USD in prizes!

Basically participants will provide patches to the db4o core that impact on performance and then these modifications will be judged by the community to select the winners. In order to make the whole process easier we're providing the following:

Eclipse Workspace Distribution
Paircast: How to get started (this video is included in the above distribution)
Performance Forum (to provide/get help)

Ideas for possible improvements are:

A UTF-8 String encoder
Improvements to the query processor
- Removal of processed index constraints from the processor so they won't run in the SODA processor
- Class index filtering of the index results to be able to ignore the SODA processor run completely if all constraints are processed
- Index processing of ANDs and ORs over field constraints at difference hierarchy levels
Improving the BTree implementation

MRU cache for BTree pages

The Performance Costest has started already and it ends on August 15 2008.

Please hurry and submit your patch! =)

Groovy and db4o

2008-06-15T23:40:00Z

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.

Thanks Gerd!

First steps with Sharpen

2008-06-14T19:29:00Z

Well, Adriano Verona's blog post title is really "Running Sharpen Tests" but he also did a great job at introducing the first steps for trying Sharpen (db4o's conversion tool that translates Java code to C# code). As you might know the tool (which is used internally to generate the .NET version of db4o) has been released as open source. Give it a try!

DataNucleus Access Platform 1.0 M2 released with support for db4o

2008-06-01T01:24:00Z

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:

Added support for db4o "embedded server" mode (contrib from Joe Batt)
Zip file of Access Platform specifically for db4o, including bundled db4o-6.1 (GPL)

Enjoy! (thanks Andy =)

db4o videos to watch on-line

2008-05-30T18:50:00Z

Hi! I just wanted to point you to the the blip.tv db4o show.

There we're hosting all db4o related videos for you to watch on-line (including our cutting-edge paircasts!). No need to download the video.

Note that you subscribe to this show via iTunes, Miro, Pando, or RSS (thanks to blip.tv the show is also available in the iTunes Store, just do a search for db4o while in iTunes and you'll get access to all our videos!).

Additionally, if you have a db4o related video which is not there we will be glad to put it in the channel (send me a private message).

Also, feel free to sindicate any of the db4o videos in your website or blog (instructions to do this are available here)

Best regards and enjoy =)

"An introduction to LINQ for db4o" by Edwin Vermeer

2008-04-29T19:43:00Z

Dutch senior web developer Edwin Vermeer just published a demo web application on The Code Project for demonstrating the power of LINQ for db4o.

In order to show the most basic operations the demo solution includes a very simple console application that creates 2 new objects and stores them in a db4o database. Before and after each save operation a list of all available objects is written to the console.

There's is also a website demo in the associated download file. The demo is not meant to be an exhaustive presentation of all the capabilities of LINQ or db4o. Instead, its objective is to show how easy it is to use db4o in an ASP.NET website. (using it in a winforms application is just as easy.) You'll learn how to use LINQ for db4o with some popular .NET databound objects. Every demo belongs to its own .aspx page and can be executed without the need of the other pages.

Thanks Edwin! Enjoy!

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/database/LINQ_for_db4o.aspx

If you would like to make the article more popular, feel free to vote here:
http://www.dzone.com/links/an_introduction_to_linq_for_db4o.html

db4o used in a Scrum tech rally

2008-04-29T18:51:00Z

At April the 4th, 2008, developers from Xebia Group (a specialist software house devoted to enterprise Java architecture, middleware, portal and integration technology) held another Tech Rally (a whole day of technical training for the whole Xebia's Software Development department).

At Xebia, previous Tech Rallies were about Ruby, Grails, CSS/Javascript/Ajax and Oracle Databases. This time it was about creating the best SCRUM tool ever. Quite a challenge for an 8 hour session!

To start with, he group was divided into smaller groups (of approx. 4 people in size) and could pick the technologies of their liking.

The "Wicket Scrum" team, originally based on Wicket, finally turned into a Groovy/Grails/db4o implementation. They focused mainly on the use of an OO database (db4o, of course =) and used the SpringBuilder form Grails to fire up their Spring config.

"Spring modules provides a module for integrating db4o and Spring, which makes integrating db4o in your project extremely easy."

http://blog.xebia.com/2008/04/22/xebia-scrum-techrally/

db4o User Survey 2008 results and prizes

2008-04-15T04:17:00Z

Thanks to your participation in the user Survey 2008 we gathered valuable feedback to guide the product roadmap.

The Results

Clearly our users vouch for even greater performance and scalability. And I must say you won't be disappointed in this respect with the upcoming db4o versions!

Given the quality of the answers and specific requests we saw a trend towards more professional db4o users. This means we will keep an eye on providing advanced resources for these users but we won't forget to help beginners get started with db4o.

The documentation was, in general, perceived as very useful by the participants while there was a clear request for more and better documentation. We will do our best to improve our comprehensive reference documentation (and to make it more accessible).

Finally, there was a boost on the percentage of embedded Java users among the participants compared to last year results. That's clearly thanks to the recently released Google Android platform. Way to go (welcome Android)!

In order to get your feedback we have started 3 forum threads on the Product Developer forum:

Please participate and state your wishes and suggestions (also let us know if your use case is an embedded device, packaged software, web, caching, etc).

The Prizes

Each of the first 25 respondents to our survey get a db4o Large Mug. And here's the list of winners:

Angsuman Chakraborty
Allan Morstein
Mauro Della Chiesa
Michael Chean
James Chen
CL Dons
Simon Treloar
Eduardo Andrés Ostertag
David Cracauer
Lester Balmaceda
Patrick Clemins
Juan Gabriel Gutierrez
Paul Bates
Shin, Soo Won
cuneyt terzi
Caidongsheng
ChenYY
Adrian Gonzalez
Brian Breneman
Alexander Stephen Cameron
Marcell Manfrin
Tiago Baptista
Ashley Aitken
Brady Anderson
Davide Angelocola

Also 10 participants get the db4o book "The Definitive Guide to db4o". This is the list:

Juan Carlos Merino Arranz
Brandon Regard
Donald Wright
Alexander Stoddard
Scott Fuelberth
Marcelo Rho
Angelo Bernrdi
Jochen Riedel
Andrea Bioli
Olivier Albiez

And finally, 3 lucky participants won an awesome Samsung Blackjack *unlocked* PDA phone:

Venelin Arnaudov
Grant Slender
Michal Minicki

Each winner will be contacted personally to arrange the details. Congratulations and...

Thanks a lot for your support!

German Viscuso
db4o community manager

UPDATE: See a review of ICOODB here:
http://best-practice-software-engineering.blogspot.com/2008/04/object-database-conference-review.html

Financial management with db4o

2008-04-14T18:42:00Z

The Loocrum project aims to create a complete, efficient and simple financial management software that helps you to control your personal finances, even if you do not have accounting and financial knowledge. Of course, the underlying persistence engine for the software is db4o.

The project is developed by volunteers and collaborators, people who work for free to make it successful and to find a great solution of finance management for everyone.

Loocrum system functionalities

Create different budget by each user.
Import Banking extract and commercial software files such as Quicken, Money, etc.
Register payments and inbound bills.
Control checks and bank accounts.
Control credit cards.
Integrate bills from diferent kinds of budgets.
Generate statistical graphics.
Generate reports.
Calculate vacation, interests, funding and so on.
Additional module to track shares around the world.
News in real time about financial world.

The development activity of the system can be followed through a roadmap, tickets and discussion groups. All these services are available on the project web site. To view the development status, access the task management system: Trac.

db4o field generation support (community contribution)

2008-04-05T14:06:00Z

Hi!

I just wanted to point you to a recent contribution by Dario Quintana. The idea is to do an interception before save/update on an object letting a (user provided) generator set a value on a given field.

Download this example and learn how to implement your own generator here.

Thanks Dario!