K U D O O F T H E M O N T H
"...It really is a pleasure not messing about with relational databases.
Not just that, but I find it helps me to think far more clearly about how to structure
code,..."
--
Shaky, August 12, 2007
A R T I C L E S
-- db4o 6.3 MOVES TO PRODUCTION RELEASE --
6.3 has enjoyed some particular focus in the past months to ready it for the categorization
of "Production". That means that it is in line as the next candidate for "Stable"
once it has enjoyed extensive field testing.
db4o 6.3 introduced remarkable features such as
- Complete runtime exception hierarchy, giving developers more
information when they encounter unexpected behavior and increasing the transparency
of the db4o engine
- A very efficient and robust BTree-based Freespace Manager
to keep the database running fast and smooth in the face of complicated updates, deletions and abrupt terminations.
The previous implementation was optimized for rapid insert performance; this release improves on that performance and completes the picture.
Transparent Activation still needs to mature a little before
it makes it into a Production release; you can test it in the Continuous release which is available
on the download page here.
To get to "Production", 6.3 underwent rigorous testing and bug fixing. Tetyana summarized
the most important details of the release in a great blog post
here.
6.3 Production can now be downloaded from the download page.
-- db4o MOST VALUED PROFESSIONALS 2008 --
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) 2008
The selection is based on many different factors - contributions
can be code related such as feature creation, bug fixes and contributions to
ProjectSpaces 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 88 individuals representing 29 different countries are now listed
on the dVP 2008 web page.
Three of the 2008 dVPs will be invited to attend the
ICOODB 2008 Conference on Object Databases that will be held
in Berlin (March 13-14, 2008) where aside from attending the conference they will
be able to meet the db4objects team and discuss product design and priorities.
Read more about the dVP Program, its benefits, the selection criteria, and the list
of the dVP 2008 award recipients
here.
-- A FOCUS ON DOCUMENTATION --
In the 2007 user survey a great many
of you expressed a desire for improved documentation. In the past months we have
focused our efforts to live up to your expectations on various fronts:
- Improved search so that it is
easier to find information
- Improved usability of offline docs
- Re-designed Resources
section on the developer site, with new content and improved navigation
- And last but not least, we overhauled all documentation, checking for broken links,
content and all
Improved Search: Search now includes
searchable Wikis and extended search. Try clicking on the new "More Search Options"
link under the search window. Maybe the docs had the information you were looking
for it was just hard to find?
Improved Usability: The offline docs now have collapsible trees to facilitate navigation
– offline docs are included in the download of any db4o release you choose.
Re-designed Resources
section: Not only is everything much easier to find now, we have added some new
content:
Code Snippets and
Starter Kits.
The code snippets section is a a community contributed collection of code such as:
how to solve a specific problem, how to increase performance or fine-tune db4o,
how to achieve tricky procedures, etc, etc..
Starter Kits are also community contributed and aim to get you up and running in
half the time.
We have also updated our
Community Content section to feature up-to-date community contributed articles,
presentations and webcasts.
Tetyana posted a great blog entry about the improvements in documentation
here.
We hope you agree that this is a step in the right direction – we by no means claim
that this task as complete, it is an ongoing process – but we hope you appreciate
the changes!
-- MODULARITY WITH LATTIX --
We were looking for a better way to analyze and modularize the db4o architecture.
We found a great tool called Lattix.
Lattix enables us to create dependency models of all the modules in db4o so that
we can analyze the dependencies within our architecture in detail, set objectives
for how the architecture should evolve, and then measure improvements over time.
In essence, Lattix supports our effort to keep the code as modular as possible. Why is that important? Because it promotes:
- higher quality code
- higher productivity
- better knowledge transfer
- better collaboration in distributed environments
- contributions from the community
Our long term objective is to have a framework that can grow a rich feature set
over time without growing in complexity, very much like what Eclipse has turned
out to be. We believe that Lattix is going to help us obtain that objective.
For more information on Lattix please visit their web site at www.lattix.com.
-- db4o VERSION 5 to 6 CONVERTER FOR .NET --
db4o version 6 came out with the significant changes for .NET platform: API,
and namespace changes were introduced to add .NET native look and feel to the database.
The db4o team decided to help project owners with the transition by creating the
Version 5 to 6 Converter. This project contains macros for VS2003 and VS2005 and
allows to convert the whole solution (c# or VB.NET) from db4o version 5.6 to version
6.x (or from legacy version). All that you will have to do after the macro has run
is to change the referenced db4o dll in your projects.
The converter is hosted in
Development Support Tools section of db4o Project Spaces and can be downloaded
here.
-- COMMUNITY NEWS --
We have exciting new projects now available to the db4o community:
db4o OSGi Eclipse: in this project Tetyana shows a practical use case for the db4o_osgi service which is
especially helpful for people new to OSGI and plug-in development. It is a simple
Eclipse UI plug-in, which will store notes between Eclipse sessions using db4o as
storage.
sttracker: here
Rodrigo introduces a very simple but useful cross-platform time tracking
application written with Scala, db4o and SWT. Note that db4o
seamlessly integrates with the Scala programming language.
db4o Silverlight:
as you might already now the Silverlight platform from Microsoft (formerly wpf-e)
enables running managed compiled code on the client side. In this ongoing project
community member Codar
integrated db4o persistence through the System.IO.IsolatedStorage namespace classes
which provide IO operations for data storage on the client.
Stay tuned, our Project Space wiki is growing fast!
L O O K I N G I N T O T H E M I R R O R
Selected press coverage about db4o since the last newsletter:
"Konservierungsmittel" (in German)
Linux-Magazin September 2007, by Tim Schuermann
"Versatile
Querying With db4o"
FTPOnline, July 25, 2007, by Rick Grehan
"BreakThruIT's
Mobile Application Framework to Bundle db4objects' Object Database db4o"
theserverside.mobi, July 25, 2007, by PRWeb
"The busy Java developer's guide to db4o (4): Beyond Simle Objects"
IBM developerWorks, June 26, 2007, by Ted Neward
"db4o in Strategic
Alliance with Prosyst"
Sys-Con Media, June 24, 2007, by Eclipse News Desk
"db4o and Scala"
N. Chime's Blog, 28 May 2007 by N.Chime
--------
With best regards
The db4objects team.
www.db4o.com
newsletter@db4o.com
Phone +1 (650) 577-2340
1900 S Norfolk Street, Suite 350
San Mateo, CA 94403 (USA)
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