Berkeley DB
Encyclopedia : B : BE : BER : Berkeley DB
Berkeley DB (DB) is a high-performance, embedded database library with bindings in C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Tcl and many other programming languages. DB stores arbitrary key/data pairs, and supports multiple data items for a single key. DB can support thousands of simultaneous threads of control manipulating databases as large as 256 terabytes, on a wide variety of systems including most UNIX-like and Windows systems as well as real-time operating systems.
Berkeley DB is developed by Sleepycat Software (acquired by Oracle Corporation in February 2006). It is available with source code under a free software license. Developers who want to redistribute DB with proprietary applications must license it from Sleepycat.
Berkeley DB includes compatibility interfaces for some historic UNIX database libraries: dbm, ndbm and hsearch.
Architecture
Berkeley DB is notable for having a simple architecture compared with other database systems like Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. For example, it does not provide support for network access — programs access the database using in-process API calls. It does not support SQL or any other query language, nor does it support table schema or table columns. A program accessing the database is free to decide how the data is to be stored in a record; DB puts no constraints on the record's data. The record and its key can both be up to four gigabytes long.Despite having a simple architecture, Berkeley DB supports many advanced database features such as ACID transactions, fine-grained locking, an XA interface, hot backups and replication.
Programs that use Berkeley DB
Berkeley DB is the underlying storage system of several LDAP servers, database system, and many other commercial and Open Source applications. Below is a list of notable programs that use Berkeley DB for data storage.- MySQL database system - A multithreaded, multi-user, SQL (Structured Query Language) Database Management System (DBMS) with an estimated six million installations. (BDB is one of several data storage backends available for MySQL; others include MyISAM and InnoDB.)
- Subversion - A version control system designed specifically to replace CVS
- KDevelop - A free C and C++ IDE for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems
- Sun GridEngine - An open source distributed resource management system; the most popular batch-queueing job scheduler for compute farms.
- Movable Type - A proprietary weblog publishing system developed by California-based Six Apart
- Caravel CMS - An open source content management system originally designed for the 2,000+ organizations of the Mennonite Church
- OpenLDAP - A free, open source implementation of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
- KLibido - A free, open source Newsgroup reader tailored for binary downloads
- Citadel - An open source groupware platform that keeps all of its data stores, including the message base, in Berkeley DB.
- Bogofilter - an open source spamfilter that saves its wordlists using Berkeley DB.
Licensing
Versions 2.0 and higher of Berkeley DB are available under a dual license (see http://www.sleepycat.com/download/licensinginfo.shtml). Versions <2.0 are available under the BSD license, which means free use commercially.External links
- [Sleepycat Software] (Berkeley DB developers)
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