Sneak Peek at jBASE Release 5
jBASE
International, a leading supplier of database management software is pleased
to unveil features of its multidimensional database, jBASE Release 5. This
release builds on jBASE Release 4 to deliver a true 64-bit database
implementation together with new Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)
and enhanced resilience through the introduction of Dataguard. The Dataguard
features allow jBASE to be a truly non-stop MultiValue database.
The new features include:
64-bit database
jBASE 5 is a true 64-bit MultiValue database. Whereas other MultiValue
databases might have added 64-bit addressing to overcome 2GB file sizing,
jBASE 5 is a complete 64-bit implementation of the database. The upgrade
path for all jBASE 4 customers is very straightforward.
Warmstart Recovery
A jBASE 4 database can be recovered by restoring the last backup and
replaying the transaction journal but requires manual intervention.
Warmstart enables jBASE 5 to automatically recover from events such as power
failures in a similar way to mainstream RDBMS products. This is made
possible by the Checkpointing enhancements to Transaction Journaling.
Checkpointing
Transaction Journaling has been enhanced to provide an even greater level of
flexibility and robustness with the introduction of Checkpointing.
Periodically, Checkpointing pauses activity to record a point in time when
the database is in a known state - a checkpoint.
Resilient Files
In badly sized hash files data is frequently split across a number of
different frames and all must be read from and written to disk when the data
changes. If something goes wrong there is a significant chance that an
update will be interrupted and the structure of the file corrupted. In
jBASE Release 5, a new JR resilient file type has been introduced to
eliminate this possibility. In a resilient file, where data spans across
disk frames, it is built up in a separate area of the file and flushed to
disk. Only once it is on disk is a pointer updated to the new data
structure rather than the old structure. There is a small performance
overhead when using JR files due to the extra flushing.
Auto-Resizing files
As well as being resilient, JR files also resize automatically. This is
achieved by separating the location of the data from the record key of the
file. This means that the structure of the underlying data can expand
without having to redistribute all the data as was the case with previous
hash files.
Online Backup and Restore
Backup and Restore commands have been enhanced so that a database backup
and restore can be performed without the need to shutdown activity on the
database server. The backup will be a complete copy of the database at the
point in time when the backup process finished. This backup is guaranteed to
be in a consistent state because of the new Checkpointing feature. The new
Restore command can also be used on a live system.
New APIs
A new jRemote Resource Adapter has been implemented for jBASE 5. It is
a J2EE Connector Architecture (JCA) compliant resource adapter allowing J2EE
applications to integrate with a jBASE Enterprise Information System. The
JCA accepts connections with JEE clients and manages the lookup, execution
and transactional flow of Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), JMS queues and
requests from Message Driven Beans (MDB). By means of the JEE user
functions a jBASIC program can perform transactional calls to EJB's, drop
messages on JMS message queues and perform processing via custom synchronous
MDB's.
A new Secure Socket Layer (SSL) API has also been
implemented for jBASE 5.
Native SQL Support
The query processor has been enhanced to accept SQL commands as well as
jQL commands.
New JDBC and ODBC Connectors
A new JDBC connector allows external applications written in Java
to retrieve data from jBASE via this industry standard interface.
A ODBC Connector implementing the OpenDatabase
Connectivity (ODBC) 3.0 API has also been developed. It supports a driver
manager based and Unicode compliant interface featuring support for
transactions and the calling of stored procedures.
jBASE Release 5 is now available as a Beta release.
Those interested in testing their applications against Release 5 should
email r5@jbase.com for more
information.
|
