Lincoln, MA — (press release excerpt) — Sleepycat Software, Inc. has released version 4.0 of the award-winning data management system, Berkeley DB. Version 4.0 delivers new services and significant performance enhancements for high-end mission critical applications.

Berkeley DB 4.0 provides a new feature required by developers building mission-critical applications: High Availability. Designed for applications that must run around the clock, High Availability uses a technique called “replication” to keep multiple copies of a database, stored in different places, up to date. In the event of a hardware or application crash that causes one of the copies to fail, applications can use the remaining copies to continue operating without interruption. Application developers can also use the copies to answer queries during normal operation. As a result, applications can support more users more reliably than ever before.

The new release also includes major performance enhancements over earlier versions of Berkeley DB. Most notably, version 4.0 supports group commit. Group commit was designed for systems that must handle a large number of database updates and dramatically improves the write throughput of applications that use Berkeley DB. Sleepycat's performance testing demonstrates the benefits of using group commit. On commodity hardware, with 100 users updating a table with 100-byte records, a write-intensive reference application was 22 times faster under release 4.0, using group commit, than the same application running under release 3.3.

Berkeley DB is already a core part of the infrastructure of the Internet, with customers deploying mission-critical services including messaging, directory management, calendaring, naming and routing, and more. In addition, Berkeley DB is a crucial part of embedded systems in the fast-growing markets for storage devices, telecommunications systems, and others. The addition of high availability services and the performance enhancements in Version 4.0 is a direct response to the demands of Sleepycat's customers in all of these markets.

Berkeley DB's source code may be downloaded for evaluation and development from Sleepycat Software's website. Documentation and licensing information are also available on the website.

 
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