The world's largest database company has bought the world's most popular embedded database. Oracle has agreed to purchase Sleepycat, the company that maintains the ubiquitous Berkeley DB, offering it under a commercial licenses, as well as the open source Sleepycat Public License.

Sleepycat Software estimates that Berkeley DB has been deployed 200 million times, making it the most widely used open source database in the world. Well-known open source projects that embed Berkeley DB technology include Linux, BSD Unix, Apache, OpenLDAP, OpenOffice, and many others. Commercial applications include Motorola's Linux-based smartphones. MontaVista has also certified Berkeley DB for use with its Carrier Grade Linux distribution.

Oracle says Berkeley DB will complement its embedded and mobile database offerings, which include the Oracle Lite database for mobile devices, and the TimesTen high-performance in-memory database.

Oracle SVP of database server technologies, Andrew Mendelsohn, stated, “Sleepycat's products enhance Oracle's market-leading database product family by offering enterprise-class support to customers who need to embed a fast, reliable database at a lower cost.”

Sleepycat CEO Mike Olson stated, “Sleepycat's products, customer base, and proven business model, combined with Oracle's tremendous expertise, complementary technology, and resources, will allow us to better serve the needs of our customers and the open source community.”

IDC's Carl Olofson stated, “The embedded database market was projected last year to be just over $2 billion in 2005 and forecasted to grow to over $3.2 billion by the year 2009.”

The last two releases of Berkeley DB, versions 4.3 and 4.4, both focused on adding high-availability features.

Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

 
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