Sneak Peek: 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 64-bit JDBC connector allows external applications written in Java to retrieve data from jBASE via this industry standard interface.

A 64-bit 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.

The jBASE Release 5 Beta program will begin in autumn 2009 with the general release by the end of 2009. Those interested in testing their applications against Release 5 should email r5@jbase .com for more information. Support for jBASE 4.1.6 will continue through 2012 to ensure maximum version stability.