Apache Derby is an embedded relational database management system, originally developed by IBM and called IBM Cloudscape.
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MariaDB Platform
Score 7.7 out of 10
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MariaDB is an open-source relational database made by the original developers of MySQL, supported by the MariaDB Foundation and a community of developers. The community states recent additional capabilities as including clustering with Galera Cluster 4, compatibility with Oracle Database, and Temporal Data Tables, allowing one to query the data as it stood at any point in the past.
If you need a SQL-capable database-like solution that is file-based and embeddable in your existing Java Virtual Machine processes, Apache Derby is an open-source, zero cost, robust and performant option. You can use it to store structured relational data but in small files that can be deployed right alongside with your solution, such as storing a set of relational master data or configuration settings inside your binary package that is deployed/installed on servers or client machines.
Apache Derby is SMALL. Compared to an enterprise scale system such as MSSQL, it's footprint is very tiny, and it works well as a local database.
The SPEED. I have found that Apache Derby is very fast, given the environment I was developing in.
Based in JAVA (I know that's an obvious thing to say), but Java allows you to write some elegant Object Oriented structures, thus allowing for fast, Agile test cases against the database.
Derby is EASY to implement and can be accessed from a console with little difficulty. Making it appropriate for everything from small embedded systems (i.e. just a bash shell and a little bit of supporting libraries) to massive workstations.
Simpler learning curve. MariaDB is a cleaner, simpler system that is (IMO) easier to learn and easier to manage effectively than many other database systems.
Lower hardware requirements. After migrating to MariaDB from another database software system, we find that our hardware needs have substantially decreased.
MariaDB support is very responsive. It's like they actually care. On the few occasions we've run into technical issues, support has always come through with what we needed. Once it was showing me a relatively new feature the server supported that I wasn't aware of, that, once I was able to properly make use of it helped me resolve a serious production performance issue.
Architectural flexibility. As an example, the ready availability of synchronous (Galera) versus asynchronous replication schemes without being locked into one of the other by enormous technical complexity or punitive licensing, allows the customer to find what really works best for their needs.
Driver Support - Some third party applications use database drivers that cause unexplained slowness with MariaDB. This can be worked around by using the MySQL drivers, but it's not clear what causes the problem in the first place.
Support - While online communities are helpful in diagnosing problems, there isn't as much professional documentation/support available for MariaDB as some of the other major database options.
Data Visualization - It would be helpful if there were more built in options for analyzing statistics and generating reports.
MariaDB is very usable and stable to be used in production settings as an alternative to MySQL. The shortcomings of SQL are present but well understood in the community, and if the decision were to be made again, I would choose MariaDB over MySQL on future projects.
We have launched several inquiries to MariaDB support and they have always responded very quickly and have not been tutoring for the duration of the incident/problem.
Likewise, they want to hold constant meetings with the client to get their opinion as well as how they can help.
I see a very human support and concerned about the customer.
SQLite is another open-source zero-cost file-based SQL-capable database solution and is a good alternative to Apache Derby, especially for non-Java-based solutions. We chose Apache Derby as it is Java-based, and so is the solution we embedded it in. However, SQLite has a similar feature set and is widely used in the industry to serve the same purposes for native solutions such as C or C++-based products.
MariaDB stacks up the the competition just fine. Due to is ture open source nature we do not have to worry about licencing and spending money on nothing. Moreover, MariaDB does everything that we need to get done. We can run data that is a million rows or many smaller projects on the same environment with little overhead. One of the best features that MariaDB has is the ability of backup or dump data to standard text sql statements. That was one of the reasons why we choose MariaDb because it makes backups or transferring data a snap
Being Open source, the resources spent on the purchase of the product are ZERO.
Contrary to popular belief, open source software CAN provide support, provided that the developers/contributors are willing to answer your emails.
Overall, the ROI was positive: being able to experiment with an open source technology that could perform on par with the corporate products was promising, and gave us much information about how to proceed in the future.
