Likelihood to Recommend 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.
Read full review TimesTen is well suited for applications using smaller data or smaller data stores and where transaction response times are not as business critical. TimesTen is good for applications already accessing Oracle and need to cache data for quick read/write operations. TimesTen is not appropriate for large data dependent applications or applications requiring fast response times. In these cases, using Oracle database or Exadata is better
Read full review Pros 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. Read full review With basic database experience, TimesTen has a very short learning curve. The installation and setup is easy and straightforward. The command line instructions are easy to follow. The error logging mechanism is simple and efficient. The system log files are helpful in troubleshooting problems with using TimesTen. The maintenance tools are user friendly and effective. Upgrading is easy and quick. TimesTen is almost a self-administrating database. Read full review Cons It may not scale as well as some more mature database products. Used it primarily from the command line with openjpa and jdbc, and from third-party clients such as Squirrel. May benefit by providing more sophisticated tools to optimize query performance. Read full review Provide better monitoring tools of TimesTen daemon, servers and connections. Improved support for APIs. The libraries lack the necessary code for applications to customize for applications using TimesTen. Read full review Alternatives Considered 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.
Read full review Sybase does not have an in-memory database until version 15 so TimesTen was ideal for caching data. TimesTen has reliable replication and backing up mechanisms. Oracle takes longer to set up and use for most applications where as TimesTen is a smaller DBMS that is quick and easy to set up and use. TimesTen can connect to Oracle for caching data so using Oracle as a backend makes sense
Read full review Return on Investment 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. Read full review TimesTen has had a positive impact from a developer's perspective because implementing TimesTen is quick and easy. The benefits of TimesTen can be seen almost instantly. For instance, the application start up time is faster, the data is easy to maintain and the performance is fast for TimesTen clients. TimesTen has had a positive impact for the business because it can be made accessible to users via a GUI. This gives users transparency to the data at any time. The negative impact is that once the TimesTen database has grown too large, the application should move to using Oracle database or else it suffers from performance degradation and stability issues. Read full review ScreenShots