Hi Marek, I have quite a lot of experience with PostgreSQL and am now working for a company that is building a product that will include an embedded Derby database.
Good - For a pure java embedded database I am most impressed with derby - it is fantastic to be able to distribute a pure java solution (tomcat etc.) - less moving parts, less dependencies, cross platform - good. We used HSQL to begin with and Derby blows it away for performance. Good - The list here is really helpful and friendly - I can only see good things in the future. (Same should be said for postgres, I would add). I do have some grumbles: Bad - I find the docs confusing esp. with the amount of overlap b/w "cloudscape" and "derby". A lot of useful links/google searches dead end into IBM land and that really frustrates me. I assume though that this will improve. Postgres documentation by comparison is gorgeous. Bad - I also find the bundled client tools really unfriendly for derby compared to postgres - ij is horrible compared to psql. Of course, once you are using JDBC you can use a whole bunch of different tools, but generally it seems a lot of simple usability is lacking (eg. you have to set a special parameter on the connection just to an error message back instead of a cryptic code that you will struggle to find in documentation). Bad - One thing that concerned me greatly was the ambiguity around whether the driver was going to be released - yes, amazing, but true - originally the whole DB was redistributable as open source but not the driver to access it! Well, I think this has been fixed for the java access, but as far as I know if you want ODBC you are still NOT able to redistribute the driver. I would love to hear if this is going to change. I hope nobody working on derby takes these comments as a negative - if they are wrong I apologize, please correct me. I just wanted to give the experience of a new user starting up with derby and the first impressions. Hope it's useful to you Marek! Simon. On 5/7/05, Marek Lewczuk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello, > I'm using PostgreSQL (and I'm very happy with that), however I'm looking > for Java-based DBMS and Derby is a proper solution. I'm just curious how > Derby looks comparing to PostgreSQL - performance, features, license > etc. Does anyone have made such a comparisons ? > > Thanks in advance. > > ML > >
