Someone mentioned Apache Derby to me the other day. I never used it before, so I decided to check it out. It turns out that it’s a tiny relational database, with built in JDBC that was designed to be embedded in Java projects. Think SQLLite, but platform independent and running completely within JVM.
It really looks quite nifty. I really like the idea of bundling mini-database with your application for simplicity. If all you need is a single table (or two) for a single user with only one connection at a time, then running mysql or postgres may be an overkill. Things like Derby and SQLLite seem to be great choices for those occasions.
Anyone has good/bad experiences with Derby? I definitely want to play around with it when I find some time to work on a fun side project that requires a handy internal database. Especially since Derby seems to be really easy to use, and it integrates with Eclipse via plugin.
[tags]derby, apache derby, java, jdbc, database[/tags]
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