Talk:Berkeley DB

Bug in non-Unix BSD versions
The "Bug in non-Unix BSD versions of Berkeley DB" seems odd to me.

First, every program has lots of bugs; Wikipedia is not a bug database, and it seems strange to single out this one -- especially since it's for a specific old version of BDB.

Second, the "(source - first hand experience)" sounds like it would disqualify this content from Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the place for "new research", and if this bug/workaround isn't documented elsewhere, doesn't that count? &mdash;The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.117.4.242 (talk &bull; contribs) 19:34, September 18, 2005.


 * No arguments there at all. I've removed it. &mdash; mendel &#9742; 23:02, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

MySQL
Under programs that use BerkelyDB, mySQL is listing at the top. Is there any corroboration of this? For example on the mySQL page it doesn't say that it's based on BerkeleyDB? dnisbet 22nd Nov 2005


 * BDB can be used as an external storage engine, and is included. http://dev.mysql.com/doc/internals/en/guided-tour.html mentions it briefly. Also, I've repointed that XA link to the X/Open XA page, http://www.sleepycat.com/docs/ref/xa/xa_intro.html 66.188.220.27 09:07, 2 December 2005 (UTC)

Categorization
All articles should be inserted in their respective categories. If they aren't it is a PitA to get to them. Please try to leave articles without a proper categori inclusion --Mecanismo | Talk 19:57, 16 December 2005 (UTC) Seems like this has been taken care of too. --Jarsyl 06:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Copying: Sleepycat license
The Sleepycat free software license appears to be a GPL-compatible copyleft license, no? Perhaps this could be mentioned? --216.114.171.141 17:06, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition
How about Oracle Berkeley DB Java Edition ? See http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/berkeley-db/je/index.html Nicolas1981 22:26, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Netscape and Sleepycat
I added a reference/link to an interview with Mike Olson that mentions the interaction with Netscape around 1996, but is unclear on the exact year. I added the "1996" to this article which already included the data point that this was before BDB version 1.85. This in turn roughly corresponds to this BDB version info I found on Oracle's site. Can anyone with more authoritative knowledge/Google-fu corroborate? --Jarsyl 06:15, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

Alternatives
I would like this page to have link to list of alternative to BDB non-SQL/emebed databases like CDB. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.222.158.239 (talk) 12:08, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Compatibility
I get the impression from various sources that bdb keeps making incompatible changes to the database format. Can anyone confirm/deny this and explain if true why there is no mention of this in the article and if it is true why the hell anyone would use it? 130.88.108.18 (talk) 18:17, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

SQLite API
11g R2 adds SQLite API. See http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/063695 Roytam1 (talk) 10:06, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

type of tree?
which type of an tree is a bdb? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 194.113.41.246 (talk) 12:11, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

Nokia N900
The standard contacts application on the Nokia N900 device uses Berkeley DB, too (I think it's named osso-abook). — Preceding unsigned comment added by 77.186.99.243 (talk) 18:45, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Sleepycat License
Sleepycat License is a hopeless stub, that could survive here in the Berkeley DB section. –Be..anyone (talk) 18:04, 4 April 2015 (UTC)

BSDs & BDB 1.8x
The article currently states:


 * The FreeBSD and OpenBSD operating systems continue to use Berkeley DB 1.8x for compatibility reasons;[6]

The ref points to a man page on FreeBSD. No mention of compatibility anywhere. It only verifies that FreeBSD has the old version.

I believe "compatibility reasons" is wrong. It's much more likely that they stick to 1.8x because it's the newest BSD-licensed version. The ones with the Sleepycat licence are copyleft which is not as free as the BSD licence. It's a well-known fact that the (Net|Open|Free)BSD try to avoid license terms more onerous than those of the BSD licence whenever possible.

(Besides, I'm digressing a bit here, but the software came from Berkeley, and the Berkeley Software Distribution tends to distribute software from Berkeley, so there's an inheritance factor at play here.)

(There's a case to be made that they stick with the old version because migrating to a newer version has a different on-disk format and would thus not be compatible though. But I find that unlikely.) --88.113.162.167 (talk) 20:10, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Programs that use Berkeley DB
This needs some audit, IMO. Some of the proprietary examples look like ads/spam. For example:

Movable Type (until version 4.0) – A proprietary weblog publishing system developed by California-based Six Apart

There are 26 examples totally. Obviously many more projects use BDB so it's not justifiable to have some proprietary weblog thingy in the article next to Sendmail, MySQL or Bitcoin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2401:FA00:9:11:A019:56B5:8948:B4F4 (talk) 23:43, 21 October 2016 (UTC)

AGPL
GNU Affero General Public License mentions BerkeleyDB as an example, but here there is no mention of AGPL. There should be. The switch to using AGPL is an important aspect in the history of BerkeleyDB. John Vandenberg (chat) 09:12, 12 June 2017 (UTC)

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comparison page?
It would be nice to have a page that compares the various embeddable database libraries, like Berkeley DB, LMDB, SQLite etc, but I don't seem to find it. 91.10.7.40 (talk) 19:55, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

Carbonado moved to "past users"
I did this on the basis that it is a 7 year-old Java interface library, and I couldn't find anyone claiming to be a user of it.

Dan Shearer (talk) 16:56, 6 April 2021 (UTC)

Propose Removing "BDB Java Edition"
The only relevance of JE to this article is that Oracle uses the name "BDB". The fact that the JE API is modelled after the BDB API is not relevant, because that applies to dozens of database libraries. Therefore unless there are objections I will remove all references to JE except for one describing the naming. The JE license is not relevant. The introduction to this article describes BDB as "written in C", so anything written in pure Java cannot be BDB.

Performance Claims Unreferenced
"BDB can support thousands of simultaneous threads of control or concurrent processes manipulating databases as large as 256 terabytes,[3] on a wide variety of operating systems including most Unix-like and Windows systems, and real-time operating systems."

This seems like one a theoretical statement based on the size of the data types in the source code. I do not know of any evidence of size testing at all, let alone to enormous sizes. I propose deleting this section. Even if the data structures support this in theory, it seems a stretch even to insert "theoretically" when describing BDB, which appears to be unmaintained by Oracle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DanShearer (talk • contribs) 16:04, 17 February 2022 (UTC)

Removing performance claims as per previous comment. Dan Shearer (talk) 19:03, 30 April 2022 (UTC)

No successor to BDB
There is no software that can be reasonably described as a "successor" to BDB. LMDB has certainly replaced BDB in many projects, but I don't think it can be described as successor, any more than the other similar storage systems with similar APIs. Likewise the founder of BDB changed employer and wrote another database storage system called Wired Tiger, but it does not replace BDB in any context I have seen. It does seem that BDB appears not to be used very much at all - I have spent a long time establishing that this is the case at least for open source software starting when Oracle changed the BDB license. But this only means it has been replaced, not that there is a clear successor.

Dan Shearer (talk) 19:12, 30 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Wired Tiger is certainly the successor in terms of lineage of BDB since it was done by the same engineers. I do not mean successor as in "WiredTiger deprecate BDB". You reverted my changes in bulk, including the reference to SIGMOD award. i⋅am⋅amz3 (talk) 13:30, 2 May 2022 (UTC)


 * I think you made some good additions, especially the reference to the 2020 SIGMOD Systems Award. Unfortunately your changes did need to be reverted in bulk, because as per Good editing practices nobody should make lots of edits in unrelated areas at once, see the section on Make incremental changes. As a trivial example of why incremental changes matter, I noticed you changed the heading "Origin" to "History" in your bulk edit - and while I personally don't care either way, I observe that many other pages in the computer science project use the term "Origin" so that may be a convention other people care about. Since that heading change is nothing to do with SIGMOD, it should be in a separate edit so it can be reverted (or not) in a standalone way.


 * Specifically as to your claim of "successor due to same engineers", I think this needs some further thought. For example that would also then make Windows NT the successor to OpenVMS because there were many of the same team too under Dave Cutler, but that is of course nonsense. I also think you would also find it difficult to account for saying Wired Tiger is a successor when there are other database libraries much closer to the BDB API that are often used for replacing BDB like-for-like. Similarly, the SIGMOD award referenced 16 people, and I am pretty sure that most of them had nothing to do with Wired Tiger.


 * I was unsure where to put the SIGMOD award reference so I was thinking about it, noting that it is about _historical_ achievement, no reference to the situation today (which would not make sense.) I made a couple of simple changes to start to prepare the way for that.


 * Once again, thanks for your contributions, keep them coming.
 * Dan Shearer (talk) 14:13, 2 May 2022 (UTC)

Bitcoin-qt uses BDB
Bitcoin-qt uses BDB. It should be mentioned in this article. SubscribeTransport (talk) 06:29, 23 September 2023 (UTC)