SMART Database Prototype

Now that I have been think about so-called smart data, I need to build some sort of a prototype to demonstrate some of my ideas. I have built something to start with DB4O, but I ran out of heap space when I created a file with too many entries. I can increase the heap space that is allocated by the JVM, but that does not seem like a happy solution. Therefore, I am going to look at some of the alternatives.

One alternative in the Berkeley DB, formerly owned by Sleepycat. It has been bought by Oracle. One of the feautures it is missing is support for flexible ad hoc queries. However, I will try to change my way of thinking. This will be my first attempt.

Object repositories are special not because they compete with an RDBMS, but because they store objects. Objects have behavior – they can even be smart. When we store files, we make a mistake. Storing a poem as a PDF requires a reader of the poem to use a PDF viewer. I would like to store a poem as a poem, and I would like the storage object to know how to serve the poem in a number of formats. I would like my poem to be able to find books about its author on the net – basically, I would like to build a smart data object.

I’ll see how things go with the Berkeley DB, Java Edition, and I will let you know.