McObject's New eXtremeDB 5.0 Menu

McObject has released its eXtremeDB 5.0 embedded database system with new features aimed at faster clustering and application development such as the Message Passing Interface (MPI) standard, which increases messaging efficiency for parallel processing on distributed-memory systems.

"McObject projects incorporating eXtremeDB Cluster [feature] in fields range from aerospace/defence to smart grid management and financial systems," said McObject CEO Steve Graves.

Graves also points to a local tables option that exempts specified eXtremeDB Cluster tables from cluster-wide replication, to accelerate processing at the local node. Local tables are shareable, when desired, through a scatter/gather mechanism.

Also here is dynamic clustering, which enables nodes to join and leave clusters without interrupting processing. Plus, support for Infiniband switched fabric interconnect reduces communication latency between eXtremeDB Cluster nodes and improve throughput and scalability.

In McObject's tests, eXtremeDB Cluster using Infiniband and MPI performed more than 7.5x faster than the same system implemented with "plain vanilla" gigabit networking (TCP/IP and Ethernet). MPI can also be used over Ethernet-TCP, and in McObject’s tests this combination performed almost 1.5x faster than using TCP/IP over Ethernet. eXtremeDB Cluster's Infiniband and MPI support is provided on Linux in the current release.

eXtremeDB 5.0 also adds support for nullable data types, or the ability to set data types to the special value NULL. This provides flexibility in representing missing or inapplicable information in query results. eXtremeDB's NULL value support extends to both its SQL and native C/C++, Java, and .NET application programming interfaces (APIs).

For the community of developers using eXtremeDB with the Java and .NET languages, version 5.0 adds features including .NET and Java class generators. eXtremeDB's database schema compiler, mcocomp, can now process database definition language (DDL) files (database schemas) written in the DBMS's native language, and output code defining the equivalent .java and .cs classes. This is described as "a boon" when adding Java or .NET front-ends to existing eXtremeDB databases that are defined in the native DDL.