McObject Releases eXtremeDB, a Data Management Engine Designed for Today’s Intelligent High-Tech Gear

September 25, 2001 — McObject LLC today announced the release of eXtremeDB 1.2, its data management engine for intelligent, connected devices. Designed from scratch for high performance in resource-constrained environments, eXtremeDB targets a growing class of smart high-tech gear, including set-top boxes, communications equipment, industrial automation and consumer electronics.

Increasingly, such devices offer sophisticated features that require fast data storage, retrieval and manipulation. Until now, developers met this need with self-developed data management code—which often lacked stability, scalability and efficiency—or with stripped down versions of business-oriented databases, which performed poorly due to unnecessary processing layers.

eXtremeDB offers an improved solution made possible by years of experience in real-time data management and related fields. In earlier roles, McObject’s founders developed the software within many current consumer and industrial devices, using existing database technology. They recognized that the next wave of “smart” devices would need data management redesigned from first principles.

“We threw out all the old database features. Then we built eXtremeDB by carefully adding back some features and redesigning others. We optimized performance, data integrity and developer flexibility, while lowering RAM and CPU demands to a bare minimum,” said Steve Graves, McObject president and co-founder.

Intelligent devices generally run on slower processors, which put a premium on efficient use of clock cycles. Available memory is squeezed by the need to minimize costs. eXtremeDB spares resources while delivering critical data management features, including coordination between multiple threads, fast and flexible navigation methods, and assured data integrity through ACID-compliant transactions.

Accelerating Data Management

In contrast to business systems, devices typically require many very small, fast database operations. eXtremeDB accelerates processing by storing data entirely in main memory, eliminating disk access overhead. By working with data in main memory, eXtremeDB also eliminates extra software layers to copy data from main memory to cache, and to another location for access by the application.

eXtremeDB stores data in the form native to the host language in which the application is developed. Unlike some “embeddable” business databases, eXtremeDB imposes no translation overhead from mapping C data elements to relational or network representations, or picking fields from tables and copying them to C structures.

Powerful Developer Features

For optimal efficiency, developers of intelligent devices will tightly integrate data management and application software. The data management engine must have features on par with the powerful, low-level programming environments – namely C, C++ and Java – utilized in such projects.

eXtremeDB features enhance such languages, improving developer productivity and significantly cutting project time. eXtremeDB provides a standard library of functions for common database operations. However, most of the methods for accessing persistent data are generated when the database is compiled, and hence are intuitive to learn and optimized for the project’s exact needs.

eXtremeDB provides a rich programming tool-set by supporting virtually all data types, and by providing multiple query methods, including exact match searches, b-tree indexes, and object-identifier references. Rather than storing duplicate data, indexes contain only a reference to data, keeping memory requirements to an absolute minimum. In addition, eXtremeDB includes source code, for complete control over database processes.

The debugging environment further promotes developer productivity. A developer edition of the data management engine run-time takes advantage of numerous traps in the database code, detecting programming errors and enabling easy correction. In addition, compile-time type-checking in the C environment applies to the methods used to store and manipulate data. Mistakes or errors in using these methods will generate compiler warnings.

eXtremeDB source code is highly portable and can be licensed for any hardware, operating system and development environment. eXtremeDB has been validated on the Windows, Windows CE, Linux, OS20/STLite, and VxWorks operating systems with MIPS, x86, ST, Hitachi SH, ARM, and PowerPC processors.

About McObject LLC

McObject LLC, based in Issaquah, WA, is committed to building data management technology that makes intelligent devices smarter, and to providing first-rate support to customers and partners. With more than 30 years experience in compilers, real-time systems, embedded data management and kernel level device-driver development, McObject’s founders are well-suited to deliver database technology that becomes as ubiquitous as computing itself.

For more information, call McObject LLC at 425 831 5964 or go to www.mcobject.com.