H2 Database Engine 1.0/2006-12-03 review

H2 Database Engine is a free SQL database engine writen in Java. JDBC and ODBC APIs are supported

License: Freeware File size: 3599K Developer: H2

0

H2 Database Engine is a free SQL database engine writen in Java.

JDBC and ODBC APIs are supported. Embedded and server modes are available. A Web console application is included. Clustering is supported.H2 Database Engine is a web based java database engine.

Here are some key features of "H2 Database Engine":
Fast database engine
Free, source code is included
Supports standard SQL
Written in Java
Disk based or in-memory databases
Browser base Console application
JDBC API
Limited ODBC support
Embedded and client/server (network) mode
High availablility support (clustering / failover)
Wide range of data types including large objects (BLOB/CLOB)
Strong security features (SSL, users, roles, encrypted files)
Multiple connections, table level locking
Cost based optimizer, using a genetic algorithm for complex queries
Transaction support (serializable transaction isolation)
Zero-administration, automatic recovery
Large resultset, external sorting
Scrollable and updatable resultset support
Read only views and inline views
Inner and outer joins, subqueries
Many functions already built-in
Triggers and Java functions / stored procedures
Referential integrity / foreign key constraints with cascade, check constraints
Multiple schema support
Compatibility modes for HSQLDB, MySQL and PostgreSQL
Sequence and autoincrement columns
Well tested (high code coverage, randomized stress tests)
Small footprint (smaller than 1 MB)
Uses a small number of database files
Can be compiled to native code using GCJ
Primary keys, multiple index types (b-tree, linear hash, tree, hash)
ORDER BY, GROUP BY, HAVING, UNION, LIMIT
Information Schema
Multiple connections
Collation support
EXPLAIN PLAN support
The database can generate SQL script files
Support for linked tables, and a built-in virtual 'range' table
Automatic re-compilation of prepared statements
Sophisticated trace options
Low memory requirements
Easy to understand exception messages
Standard handling of NULL values
Multilanguage console application (at this time, English and German)

Currently, this is not traditional GPL software, but the source code is included. It is free for private and commercial use.

What's New in This Release:
The database encryption did not work as documented, so this has been fixed.
The performance has been improved for index creation and complex queries.
Deeply nested views were slow to execute.
The SQL statement COMMENT did not work as expected.
The database can now run as a service.
CSVREAD now can be used like a table.
The 2Q page replacement algorithm has been implemented.