8 replies to this topic

[Vyoma]

Does any one have experience or solution for this?

Here is what I want:

I need to develop an application that would be running on only one computer which is not networked in anyway. It will be a standalone PC and it would not have internet connection. The application I need to develop would most probably be written in Java - and it may go for Java swing components. The application would need a database. I need to install the database on the same computer.

What open source or free database options do I have that would let me develop an application using Java on it?

Can MySQL be setup on a standalone PC and be accessed by Java on it? If not are there other options and what are they?

[miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG]

Try SQLite ( http://www.sqlite.org ) - one of the very best in free & open-source embeddable SQL compliant databases.. I use it for every single one of my standalone applications.

MySQ can easily be set-up on a standalone PC, but it still has to be setup as a Service/Daemon and will act the same way as a remote server. For small applications, this is too much of an overkill and SQLite gives you a decent way out here..

You can manipulate SQLite databases using the C++ API (which is kind of messy) or you can take the easier way out by using some wrappers which provide you with standard classes for manipulating SQLite DBs.. here are a few:

• http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=SqliteWrappers - The COMPLETE List
• http://www.ch-werner.de/javasqlite/overview-summary.html
• http://freshmeat.net/projects/java_sqlite/

Hope this helps

[Vyoma]

Thanks for the link to SQLite, miCRoSCoPiC^eaRthLinG. I sure will check it out.

But from the brief description that you have given, it seems to be a database with APIs in C/C++. I can very well use C/C++ but for this project, I would like to use Java (and the Swing classes along with it).

Can I connect to this database from a Java program?

And about MySQL - it may seem like an overkill to go for this option, but if I can have a program written in Java connect to it, I do not mind going for a MySQL setup.

[ethergeek]

I've had tremendous success with HSQLDB. HSQLDB is the embedded, all-java, relational DBMS that's used as the storage backend for OpenOffice.org Base.

Your other option for an embedded RDBMS is to look at the apache derby project. I don't have much experience with it though, so I can't say how it compares to HSQLDB.

[starscream]

As discussed earlier in this thread, SQLite is one good database to work with for embedded database. Other than i can suggest few more to you, if you want to try them out. Some of the Embedded database work for both web/desktop based applications. And those database even have wrappers for multiple programing languages. Most of the popular languages are supported by the database i'm mentioning here. So here is my view about those databases.


HSQLDB, is embedded database which is preferred by most of the java developers. It supports desktop as well as web applications. It is written for and in java. It is compatible with 1.x branch of JDK. Batch and scrollable result-set functionality is fully supported. But it comes with a price of more footprint than SQLite. HSQLDB also supports free java runtime like Kaffe. Database engine is just 600kb, which is larger than sqlite but still small enough to be qualified for embedded applications.

H2 database has less footprint than HSQLDB. But it is more than SQLite. It also supports most of the JDK versions and JDBC interface support with batch and scrollable functionality is also supported. So if you want to choose between H2 and then H2 is good choice. To be precise, HSQLDB and H2 are perfect for java development. They can be used with C++ and other languages as well. H2 database is more suitable for web development. It comes with web server and console examples. Other than that both these database support CSV read and write access. Apache Derby which is also included with JDK & Netbeans is also one good alternative as it comes with software. You don't have to download, and if needed recent versions of it can be downloaded from Netbeans. Other than this both MySQL and PostgreSQL can be used to for embedded applications.