Databases | News

Oracle Releases NoSQL Database

• By Leila Meyer
• 10/24/11

Oracle has released Oracle NoSQL Database 11g, the company's new entry into the NoSQL database market. Oracle NoSQL Database is a distributed, highly scalable, key-value database that uses the Oracle Berkeley Database Java Edition as its underlying storage system. Developed as a key component of the Oracle Big Data Appliance that was unveiled Oct. 3, Oracle NoSQL Database is available now as a standalone product.

Oracle NoSQL Database is intended to help organizations manage massive amounts of data with dynamic schemas, such as Web log data, sensor and smart meter data, data gathered for personalization, and data maintained by social networks. Oracle touted the simple key-value data model as ideally suited for rapid development and deployment of applications because the format is simple and flexible. "As customers look to manage the huge explosion in data from new and evolving sources, such as Web, sensors, social networks, and mobile applications, Oracle is helping them unlock the value of this data by providing a highly-available, reliable, and scalable NoSQL database environment," said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president, Oracle Server Technologies.

Key features of Oracle NoSQL Database 11g include:

• Pure Java-based implementation and Java API with simple Put, Delete, and Get operations;
• Key-value pair data structure with keys composed of major and minor keys represented as a string and an associated value represented as an opaque set of bytes;
• Bounded latency through B-tree caching and efficient query dispatching;
• Ability to store billions of records and multi-terabytes of data;
• ACID (Atomic, Consistent, Isolated, Durable)-compliant transactions that are configurable globally and per operation;
• Simplified installation, configuration, and administration;
• Replication for high availability, fault tolerance, fail-over, and read-scalability;
• Dynamic partitioning ("sharding");
• Ability to scale out to thousands of nodes;
• Transparent load balancing;
• Node-level backup and restore;
• Highly tuned memory management; and
• Web console or command line interface for administration.

Oracle NoSQL Database will be available in a Community Edition through an open source license and an Enterprise Edition through an Oracle Technology Network (OTN) license. The Community Edition is still awaiting final licensing approval, but the Enterprise Edition is available now for download from the Oracle Technology Network.