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Choosing the Right OODB Solution
Gain an understanding of the differences among four top OODB products, enabling you to determine the appropriate OODB for your applications.
by Steve Franklin
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 s with relational databases (RDBs), there are many major object-oriented database (OODB) options on the market. However, OODBs have less standardization in price, functionality, features, and architecture. This article will help you understand some of the differences among OODBs, enabling you to narrow the number of OODBs appropriate for your applications.
The references I used for these product evaluations vary quite a bit depending on the criteria. In many cases, the evaluations are based on personal experiences (and opinion). Other specifics were obtained directly from evaluating the software or reviewing vendor-supplied data sheets. Before making a selection, always perform extensive testing that is specific to your application. As always, "your mileage may vary."
The four OODB products that we will analyze are ObjectStore, Versant Developer Suite, Poet FastObjects, and Objectivity. Each will be evaluated using the following criteria:
Costs and Licensing
Two costs are associated with projects: startup and maintenance. The startup costs often dominate the evaluation, but issues such as yearly support, on-line forums, and fellow users all should be factored into a product's cost. OODBs often are very expensive, even compared with major RDBMS competitors.
| Criteria |
Look for... |
| Evaluations |
Freely downloadable, full-featured evaluation software |
| Developer license costs |
Low-cost, per-seat licenses |
| Production license costs |
Low-cost, per-CPU licenses with low per-year maintenance |
| Online support |
Responsive technical staff, many useful on-line tech notes, samples, and discussions |
| Strong user community |
A large audience of users, good activity within the newsgroups, unofficial support sites |
Compliance
OODBs generally do not take the goal of compliance as seriously as their relational counterparts. Most OODBs have their own unique approaches to implementing various features. This presents a problem with regards to the Object Database Management Group (ODMG) standard—with no other clear specification to measure OODBs against, the ODMG specification is the best available gauge. Finding a product that is fully compliant with the ODMG 2.0 or 3.0 spec is difficult, and the 2.0 specification is fairly light and incomplete compared with the year-old 3.0 specification. Perhaps we will measure Java OODBs against the Java Data Objects (JDO) specification in the near future.
| Criteria |
Look for... |
| Object Definition Language (ODL) compliance |
Full ODMG 3.0 compliance for object definition |
| Object Query Language (OQL) compliance |
Full ODMG 3.0 compliance for queries |
| Java compliance |
Full ODMG 3.0 compliance, indicating accurate implementation of the Java API/binding |
| C++ compliance |
Full ODMG 3.0 compliance, indicating accurate implementation of the C++ API |
| Smalltalk compliance |
Full ODMG 3.0 compliance (perhaps an optional criterion if your architecture is unlikely to include Smalltalk) |
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Performance and Scalability/Availability 
Compatibility and Features 
Product Reviews 
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