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Saturday, March 19, 2011

Why Java RDBMS?


It is a well known fact that Java as a programming language set off a new paradigm in the software industry. Suddenly, every software programmer worth his salt was amidst software jargons like 'Platform-Independence', 'Cross-Platform-Deployment' and 'The Java Virtual Machine'. In fact, it did not take long for Java to usurp the 'most sought after status' from many software languages, and become the most preferred tool for creating software; especially software for the web. As the recent trends in the industry show, Java is set to achieve an undeniable position as the most preferred software programming language for a long time to come. It is indeed Java's credit that many prominent vendors who tried to emulate the capacities of Java, failed miserably in the endeavor.

The importance of Java in the software scenario has led to another major trend. Software vendors are either rewriting their existing products in Java, or are creating new products exclusively or partially in Java. This has led many analysts to question the need to port already existing applications to Java. While the prospects of porting small or medium sized software to Java may not attract concern, it assumes significance when we consider porting existing databases that could be handling millions of sensitive blocks of information. Similarly, experts also have to decide between deploying reputed databases, and new databases that have been entirely developed in Java, in their organizations.

Analysts have to answer many pertinent questions like: What are the advantages of a Java RDBMS that would compel my company to switch to it? Would it be cost effective to change to an RDBMS that has all the advantages of Java? Would the costs involved in porting millions of existing records justify the perceived performance and scalability features of the Java RDBMS? How secure would be the new RDBMS? What is the learning curve that has to be tackled by the staff who may be assigned to this database? In fact, there are a host of questions that a concerned technical head may ask himself before taking that all important decision to switch to a Java RDBMS. Let's try finding out some of the answers.