Masood Mortazavi's Blog

Derby 10.2 Is Released

The Apache Derby community comes out of a long tunnel with their new, Derby 10.2 release. What a fitting opening to Apache Con US 2006!

A well-deserved kudos to the Sun Java DB team and the rest of the Apache Derby community for all the good work that has gone into this release!

The 10.2 release contains many important enhancements and some new features.

Below, I've reproduced the e-mail the announcement sent by Sun Microsystms Inc.' Rick Hillegas, who according to his IBM colleague, Andrew McIntyre, navigated this Apache Derby release "through treacherous waters." As the project manager for Sun Microsystem Inc.'s Derby 10.2 contributions, I can also testify to that assessment, as can many others who have been active members of the Apache Derby community. For tidbits regarding other members of the Apache Derby community who work at Sun Microsystems Inc., you can pursue the clues I have left elsewhere. For a better photo of some members of our Norwegian team, captured while we were doing something else we do well, see here. Finally, there are a number of others who blog about Java DB and Derby: Bernt Johnsen, David Van Couvering and Francois Orsini.

The Apache Derby project is pleased to announce a new feature release
of Derby, 10.2.1.6.

Apache Derby is a subproject of the Apache DB project.
Derby is a pure Java relational database engine which conforms to the
ANSI SQL and JDBC standards. Derby aims to be easy for developers
and end-users to work with.

Derby 10.2.1.6 can be obtained from the Derby download site:

 http://db.apache.org/derby/derby_downloads.html.

Derby 10.2.1.6 introduces the following new featues:

* Tools
 o The ij SQL interpreter now has command-line help
   and two new commands: show tables and describe.
 o The ij connect statement now works in the J2ME/CDC environment.
 o Tools can now be invoked without specifying a classpath
   just by typing "java -jar derbyrun.jar ".

* Security
 o Databases can now be re-encrypted.
 o Secure connections can now be required.
 o Support has been added for DRDA userid/password substitution.
 o SQL Standard GRANT/REVOKE support has been added
   for authenticated users.

* Administration
 o New scripts have been added in the bin directory which
   follow Apache conventions.
 o System tables have been added for access to diagnostic information
   previously available only through non-standard VTIs.
 o Online backup is enhanced to allow updates to the database, during backup.
 o Various Net Servlet improvements have been made.
 o The network server now logs startup/shutdown messages
   to the server log file.

* JDBC
 o The network driver now supports statement timeouts.
 o Large object streaming has been improved in the network driver.
 o The FOR UPDATE clause is no longer required when declaring an updatable ResultSet.
 o Scrollable, updatable, insensitive ResultSets are now supported.
 o Network client messages have been internationalized.
 o Source-only JDBC 4 drivers are included, based on a proposed final draft
   of JSR-221 and beta build 99 of Java SE 6.

* SQL
 o Expressions are now allowed in the GROUP BY clause.
 o Identity columns can be reset to start at a new value.
 o New XML datatype and operators for storing and querying XML data
   have been introduced, based on SQL/XML 2006.
 o New builtin math functions have been added and wired-in as
   JDBC escape functions.
 o Unary ± are now allowed for ? parameters.
 o Optimizer overrides have been added.
 o Triggers can now call Java procedures.
 o The nullability of a column can be changed now.

Regards,
-Rick

For more, see the 10.2 release wiki.

Stay tuned as various releases from this branch will most probably make it, as Java DB releases, to JDK 6 for Java developers' use.

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