VelocityDB

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World’s Fastest, most Scalable C# .NET Object Database

VelocityDB is a NoSQL Object Database, a Graph Data Store and an excellent choice for Embedded database or a Distributed database. By using class BTreeMap<Key, Value>, an efficient distributed Key/Value store is provided as well.


News

  • VelocityGraph preview, build on top of VelocityDB, is provided in the download with complete source code. We believe it is or will be the best performing and most scalable graph database in the world, see for yourself in VelocityGraphSample sample added in version 2.4. Now available for download and here.
  • In addition to our normal .NET 4.0 based download, we now provide a download build for .NET 3.5. All samples are included in the .NET 3.5 version except a few that are not compatible (Indexes, TextIndexer, TriangleCounter). Now available for download.
  • Swap from one VelocityDbServer host to another without data loss, see for yourself in High Availability sample added in release version 2.3
  • Much simplified persistence API added in release version 2.1 - Now available for download. Sample code updated to use this simplified API.
  • Indexing support added in release version 2.0. Sample code using indexing in download and here.
  • Download page now includes VelocityDB.dll assembly custom build for Mono and Mono for Andoid. Develop using MonoDevelop.

Value

Using VelocityDB saves time and money for all software requiring reliable, high performance data persistence. The use of VelocityDB can be hidden from your application user's and doesn't require a team of database administrators (DBA's).


What is OODB?

An object database allows software developers to develop application data models, store them as objects, and replicate or modify existing objects to make new objects within the object database system. The database is integrated with the programming language, allowing the developer to maintain consistency within one environment, since both the database system and the programming language will use the same model of representation.

Among other benefits, this architecture eliminates the need for a cumbersome mapping layer between the database model and the application data model.

Object verses Relational

A relational database stores all data in tables on a server. Clients talk to such servers using SQL statements such as "select * from actors". Data is also created and updated using SQL. VelocityDB is not a relational database (but it is very good at managing relations!), with VelocityDB C# objects are stored as objects with all references/relations between the objects. Using VelocityDB persistent C# objects is very similar to using in memory C# objects. Data is created by creating C# objects; updates are accomplished by updating C# objects. The persistent store is safely done using transactions with locking protection so that one user can't accidently undo other user's changes. Like most database systems, VelocityDB uses paging but unlike other systems VelocityDB data pages have variable size and can optionally be encrypted and compressed. VelocityDB persistent objects have an object identifier (Oid) consisting a DatabaseNumber-PageNumber-SlotNumber.


Customer Highlights

I luckily stumbled across VelocityDB a week or so ago and gave it a try WOW. Object databases done right should be scalable, simple, fast and elegant. VelocityDB is just that. It's very simple to use, certainly more than some other object databases. It works just like you think it should. The way it handles the object depth issue using WeakReference as a id to a collection is very elegant. Unlike others where you explicitly state the object depth before a query and if you get it wrong it just returns a null (set too low) or you cop a big performance hit (set too high). It's scalable - OK, I have not pushed it here as they say it can deal with billions of objects, I've only created about 10 million objects which it does not even blink at. That said I've used other object databases that had trouble with less than this. It is blindingly fast. The first time I loaded the database from a file I thought I had a bug because it finished so quick. But it had done them all. Check out their web site for benchmark comparisons. VelocityDB will change your mind about how your app can and should persist data. I'm a big object database evangelist anyway, but I've told everyone who will stand still for 30 seconds how good it is. Its scalable, fast, simple and elegant - perfect! I've used DB4O before and although it is fairly simple it was slow, less than elegant and certainly not scalable.

Tony Jackson, Canberra - Australia.

Hart InterCivic, a leading national provider of proven election voting systems, plans to deploy with VelocityDB.

Com-passz, hotel and restaurant software, is a customer in Hungary using VelocityDB with Mono for Android.

Paradigm Publishing Inc, financial market with trading system.

SMSB Systems, a software development company in Boston and in Mumbai, India.

Our first customer in France, pays for VelocityDB license using PayPal.


Benefits

The most important benefit is the flexibility that this database system provides. No other types of database system lets you fine tune your application to the finest details. Using VelocityDB, you can choose the best possible data structures for your application. You can control exactly where you place the data persistently. The placement choice can make a huge difference for performance. With VelocityDB you will have the ultimate tool for persisting data efficiently with unbeatable performance.

Unstructured Data can be managed efficiently using VelocityDB. Several of the sample applications provided with the download explore unstructured data. The triangle counter test demonstrates how efficient it is to follow association/relations. In memory, an association in VelocityDB is simply a C# object reference. It can't get any more efficient than that. The Kevin Bacon Numbers sample is another example showing how efficient we can handle unstructured data. A common way to manage unstructured data is to add such data to an inverted index. That way we can efficiently query such data, like if we want to know what store products that match one or more words. The entire Google search mechanism is based on an inverted index. In some of our samples we use inverted indexes, these samples include; TextIndexer and Wikipedia.

A shopping web site in prototype production uses an inverted index to help shoppers find products they are looking for, try the product search here.  It currently manages about 30 million products from about 650 stores (~33 GB of data).

VelocityDB is extremely scalable; it can handle small applications with small amounts of persistent data as well as applications using trillions of objects up to about an Yottabyte in size per session. Unlimited number of sessions can be used per application. Performance is fantastic, a billion Person object database is quickly created, a little over 1 hour, and can be browsed with the VelocityDbBrowser.


System Requirements

To use VelocityDB you need to have Visual Studio 2012 C# (or Visual Studio 2010 + sp1) using .NET 4.0 and a Windows 8 PC (other Windows versions OK if recent). Other .NET languages may also be used. SharpDevelop is a free light weight alternative to Visual Studio. Some versions of Visual Studio are also free.  MacOS and Linux platforms are available by using the cross platform, open source .NET development framework mono. Android and iPhone deployable C# .NET applications are possible by using MonoTouch. Free trial download of VelocityDB is available here.

Usage Choices

Use VelocityDB standalone on a single PC or use unlimited distributed clients with unlimited distributed servers.

Standlone version can do almost everything that the client + server(s) version can do. See the feature table comparison for the differences.




Not using .NET?, deploy to C++/Java or whatever language you want

First define your data model using .NET then we can provide a deployment tool to other object oriented languages such as C++ or Java. Even deploy to multiple languages for concurrent usage. We can build this feature on request for a fee.

Backup data to text files ...

Backup data to text files such as comma seperated(.csv)/tab seperated table fields that can be edited with Micosoft Excel/Notepad and other applications. Having a text only backup format can be useful when making drastic changes to a datamodel. It is also a safe and easy to manage type of data backup. We can build this feature on request for a fee.



Registration Process Video

QuickTime movie (4.2 Mb) showing VelocityDB registration, download, install, running Sample 1 and browsing Sample 1 databases using VelocityDbBrowser