Berkeley DB Java Edition 5.0 was just released. There are a number of new features, enhancements, and options in there that our users have been asking for. Chief among them is a new class called DiskOrderedCursor, which greatly increases performance of systems using spinning platter magnetic hard drives. A number of users expressed interest in this feature, including Alex Feinberg of LinkedIn. Berkeley DB Java Edition is part of Project Voldemort, a distributed key/value database used by LinkedIn.

There have been many other improvements and optimizations. Concurrency is significantly improved, as is the performance of update and delete operations. New and interesting methods include Environment.preload, which allows multiple databases to be preloaded simultaneously. New Cursor methods enable for more effective searching through the database.

We continue to enhance Berkeley DB Java Edition’s High Availability as well. One new feature is the ability to open a replicated node read-only when the master is unavailable. This can allow critical systems to continue offering some functionality, even during a network or master node failure.

There’s a lot more in release 5.0. I encourage you to take a look at the extensive changelog yourself. As always, you can download the new release and try it out here:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/berkeleydb/downloads/index.html