News Article

VistaDB: Next generation database engine

July 8th, 2004

We are finally at a point where we can share this information with everyone. We are very committed to this plan and we welcome your comments. Cesar, Alexey, Mike and myself have been working around the clock on VistaDB. It is the most exciting project any of us have worked on.

The next 24 months will not be as difficult as the last 24 months have been. Releasing a new commercial software product is a very difficult process. We are 100% focused on the .NET platform, and the significance of our complete commitment to .NET will become clear to you as the world makes its way to standardizing on it. Our goal is to make VistaDB the absolute best alternative to Access/JET, MSDE, and xBase for building small to midsize .NET database apps.

On behalf of all the guys here, many thanks for your years of support with Apollo and we hope that VistaDB will start a new and exciting chapter in our mutual endeavors with .NET database development. Without wasting more time, here is our plan!

VistaDB: Our next generation database engine

We have been extremely busy working on our new database engine VistaDB. We started work on this in 2000 and it became a full time project 2 years ago. The product started out as the next generation of Apollo, referred to as Apollo 7 but it eventually became VistaDB 2.0. To save time, the history of how we got here is detailed here: http://www.vistadb.net/vistadb_history.asp

We have been quiet about our work on VistaDB mainly to prevent competitors from learning about our plans. This has been the most intense and most productive period ever for us. Development on VistaDB goes on nearly 24 hours a day because of the time zones we each live in. And our total focus on VistaDB has paid off. A few weeks ago, VistaDB 2.0 Beta 3 was released and with this build, we feel VistaDB is finally good enough to let Apollo users take a closer look. So here we are.

What is VistaDB?

First off, lets explain what VistaDB is and where we are positioning VistaDB in the database market:

VistaDB is designed to be the #1 alternative to Access/JET, MSDE, xBase and in some cases SQL Server, for building robust small to midsize .NET database applications. VistaDB is built specifically for .NET to give .NET developers high-speed embedded database management with minimal overhead.

The main way to manage data under .NET is to use ADO.NET, which is a big improvement over the ADO/OLEDB architecture. Much like Borlands' VCL TDataset architecture, ADO.NET is very elegant and very efficient. In fact, most all of the .NET framework is very similar to Borland's VCL architecture, which is a big affirmation to just how well .NET has been designed.

VistaDB is a great database engine but it may not be for everyone.

We had to make some difficult decisions along the way which affect Apollo customers. The big point to understand upfront is that VistaDB was built exclusively for .NET and it will not exist outside of the .NET platform. Some good news for people looking to move to Linux -- VistaDB 3.0 (next year) will support Mono, which is a full port of the .NET framework to Linux. Novell is behind this initiative. Read more about Mono here: http://www.mono-project.com/

VistaDB Features and Highlights

As stated, VistaDB is designed for .NET only. It is designed to work with Visual Studio .NET 2003 and the various Visual Studio Standard editions. VistaDB works with CLR compliant languages only, such as: C#, VB.NET, Delphi.NET, C++.NET, J# etc. VistaDB features tight integration into the Visual Studio .NET IDEs. The VistaDB Provider even has a DataAdapter wizard. We currently do not have integration into the Delphi.NET IDE, but this support is coming in 2.1.

VistaDB does not support xBase files so Clipper, FoxPro and NSX are not supported. Instead, VistaDB supports our new VistaDB .VDB database format only which is a totally new database format. The big features are: single file format, exabyte storage, rich data types, Identity fields (i.e. autoincrement), long field names, and more.

VistaDB includes 2 powerful utilities: Data Builder and the Data Migration Tool. Data Builder is a powerful data management utility that lets you create and manage VistaDB databases. The Data Migration Tool lets you migrate data from various existing databases, including Apollo, Access, SQL Server and more. A BDE version of this Migration Tool is available that supports Paradox and InterBase too, but that's a separate download. Here are some more features of the engine and database format:

• Small 1MB footprint (Engine + .NET Provider)
• XCOPY deployment (2 DLL files only)
• Built-in SQL-92 query engine
• Lightning-fast performance (e.g. insert 1,000 records using the Provider in 1.6 secs)
• ADO.NET Data Provider for SQL-based (disconnected data)
• Direct Data Access objects for non-SQL (live cursors)
• Massive Exabyte storage capacity
• Rich set of data types (BLOB, Boolean, Character, Currency, Date, DateTime, Double, GUID Int32, Int64, Memo, Picture, Varchar)
• Identity Fields (Start and increment values)
• Dynamic default values let you set default values in new rows using functions such as Now(), Time(), etc.
• Triggers, Constraints, Relationships
• Primary Keys and Foreign Keys
• Transaction Processing
• Full-Text Search
• Data Builder utility to visually mange databases
• Data Migration Wizard to migrate databases to VistaDB
• High-speed compound indexes (case sensitive or insensitive)
• Blowfish and DES Encryption
• Row and Table locking
• Import and Export (XML and Text)
• Record recycling
• and much more (see the above link for details).

Overview: http://www.vistadb.net/vistadb_overview.asp

Features: http://www.vistadb.net/vistadb_features.asp

Screenshots: http://www.vistadb.net/vistadb_screenshots.asp

Delphi .NET (Delphi 8.0 and 9.0)

Since Delphi .NET is 100% CLR compliant, it supports VistaDB. VistaDB has been tested with Delphi .NET and it works well.

Why does VistaDB not support Xbase?

xBase data files are very well serviced by Apollo and by the other competing xBase engines. xBase is simply not a growth market -- there is very little new development based on xBase. Therefore it makes no sense to have support for legacy xBase database technology in a brand new database engine. This was a tough decision, but it became clear that this was the correct decision.

Why .NET only?

We firmly believe that .NET is the future. The days are clearly numbered for Win32 development. Furthermore, there are several good database products today that exist for Win32 and for these reasons, we decided to focus all of our resources on .NET and make the very best .NET database solution possible.

Freeing ourselves from xBase, focusing all of our resources on our own database format and supporting .NET only is making us incredibly productive -- more so than ever before. VistaDB improves each week because of our extreme focus. It would not be possible to grow VistaDB this quickly and this efficiently had we added support for xBase and Win32. We would be just like all the other databases, which is exactly what we didn't want to do.

Plans for Apollo

We have a vested interest in Apollo and in its ongoing success, and therefore we have an interest in continuing to support Apollo. We do not have new R&D plans for Apollo however we will continue to provide updates as needed. The upcoming 6.11 update should fix the known issues and make Apollo even more stable.

Apollo and the underlying SDE are very mature today. There really isn't much more we can add without changing the DBF format, which would defeat the very purpose of using Apollo. Apollo has matured into an outstanding xBase engine and, again, and we will continue to support it.

Many customers over the years have requested that we make the SDE source code available. We have recently added this option to our shopping cart for those that are interested. The SDE source code is written in Visual C++ 6.0 and has ~100,000 lines of code.

VistaDB Release Schedule

Our plan is to finish VistaDB 2.0 and release it September. More on our VistaDB release schedule here: http://www.vistadb.net/news_040511_ReleaseSchedule.asp

How do i get VistaDB?

The retail price for VistaDB 2.0 is $329. We have a special introductory offer of $129 while VistaDB is still in pre-release mode. This is $200 savings off the retail price! You may order VistaDB 2.0 for $129 (Save $200) securely from here: https://secure.vistadb.net/shop/shop.asp

Any questions, feel free to call me directly.

Sincerely,
Anthony Carrabino
President/CEO
Vista Software