MongoDB is a high-performance, open source, schema-free document-oriented database. MongoDB is written in C++ and offers the following features:

* Collection oriented storage - easy storage of object-style data

* Dynamic queries

* Full index support, including on inner objects

* Query profiling

* Replication and fail-over support

* Efficient storage of binary data including large objects (e.g. videos)

* Auto-sharding for cloud-level scalability (Q209)

Of course the answer is “it depends”, but that’s not very helpful. Let me ask you a few questions to help you figure out which technology is appropriate to your particular application. Then I can give a few pointers so that you can find out more.

The movement's chief champions are Web and Java developers, many of whom learned to get by at their cash-strapped startups without Oracle by building their own data storage solutions, emulating those being built by Google Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., and which they subsequently released as open source.

Now that their open source data stores manage hundreds of terabytes or even petabytes of data for thriving Web 2.0 and cloud computing vendors, switching back is neither technically, economically or even ideologically feasible.

A Linux developer has published a new kernel patch that provides a workaround to avoid Microsoft's patents on the FAT filesystem. The patch, which has undergone extensive legal review by patent lawyers, could make it possible to use FAT on Linux without having to pay licensing fees to Microsoft.

Like the Patriots, who rebelled against Britain's heavy taxes, NoSQLers came to share how they had overthrown the tyranny of slow, expensive relational databases in favor of more efficient and cheaper ways of managing data.

Object identity is deceptively hard to implement correctly when objects are persisted to a database. However, the problems stem entirely from allowing objects to exist without an id before they are saved. We can solve these problems by taking the responsibility of assigning object IDs away from object-relational mapping frameworks such as Hibernate. Instead, object IDs can be assigned as soon as the object is instantiated. This makes object identity simple and error-free, and reduces the amount of code needed in the domain model.

Can you believe that in nearly four years of Paranoid Penguin columns, I've never talked about how to configure FTP services? This month I fix that, using my new favorite FTP server, Chris Evans' excellent vsftpd (Very Secure FTP Dæmon). Because my space here is limited and the best use of FTP is anonymous FTP, we focus on anonymous FTP. The FTP protocol's use of clear-text authentication makes it a terrible choice for anything but anonymous file transfer. But anonymous FTP is still plenty useful.

Get a head start for your products by leveraging db4o's cutting edge technology to achieve unprecedented levels of performance and flexibility. Simply embed db4o's open source object database engine into your application and store and retrieve even the most complex object structures with only one line of code. Download a free version of db4o under the GPL license and start your free evaluation now!

Although it may seem trite to say it, $g(Object/Relational Mapping) is the Vietnam of Computer Science. It represents a quagmire which starts well, gets more complicated as time passes, and before long entraps its users in a commitment that has no clear demarcation point, no clear win conditions, and no clear exit strategy.

Gilead stands for Generic Light Entity Adapter. It permits you to send Persistent entities (and especiallay the partially loaded ones) outside the JVM (GWT, Flex, Web-Services, ...) without pain. No LazyInitialisationException. No DTO mapping. Just POJO and Domain Driven Design :) !