Beyond XML-specific features, Figaro inherits a great many features from Oracle Berkeley DB, which allows Figaro to provide the same fast, reliable, and scalable database support as does Berkeley DB. The result is that Figaro is an ideal candidate for mission-critical applications that must manage XML data.
Important features that Figaro inherits from Oracle Berkeley DB are:
In-Process Data Access
Figaro is compiled and linked in the same way as any library. It runs in the same process space as your application. The result is database support in a small footprint without the IPC-overhead required by traditional client/server-based database implementations.
Size Limitations
Berkeley DB XML can manage databases up to 256 terabytes in size.
Database Environment Support
Figaro environments support all of the same features as Berkeley DB environments, including multiple databases, transactions, deadlock detection, lock and page control, and encryption. In particular, this means that Figaro databases can share an environment with Berkeley DB databases, thus allowing an application to gracefully use both. See Berkeley DB Environments for an introduction to environments.
Atomic Operations
Complex sequences of read and write access can be grouped together into a single atomic operation using Figaro's transaction support. Either all of the read and write operations within a transaction succeed, or none of them succeed. See Transaction Benefits for more information.
Isolated Operations
Operations performed inside a transaction see all XML documents as if no other transactions are currently operating on them. See Isolation for more information.
Recoverability
Figaro's transaction support ensures that all committed data is available no matter how the application or system might subsequently fail. See Recovery Procedures for more details.
Concurrent Access
Through the combined use of isolation mechanisms built into Figaro, plus deadlock handling supplied by the application, multiple threads and processes can concurrently access the XML data set in a safe manner. See Concurrency for more information.
See Also
