Oracle recently announced the acquisition of Sleepy Cat, a maker of embedded database systems. Sleepy cat is famous for its Berkeley DB Engine that comes as Berkeley DB, Java Optimized Berkeley DB and the Berkeley DB XML Edition. This is an exciting expansion of Oracle's product line since Oracle never had a strong hold in this area. The most prominent user of Berkeley's products has been google in all its personalization systems that include gmail, google groups etc.
Typically embedded databases are different from conventional databases by the fact that they run in process with the application and store the data locally instead of requiring a separate installation. They are used in many devices that we see and use in our daily lives including appliances, networking gear like switches and routers.
Oracle announced that it intends to continue the dual license mode where they will continue to let the database to be used in Open Source Implementations as well as a closed source distribution where the product Oracle has no plans to change the dual license, and we will continue to serve both open source and commercial users.
