Ingres 2006 is an open source database available for multiple platforms; including Windows, Linux, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, and HP OpenVMS. Both 32 and 64-bit compatible versions are offered for most environments.

The DB is offered in both source code and binary downloads from the Ingres Corporation Web site; and is available in both a free GPL 2-based Community Edition, and an Enterprise Edition featuring direct support and certification from Ingres. Community Edition licensing is free for those developers that would bundle the package in their own GPL-based applications; to bundle the DB in a commercial (non-GPL) app requires an additional OEM license from Ingres. A trial/development license is also available that allows the inclusion of the client access libraries in distributed applications without requiring a royalty.

The vendor notes support for multiple client development languages and access mechanisms; including Perl, Python, ODBC, JDBC, .Net, PHP, and embedded SQL in C, C++, Fortan, and COBOL apps, among others. Additionally, the vendor offers their own Windows-based RAD tool called OpenROAD (not open source).

Key features of the DB include:

- The ability to process queries in parallel across all available CPU resources (for supporting architectures)

- The ability to partition and sub-partition (to multiple levels) individual tables based on ranges, lists of values, or hash values for more efficient accesses. Partitioned tables appear as a single table to clients

- Cluster support, and a "Distributed Option" that enables multiple Ingres DBs to appear as a single virtual DB

- A replicator option for the synchronization of multiple servers

- XML and Unicode support

- Visual configuration, monitoring, and management through the Visual DBA tool

Other products offered by Ingres extend or support the Ingres 2006 DB, and include the aforementioned OpenROAD RAD; the Enterprise Access middleware, which serves as a gateway between applications designed to access Ingres DBs and third party DBs (I.E., the applications can access the single gateway as it would an Ingres DB; which in turn would physically access one or more Ingres or 3rd party DBs for the actual data); and the EBDC client, which provides a similar function as Enterprise Access but for IBM Mainframe data sources.

Containing the Ingres DB itself is the vendor's Ingres Icebreaker soft appliance, which combines the Ingres 2006 DB with a custom Linux operating system for deployment on any x86-compatible, 32-bit capable, Linux compatible hardware. The vendor states that Icebreaker contains "...only those portions of the Linux operating system needed for the Ingres 2006 database," and was developed via collaboration with rPath. Icebreaker is currently available only as a certified download (supported by Ingres, paid license).

New to the Ingres products portfolio is the Ingres Icebreaker BI appliance, a combination of the Icebreaker soft appliance with the JasperSoft BI suite of business intelligence tools. The vendor states that a single maintenance and support contract covers the entire software stack of the appliance. The initially available BI appliance includes the JasperSoft Professional Suite and is available as a Certified license only; the vendor states that they are working on a free downloadable version that will be based on the open source versions of Jasper Analysis, Server, ETL, and Reports.

Visit the Ingres Web site for further details.