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History and RoadmapChange Log
    Roadmap
    History of this Database Engine
    Why Java
    SupportersChange Log
The up-to-date change log is available at
http://www.h2database.com/html/changelog.html
 Roadmap
The current roadmap is available at
http://www.h2database.com/html/roadmap.html
 History of this Database Engine
The development of H2 was started in May 2004,
but it was first published on December 14th 2005.
The original author of H2, Thomas Mueller, is also the original developer of Hypersonic SQL.
In 2001, he joined PointBase Inc. where he wrote PointBase Micro, a commercial Java SQL database.
At that point, he had to discontinue Hypersonic SQL. The HSQLDB Group was formed
to continued to work on the Hypersonic SQL codebase.
The name H2 stands for Hypersonic 2, however H2 does not share code with
Hypersonic SQL or HSQLDB. H2 is built from scratch.
 Why Java
The main reasons to use a Java database are:
 
Very simple to integrate in Java applications
Support for many different platforms
More secure than native applications (no buffer overflows)
User defined functions (or triggers) run very fast
Unicode support
 
Some think Java is too slow for low level operations,
but this is no longer true. Garbage collection for example is
now faster than manual memory management.
 
Developing Java code is faster than developing C or C++ code. When using Java,
most time can be spent on improving the algorithms instead of
porting the code to different platforms or doing memory management.
Features such as Unicode and network libraries are already built-in.
In Java, writing secure code is easier because buffer overflows can not occur.
Features such as reflection can be used for randomized testing.
 
Java is future proof: a lot of companies support Java. Java is now open source.
 
To increase the portability and ease of use, this software depends on
very few libraries. Features that are not available in open source
Java implementations (such as Swing) are not used, or only used for optional features.
 Supporters
Many thanks for those who reported bugs, gave valuable feedback,
spread the word, and translated this project.
 
Also many thanks to the donors.
To become a donor, use PayPal (at the very bottom of the main web page).
Donators are:
 
Martin Wildam, Austria
tagtraum industries incorporated, USA
TimeWriter, Netherlands
Cognitect, USA
Code 42 Software, Inc., Minneapolis
Code Lutin, France
NetSuxxess GmbH, Germany
Poker Copilot, Steve McLeod, Germany
SkyCash, Poland
Lumber-mill, Inc., Japan
StockMarketEye, USA
Eckenfelder GmbH & Co.KG, Germany
Jun Iyama, Japan
Steven Branda, USA
Anthony Goubard, Netherlands
Richard Hickey, USA
Alessio Jacopo D'Adamo, Italy
Ashwin Jayaprakash, USA
Donald Bleyl, USA
Frank Berger, Germany
Florent Ramiere, France
Antonio Casqueiro, Portugal
Oliver Computing LLC, USA
Harpal Grover Consulting Inc., USA
Elisabetta Berlini, Italy
William Gilbert, USA
Antonio Dieguez Rojas, Chile
Ontology Works, USA
Pete Haidinyak, USA
William Osmond, USA
Joachim Ansorg, Germany
Oliver Soerensen, Germany
Christos Vasilakis, Greece
Fyodor Kupolov, Denmark
Jakob Jenkov, Denmark
Stéphane Chartrand, Switzerland
Glenn Kidd, USA
Gustav Trede, Sweden
Joonas Pulakka, Finland
Bjorn Darri Sigurdsson, Iceland
Gray Watson, USA
Erik Dick, Germany
Pengxiang Shao, China
Bilingual Marketing Group, USA
Philippe Marschall, Switzerland
Knut Staring, Norway
Theis Borg, Denmark
Mark De Mendonca Duske, USA
Joel A. Garringer, USA
Olivier Chafik, France
Rene Schwietzke, Germany
Jalpesh Patadia, USA
Takanori Kawashima, Japan
Terrence JC Huang, China
JiaDong Huang, Australia
Laurent van Roy, Belgium
Qian Chen, China
Clinton Hyde, USA
Kritchai Phromros, Thailand
Alan Thompson, USA
Ladislav Jech, Czech Republic
Dimitrijs Fedotovs, Latvia
Richard Manley-Reeve, United Kingdom
Daniel Cyr, ThirdHalf.com, LLC, USA
Peter Jünger, Germany
Dan Keegan, USA
Rafel Israels, Germany
Fabien Todescato, France
Cristan Meijer, Netherlands
Adam McMahon, USA
Fábio Gomes Lisboa Gomes, Brasil
Lyderic Landry, England
Mederp, Morocco
Joaquim Golay, Switzerland
Clemens Quoss, Germany
Kervin Pierre, USA
Jake Bellotti, Australia
Arun Chittanoor, USA
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