October 18, 2005 — Bellevue, WA — Oshkosh Truck Corporation, a leader in the defense, fire and emergency, and commercial truck manufacturing market, is now using an ITTIA embedded database in several of its vehicles.
Soldiers and civilians alike rely on Oshkosh’s strength and reliability to keep them moving, no matter how adverse the conditions. Their advanced electronics know-how also makes their vehicles among the smartest in the world. Their advanced TerraMax truck completed the DARPA autonomous vehicle grand challenge this year.
Users of Oshkosh trucks require systems that work quickly and reliably, and Oshkosh expects the same from the software that helps keep their vehicles on top. The company spent significant time and resources to valuate various embedded databases before they selected an ITTIA database solution. The superior performance of db.*, coupled with ITTIA’s technical support and training made db.* a great choice from a technical perspective. The open-source nature and low cost of db.* made the decision obvious from a business perspective.
Jim Bomkamp, a software engineer for Oshkosh Truck, says, “I looked all over the Internet for database offerings that would meet criteria such as: could be embedded on our Linux ARM platform, interface to C/C++, small footprint, fast execution speed, did not need external maintenance, could be restored on the fly if file/data corruption occurred, very inexpensive. ITTIA alone provided what we needed and our implementation of the database was a success. The low cost of membership in Club ITTIA along with a week long training course ITTIA provided was at least $25,000 cheaper than implementing any other company's database solution, and I just couldn’t believe the cost that some companies wanted to charge to implement their database in our products. The Linux open source solutions such as ITTIA provides are definitely worth looking into.”
ITTIA’s db.* is free to download, develop and distribute for Standard and Premium members. There are no licensing or development fees whatsoever. Paid Club ITTIA members also receive updated versions of the database and technical support. These benefits – coupled with the maturity of the code and documentation and the low-cost online and on-site training and technical support – places the total cost of ownership (TCO) of db.* and ITTIA solutions far below that of any competitor.
Jim Bomkamp again states, “Once we decided to implement the ITTIA database into our products we knew that there would be a learning curve to go through to get to the point of writing efficient and error-free code, especially since none of us had a great depth of database experience. We decided that to have ITTIA provide a week of training would actually cost less than generating internal training, plus on our own we would take much longer getting going and wouldn't necessarily arrive at optimal code solutions. ITTIA’s training provided what we needed to get going in a short amount of time, plus we were able to pose application specific questions to their trainer that helped us right where we most needed it. Also, ITTIA’s technical support has been very responsive since that initial training session when we have had need in several instances to pose to them a development or debug question.”
There are electronic modules inside trucks that control various subsystems and produce fault codes when problems occur. In one scenario, the db.* database is utilized as the permanent storage for these fault codes and system information is retrieved from db.* to be displayed for the truck operators on seven inch color displays. Due to sensitivity of the environments such as combat zones where these trucks are used, it is important for the database to be reliable, efficient and fast.
“Oshkosh is a very smart company, and we are proud to announce that they chose our solutions over that of all our competitors,” said Sasan Montaseri, president of ITTIA. “They did their research, and made their decision based on performance and cost. I encourage others to look at our offerings before they settle on a second-class solution, or one that will cost them tens of thousands or even millions more in licensing and development costs.”
