July 31, 2012 — Bellevue, WA — Whenever power removal is suspected, developers of applications for mobile devices and other embedded systems tend to use EEPROM hardware for storing small quantities of data that must be saved. EEPROM devices are equipped with serial flash - a small, low-power flash memory, which is frequently accessible through a Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI). In order to retrieve data, an EEPROM requires each write operation to begin at an aligned offset, which necessitates batched writes to avoid excessive ware.
ITTIA DB SQL eases this process by supplying raw storage flash media with robust data management capabilities through SPI. This is made possible through the creation of an ITTIA DB database on EEPROM or flash media by the embedded application; therefore, data is stored in table rows that will be efficiently queried, with or without SQL. ITTIA DB SQL also combines data with a journal to protect it from corruption in case of unexpected power loss or other failures. Data and journal can be mixed in the same region of storage, and ITTIA DB SQL always writes in blocks of uniform size to accommodate alignment restrictions.
Storing database directly to SPI device can also eliminate the need for a file system. Rather than rewriting an entire file whenever changes need to be saved, the application can atomically modify one or more rows by grouping operations into database transactions. Even images and music can be stored in the database as binary large objects (BLOBs). Unlike editing a file, database access is protected by the ACID properties: atomicity, consistency, isolation, and durability.
ITTIA DB SQL offers significant advantage even without an operating system. When an operating system is available to provide multitasking, an application can safely and efficiently share database among different tasks. ITTIA DB SQL supports common desktop operating systems such as Windows and Linux, plus many real time embedded operating systems such as ThreadX, QNX, VxWorks and ucOS-II.
Embedded systems and mobile devices run on a broad array of parallel NOR, serial NOR, and NAND flash memory solutions with various memory landscapes, from a few kilobytes to several gigabytes. Now developers creating software for these devices can benefit from ITTIA DB SQL to manage data effectively on storage media accessed through SPI. ITTIA DB SQL storage provides the required technology so application developers can select a data management solution that meets the diverse demands of their customers.
A free copy of ITTIA DB SQL is available for evaluation at:
http://www.ittia.com/products/embedded/evaluation
A free video demonstrates the ITTIA DB SQL database architecture in few minutes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=svsnXuMGxq0
About ITTIA
ITTIA offers database solutions for platforms where limited memory, storage, and processing power makes software development challenging. ITTIA develops fast, high performance database products and tools with the goal of providing excellent data management software for embedded systems and devices. ITTIA products are designed to be suitable for application development and deployment at a significantly reduced cost. ITTIA customers include GlaxoSmithKline, VNU, Boeing, Moodys, Sandia National Laboratory, Puget Sound Energy and others. You can obtain more information about ITTIA at: www.ittia.com.
