Gemstone (database)
 | |
| Paradigm | Object database, OOP, Distributed cache and computing, In-Memory DB and processing |
|---|---|
| Developer | GemTalk Systems |
| First appeared | 1986 |
| Stable release | GemStone/S 64 Bit v3.2.2 |
| Typing discipline | Dynamic |
| OS | Cross-platform: Solaris, AIX, Linux, Mac OS X |
| Website |
gemtalksystems |
| Influenced by | |
| Smalltalk | |
| Influenced | |
| Java EE, GemFire | |
GemStone/S is a proprietary application framework that was first available for Smalltalk as an object database.
Company history
GemStone Systems was founded on March 1, 1982 as Servio Logic to build a set theoretic model data base machine. Ian Huang instigated the founding of Servio Logic, as the technology adviser to the CEO of Sampoerna Holdings (Putera Sampoerna), by recruiting Frank Bouton (President) who was the co-founder of Floating Point Systems Inc, Dr. Michael Mulder (Vice President of Engineering) who was the Group Manager for Advanced Processor Design at Sperry Univac and Principal Architect for the Univac 1180 mainframe, Steve Ivy (Vice President of Operation) who was a senior manager at Tektronix, Leonard Yuen (Vice President, Business Development) who was the Development Manager for DB2 data base at IBM, Dr. George Copeland (Chief Architect) [1] who was the Senior Staff Engineer at the Advanced Development Group in Tektronix, Steve Redfield (Chief Engineer) who was the Chief Engineer for the Intel 80286 microprocessor, Alan Purdy who was a Staff Engineer at Tektronix, Bob Bretl who was a software engineering manager at Tektronix Signal Processing Systems, Allen Otis who was also with Tektronix, John Telford who was a software engineering manager from Electro Scientific Industries, and Monty Williams.
Servio Logic then became GemStone Systems, Inc in June 1995. GemStone developed its first hardware prototype in 1982, and shipped its first software product (GemStone 1.0) in 1986. The engineering group resides in Beaverton, Oregon. Three of the original co-founding engineers, Bob Bretl, Allen Otis, and Monty Williams (now retired), have been with the company since its inception.
GemStone's owners pioneered implementing distributed computing in business systems. Many information system features now associated with Java EE were implemented earlier in GemStone. GemStone and VisualWave were an early web application server platform. (VisualWave and VisualWorks are now owned by Cincom.) GemStone played an important sponsorship role in the Smalltalk Industry Council at the time when IBM was backing VisualAge Smalltalk (VisualAge is now at Instantiations). After a major transition, GemStone for Smalltalk continues as "GemStone/S" and various C++ and Java products for scalable, multi-tier distributed systems. GemStone Systems, Inc. now develops and markets GemFire, which is notable for complex event processing (CEP), event stream processing (ESP), data virtualization, and distributed caching.
On May 6, 2010, SpringSource, a division of VMware, announced it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire GemStone.[2]
On May 2, 2013, GemTalk Systems acquired the GemStone/S platform from VMware.[3]
Product
Gemstone builds on the Smalltalk programming language. GemStone systems serve as mission-critical applications.[4] GemStone frameworks still see some interest for web services and service-oriented architectures.
A recent revival of interest in Smalltalk has occurred as a result of its use to generate Javascript for e-commerce web pages or in web application frameworks such as the Seaside web framework. Systems based on object databases are not as common as those based on ORM or Object-relational mapping frameworks such as TopLink or Hibernate. In the area of web application frameworks, JBoss and BEA Weblogic are somewhat analogous to GemStone.