McObject Offers Perst Embedded Database For Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Smartphones

July 7, 2010

In a classic example of the market driving the direction of a software product, McObject is offering support for its Perst object-oriented, open source embedded database on Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 (WP7) smartphone platform, after Windows mobile software experts in the UK ported Perst (along with McObject’s related Silverlight demo) to WP7, and a Microsoft executive guiding WP7 developer relations described the port as “epic.”

APPA Mundi, a Birmingham, England-based consulting firm with deep experience in developing Windows-based mobile software, first offered Perst for WP7 from its Web site in early June. “There is a database available that WP7 Silverlight developers can use,” blogged Andy Wigley, an APPA Mundi principal and Microsoft device application Most Valuable Professional (MVP), alluding to WP7’s tight integration with Microsoft Silverlight technology, a major improvement in the platform that enables developers to create richer smartphone applications.

McObject's Perst Silverlight database demo running in WP7 smartphone emulator.

“Using Perst for .NET, developers using Silverlight can now include true database management system features in their Silverlight applications, including adding persistence to this data by storing it in a container file in isolated storage,” Wigley blogged.

Wigley is successfully using Perst in the WP7 emulator and looks forward to working with it on WP7 phones when they become available to developers later this summer. He expects to see excellent performance, because in tests against other mobile databases on Windows, Perst “blew them out of the water,” he said.

McObject has added the code ported by APPA Mundi to the Perst for .NET distribution available at www.mcobject.com/perst_eval and supports the platform, effective immediately, McObject CEO Steve Graves said. “Three cheers for APPA Mundi and their initiative in driving Perst for .NET in this direction,” he said. “The exciting thing about open source software such as Perst is the amount of innovation that comes from the community, resulting in the fastest possible response to marketplace demands.”

Unveiled in February at Barcelona’s Mobile World Congress, Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s dramatically revamped device operating system that aims to upend its market and catapult Windows from third to first place among smartphone platforms. To accomplish this, the company's WP7 strategy focuses on promoting development of third-party apps to be used on phones alongside Microsoft's own Office applications; providing rich developer tools in the form of C#, Silverlight, Visual Studio and Expression Blend technology for user interface design; and licensing to a wide variety of hardware vendors. WP7 seeks to entice end-users with a sleek, touch-based user interface, social networking integration, and many other improvements. Microsoft has stated it plans WP7's general release for "holidays, 2010."

Business users are a major WP7 target market. Microsoft says that 90 percent of WP7 target customers use smartphones for business purposes, and 61 percent use their phones equally or more for business compared to personal use.

Full-text search is one important Perst feature for smartphones.

According to APPA Mundi’s Andy Wigley, this business market is precisely where Perst for WP7 will deliver the greatest value. “Consumer applications typically do not have a complex object model. But for anything that is more line-of-business, a database management system (DBMS) greatly helps developers’ productivity by supporting local storage, search and retrieval at the device level. Perst for .NET is the only DBMS available for WP7, and will be really appealing for anyone who wants to persist even a moderate amount of data.”

At Microsoft, Perst’s unique value to WP7 application developers has been noted. “Building a database for Windows Phone 7 qualifies as epic,” blogged Brandon Watson, the company’s director of WP7 developer experience. “The guys over at Appamundi have done something that certainly caught our eye.”

Developers doubting that WP7 devices’ tight memory, CPU and storage constraints will permit use of a “real” embedded database can dispel their uncertainties by looking at Perst’s successful track record on BlackBerry smartphones. In 2006, McObject released Perst Lite, an edition of Perst for the Java ME technology used on BlackBerry. Since then, developers have successfully integrated Perst Lite in commercial and open source software for BlackBerry ranging from mobile customer relationship management (CRM) clients to banking, consumer, healthcare and other vertical market solutions.

Smartphone application developers credit the off-the-shelf Perst DBMS with shaving months from their product development cycles, while enhancing products’ run-time performance and reliability through features including ACID transactions, database indexes, full-text search, an intuitive application programming interface (API), support for storage on SD cards, and more.

Perst and Perst Lite are part of McObject’s family of powerful small footprint, high performance embedded database software products. The eXtremeDB in-memory embedded database from McObject is used widely in devices including MP3 players, WiMAX base stations, digital TVs, telecom/network communications equipment and military/aerospace technology. Perst is available for Java and .NET, including Java ME and .NET Compact Framework. CA’s Wily Technology credits Perst with delivering a shortened development cycle and a ten-fold performance improvement within its real-time Java application.