Can you use an object database in a production system?

Question

Object databases are very rarely used, although they offer a way to live without SQL, which I think is an advantage.

However, I have never seen them in production systems. Is there something fundamentally wrong with object databases? Is it possible to use a database of objects in a production system?

Edit: So, maybe I should confess that I love object databases. I cannot understand why they are not used much more often.

Answer 1

Of course, if it were stable. The problem is the relative lack of high-quality object-oriented database systems, as well as the fact that most people do not even know what it is.

Answer 2

db4o is used by many Fortune 500 companies (especially for embedded applications), so I would not say that OODBs are not used for real production systems

Answer 3

There are production systems written using GemStone OODB. This is a distributed, permanent Smalltalk system.

Answer 4

Have you heard the cache ? Used by EpicSystems for Enterprise Health Record (EHR). It uses many production halls.

Answer 5

The real question is: do you need tools to support your database or not. With tools, I mean reporting, data migration, data mining, etc. Do you need to provide self-service reports? Hell, even reports with fast runtimes that don't require deploying new code? (Providing report functions in an application is a real drag and drop.)

There are many tools available to perform these operations against traditional RDBMs. Against OODB? I am not familiar with basic products. Although, admittedly, I am not wearing OODB.

If you do not need these tools, they go for it. Otherwise, stick to traditional RDBMs. With current ORM technology, the pain of matching objects to records is much less than before.

Answer 6

The problem that I believe is that SQL is not inherently bad. This is very good for dialing operations. From what I saw, object databases work well when working with individual objects, but when trying to perform operations based on a set, they do not work. In addition, people work very well with SQL databases. It is easy to find people to work with them. The database of objects is another story.