CNET reports that IBM is going to open source Cloudscape, a
Java, embedded DB. I have a certain loathing for databases, but over the years I’ve realized that it’s not so much the DB part that I don’t like, but that they’re usually separate systems.

Thus, embedded DB’s that are pure Java — like Cloudscape, McKoi, and Hypersonic — seem pretty attractive. Hopefully, since Cloudscape was once commercial (?), it’s extremely robust, scales, and all that stuff.