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Objectivity/DB

discontinued

by Objectivity, Inc. (defunct) · since 1990 · also known as Objectivity, ThingSpan, InfiniteGraph

Distributed, federated object database once used at petabyte scale in physics; vendor has ceased trading.

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discontinued. Objectivity, Inc. reportedly ceased operations in late 2023; objectivity.com no longer serves product pages and no releases or support are available.

Overview

Objectivity/DB was a commercial object database with a distributed, federated architecture: many database files across many hosts presented as a single logical store, accessed through C++, Java, C# and Python APIs that followed the ODMG standard. It was famous for scientific and defence workloads, including SLAC's BaBar experiment, which held over a petabyte of objects, and it later spawned the ThingSpan and InfiniteGraph graph products. Objectivity, Inc. reportedly ceased operations in late 2023, and its website no longer serves product information. Treat it as discontinued.

Scientific dataTransactional apps (OLTP)Graph traversal

Strengths & trade-offs

Strengths

  • +Federated architecture spanning many hosts as one logical database
  • +Proven at petabyte scale in high-energy physics

Trade-offs

  • −Vendor has ceased trading; no support or updates
  • −Proprietary formats complicate data extraction

Great for

  • +Planning migrations off remaining Objectivity/DB installations
  • +Historical reference for federated object database design

Think twice for

  • −Any new project

Capabilities

Native or official first-party support · 3 of 25 tracked

✓Transactions
✓Secondary indexes
✓Durable persistence
–Joins
–Full-text search
–Vector search
–Geospatial
–JSON
–Change data capture
–Triggers
–Stored procedures
–Materialized views
–TTL / expiry
–Pub/Sub
–Columnar storage
–In-memory
–Compression
–Encryption at rest
–Role-based access
–Time travel
–Branching
–Online schema changes
–Streaming ingest
–Offline sync
–Runs in WebAssembly

Scale & consistency

Comfortable data size
Massive · Multi-PB
Horizontal scaling
Native
Multi-region
No
Transactions
Full ACID
Consistency
Strong
Schema
Strict
Architecture
Distributed, Client server
Query languages
ODMG object APIs, SQL/ODBC

Federated databases reached over a petabyte in the BaBar physics experiment.

Deployment

Self-hosted Vendor-managed cloud Serverless Embedded Edge Kubernetes operator

Ecosystem

apis & protocolsC++ API, Java API, C# API, Python API
client languagesC++, Java, C#, Python

Alternatives to Objectivity/DB

Compare all→
Actian NoSQL (Versant)Object3.1

Enterprise object database formerly known as Versant, sold by Actian for complex object models.

objectivity-db vs versant-object-database →
GemStone/SObject6.1

Smalltalk object database where application code runs inside the transactional object repository.

objectivity-db vs gemstone-s →
ObjectDBObject9.3

Commercial object database for Java that implements JPA and JDO natively, with no ORM layer.

objectivity-db vs objectdb →
Neo4jGraph61.2

The default property-graph database, with Cypher, a big ecosystem and a managed cloud.

objectivity-db vs neo4j →
PostgreSQLRelational93.2

The extensible, standards-first open-source relational database.

objectivity-db vs postgresql →
TypeDBGraph27.0

Strongly typed entity-relation database with TypeQL, polymorphic queries and a Rust core.

objectivity-db vs typedb →

Objectivity/DB FAQ

What is Objectivity/DB?

Objectivity/DB is an object database by Objectivity, Inc. (defunct), first released in 1990. Objectivity/DB was a commercial object database with a distributed, federated architecture: many database files across many hosts presented as a single logical store, accessed through C++, Java, C# and Python APIs that followed the ODMG standard. It was famous for scientific and defence workloads, including SLAC's BaBar experiment, which held over a petabyte of objects, and it later spawned the ThingSpan and InfiniteGraph graph products. Objectivity, Inc. reportedly ceased operations in late 2023, and its website no longer serves product information. Treat it as discontinued.

Is Objectivity/DB open source?

No. Objectivity/DB is proprietary, closed-source software. License: Commercial (no longer sold).

Does Objectivity/DB support ACID transactions?

Yes. Objectivity/DB supports full ACID transactions, with strong consistency.

Does Objectivity/DB scale horizontally?

Objectivity/DB scales horizontally out of the box, with built-in sharding or partitioning. It is comfortable at massive scale (Multi-PB).

How can I run Objectivity/DB?

You can self-host it.

What is Objectivity/DB best for?

Objectivity/DB is a strong fit for planning migrations off remaining Objectivity/DB installations and historical reference for federated object database design. Think twice for any new project.

What are the best alternatives to Objectivity/DB?

Common alternatives to Objectivity/DB include Actian NoSQL (Versant), GemStone/S, ObjectDB, Neo4j and PostgreSQL. The right choice depends on your workload, scale and hosting; WhichDB's smart match ranks them against your requirements.

Is Objectivity/DB still maintained?

Objectivity/DB is discontinued. Objectivity, Inc. reportedly ceased operations in late 2023; objectivity.com no longer serves product pages and no releases or support are available.

How popular is Objectivity/DB?

Objectivity/DB ranks #482 of 844 databases on the WhichDB Score (2.3/100), and #13 among object databases. The score combines public adoption signals such as package downloads, GitHub activity, job posts and developer discussion.