Oracle Berkeley DB Reviews

Name: Oracle Berkeley DB
Brand: Oracle
Rating: 3.6 (5 reviews)

3.6 out of 5

5 reviews
66% willing to recommend

What is Oracle Berkeley DB?

Oracle Berkeley DB provides the best open source embeddable databases allowing developers the choice of SQL, Key/Value, XML/XQuery or Java Object storage for their data model. At its core is a fast, scalable, transactional database engine with proven reliability and availability. Berkeley DB comes three versions: Berkeley DB, Berkeley DB Java Edition, and Berkeley DB XML.

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Oracle Berkeley DB is the #2 ranked solution in top Non-Relational Databases and #7 ranked solution in Top Embedded Database Systems. PeerSpot users give Oracle Berkeley DB an average rating of 7.2 out of 10. Oracle Berkeley DB is most commonly compared to SQLite: Oracle Berkeley DB vs SQLite. Oracle Berkeley DB is popular among the large enterprise segment, accounting for 67% of users researching this solution on PeerSpot. The top industry researching this solution are professionals from a financial services firm, accounting for 15% of all views.

Buyer's Guide

Embedded Database

August 2025

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Featured Oracle Berkeley DB reviews

Emad Mokhatab

Solution & Software System Architect at Shaparak

One of the things that I want to see in Oracle Berkeley DB is a driver for reactive programming. I think the tool's official driver for reactive programming, especially for Java, is the thing that Oracle needs to be more agile in, specifically in those areas of programming that other products are currently going into. Other tools have become more innovative in many areas. I know that Oracle has many responsibilities in maintaining the situation with the current projects and so on. I think it would be very cool if Oracle could make improvements to its projects, as it can help me with my current projects. One reason why I don't choose Oracle Berkeley DB is because we want to go for reactive programming, along with Project Reactor from Spring, but we don't have the official driver for it.

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Okkar Aung

Junior Network Engineer at Auston University

The product's interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly. I've been using Oracle Berkeley DB for about a month now. I would rate the stability around five or six. It has been stable. I rate the product scalability around eight, although I haven't extensively tested it. I used MySQL…

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it_user494169

Project Lead at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees

When multiple processes are holding handles to same environment, then there is a high possibility that the environment handles might get corrupted and the whole connection to various databases need to be recreated on the fly. This will also cause ongoing DB operations to get terminated. One solution to this problem is to design the DB access mechanism in such a way that only one process (we can call it a server process and it can be a COM server) is holding the database environment handle and all other client process should communicate with this server process to read/write DB records.

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Oracle Berkeley DB mindshare

Product category:

As of August 2025, the mindshare of Oracle Berkeley DB in the Embedded Database category stands at 4.2%, down from 5.1% compared to the previous year, according to calculations based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Embedded Database

Key learnings from peers

Valuable Features

Oracle Berkeley DB offers easy key-value storage and fast response times. It incorporates ACID transactions, a rarity in NoSQL databases. Users appreciate its ability to function without a server by embedding within applications. Features like transactional data storage, concurrent data handling, file-based deployment, and replication provide significant benefits. Consistently praised for stability and performance, it helps avoid performance issues found in other systems. Usage includes Oracle RAC and DBA tools in production environments.

"The tool's performance is good, and I don't have any problems with it."
"The product meets all the essential business requirements."

Room for Improvement

Oracle Berkeley DB users highlight several areas for improvement, including the lack of bulk retrieval support in the Java edition and high memory consumption when managing large datasets. Concurrent environmental use often leads to corruption, and page-level locking during updates can cause additional issues. Users would appreciate a more intuitive interface and posit a need for a reactive programming driver, particularly for Java. Technical support services could be enhanced to improve user satisfaction.

"I think the tool's official driver for reactive programming, especially for Java, is the thing that Oracle needs to be more agile in, specifically in those areas of programming that other products are currently going into."
"The product's interface could be more intuitive and user-friendly."

Pricing

"There is a need to pay for the licenses and features of the tool."
"I rate the product's pricing a five out of ten."

Deployment

Setting up Oracle Berkeley DB as an embedded database is considered easy by many users, though it requires careful attention to documentation for optimal performance. Deploying can take 15-30 minutes. Users found the process straightforward despite some confusion with the user interface. Company-level programming encountered no issues, successfully integrating the database and drivers. Initial steps were noted as clearly structured, making the setup phase manageable without significant complications.

These insights are based on the in-depth reviews provided by peers to help you make a better buying decision.

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Top industries

By visitors reading reviews

University

15%

Financial Services Firm

15%

Computer Software Company

Educational Organization

Government

Manufacturing Company

Media Company

Comms Service Provider

Hospitality Company

Sports Company

Retailer

Healthcare Company

Performing Arts

Transportation Company

Energy/Utilities Company

Logistics Company

Recreational Facilities/Services Company

Construction Company

Legal Firm

Non Tech Company

Non Profit

Outsourcing Company

Aerospace/Defense Firm

Compare Oracle Berkeley DB with alternative products

Learn more about Oracle Berkeley DB

The Oracle Berkeley DB family of high performance, self-contained databases provides developers with a fast, transactional database solution with a track record of reliability, unmatched scalability and five-nines (99.999%) or better availability. Oracle Berkeley DB is well suited to Independent Software Vendors, device and equipment manufacturers, and enterprises or software companies building solutions which need a data management component. The Oracle Berkeley DB family of products provides fast, local persistence with zero oversight administration.

Customers and end-users will experience an application that simply works, reliably manages data, scales under extreme load, and requires zero oversight in deployment. Your development team can focus on your application and be confident that Berkeley DB will manage your application’s data.

For more information on Oracle Berkeley DB, visit Oracle.com

Oracle Berkeley DB was previously known as Berkeley DB.