VirtualBox, Fedora15, OpenBD and H2

I just need to take a minute or two and speak favorably of a handful of software.

VirtualBox – makes it insanely easy to run an OS inside an OS.

Fedora 15 – feel the love.

OpenBD – Open source. Cold Fusion. Linux.

H2 – it’s supported in OpenBD and the more I use it the more I like it.

A little history… I have an old Dell Inspiron 6000 that ran Windows XP for years. Then, parts started to fail on it (and fall off of it). XP grew slower and slower as more advanced firewall and virus blocking was required. So, I used LiveUSB Creator from Fedora to install FC12 on it. This was great for those times I needed an X-Windows box to run some gui software on a work server. This was a very useful setup. Ultimately the weak power socket and it’s 15 re-solders failed. In need of an X-Windows box and a linux play thing, I installed Virtual Box on my Windows 7, 64-bit laptop. Much to my surprise it was easy to use the Fedora 15 ISO to get a robust linux box up and running.

The present time… I have a hankering to create a small, open source product. At first I was going to go with LAMP, but then I remembered how I dislike php. I poked around and found OpenBD from cf411.com. Runs on linux and windows. Deploys as a war or as an installed service. Very nice! Support for Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MS SQL and something called H2. Hmmm, now to reacquaint myself with MySQL. But, this H2 thing has me curious. And, there is a spot on wiki page for linux installations.

H2 is a java database that is used for in-memory and embedded applications. But, if it’s java and OpenBD is java… My project won’t require an Oracle or MS SQL database, so, I install it. Well, I run the H2 jar file and wow! This is easy. Good feature set. ACID compliant.

So, I have installed VirtualBox on a 64-bit Windows 7 laptop. Inside VirtualBox, I have a 32-bit version of Fedora 15 running with Tomcat hosting an OpenBD war. H2 and it’s console is also running. I’ll keep you posted, if I can pull away from these delicious new goodies.