Java Embedded Databases Comparison
I needed to use Java embedded database in one of my projects and I did lot of research understanding pros and cons of each database. I wrote a blog listing pros and cons of popular embedded java databases (H2, HSQLDB, Derby, ObjectDB, Neo4j, OrientDB), you can have a look at it. I chose H2 as I thought it best suited my requirements. Link for the blog: http://sayrohan.blogspot.in/2012/12/choosing-light-weight-java-database.html Hope it helps!
I use Apache Derby for pretty much all of my embedded database needs. You can also use Sun's Java DB that is based on Derby but the latest version of Derby is much newer. It supports a lot of options that commercial, native databases support but is much smaller and easier to embed. I've had some database tables with more than a million records with no issues.
I used to use HSQLDB and Hypersonic about 3 years ago. It has some major performance issues at the time and I switch to Derby from it because of those issues. Derby has been solid even when it was in incubator at Apache.
Either
- HSQLDB - Used by OpenOffice, tested and stable. It's easy to use. If you want to edit your db-data, you can just open the file and edit the insert statements.
or
- H2 - Said to be faster (by the developer, who originally designed hsqldb, too)
Which one you use is up to you, depending how much performance and how much stability you need.
The developer of H2 has put up a nice performance evaluation:
http://www.h2database.com/html/performance.html