Fat client, thin client, Flex, AJAX, asynchronous messaging, applets… How good are all these technologies from a salesman-sitting-with-the-client perspective if you “ve lost your database connection?

The good old Java came to the rescue again. The product is called Java DB is Sun “s version of the Apache Derby database . While this is not the first embedded Java database (BerkleyDB exists in this space for a while), its beauty is in a relatively small footprint (2MB). In the broadband connection era, this opens the door to the new ways of architecting web applications.

Your Swing, Flex, or AJAX web client brings the database right to the client PC, and you do not really care anymore if you maintain your connection with the remote database server or not.

Today “s technologies provides solutions to for disconnected clients. For example, in Java you can use the JDBC RowSet interface which offers a disconnected result set. With Flex remoting, you define messaging channels (AMF and RMTP), and if one connection is not available it “ll try another one. But isn “t it a breeze of fresh air (especially for the AJAX guys), when the most important part of your application, THE DATA, is right here in your PCs memory, and runs in your browser “s JVM?

How to deploy it on the client? No sweat. I arrives automatically over your HTTP connection packaged in a nice-looking jar.

As per Fransois Orsini, this database was demo’ed at the recent Apache conference. It would be interesting to take a closer look at this product.

Combine Java DB with some JSR-80 implementation, and you can arrive at the airport with a USB memory stick in your shirt pocket, stop by the nearby Internet kiosk, download your business application, work with for half an hour. Oops they are started boarding hellip;No problem. Save the results of your work through the USB port, and off you go!

Dear Web-app architects, take a closer look at Java DB to be ahead of the game.