Hitachi America Releases English Language Beta of Entier Embedded Database
-- Small Footprint RDBMS Comes With Spatial and Incremental Text Search --
SANTA CLARA, Calif. - July 13, 2006 - The Embedded Business Group of Hitachi America, Ltd., a subsidiary of Hitachi, Ltd., (NYSE: HIT) today announced the release of the English language beta of the Entier embedded database management system. Based on the technology that makes Hitachi’s HiRDB one of the top selling Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS) in Japan, Entier is designed for small footprint devices that require a fast, powerful database manager.
Entier has been marketed by Hitachi in Japan since July 2005 and is under active evaluation by manufacturers of smart phones, set top boxes and digital video recorders navigation systems. This is the first release of an English language version of the product. A full production version is expected in September of this year.
“We are excited to bring this cutting edge product to the North America marketplace,” said Malcolm Colton, deputy general manager and vice president of sales and marketing for the Embedded Business Group of Hitachi America, Ltd. “With its small footprint and advanced search capabilities, Entier is well suited to manage data in a variety of devices, including smart phones, navigation devices, and set top boxes.
“As these devices get more powerful and store more data, the need for data management middleware becomes ever clearer. Entier is entering the market at just the right time.”
The Hitachi America Embedded Business Group, part of the company’s Information Division, was recently formed to market and sell Hitachi’s Entier relational database software. Built on a reliable file store that provides total data integrity, Entier can be configured to a tiny 300K memory footprint, making it one of the most compact RDBMS on the market.
While other RDBMS are limited to searching only alphanumeric data, Entier offers two new powerful search technologies. First, it provides the ability to search 3-D data efficiently, making it well suited to navigation devices or for delivering location based services to a variety of mobile devices. “A standard relational database is not good at multi-dimensional search,” said Malcolm Colton. “We have built high-performance spatial search into Entier, so that it can rapidly answer questions like ‘Show me nearby hotels or restaurants’ or ‘Show me the points of interest along this route.’ We expect to see Entier deployed on mobile devices to support queries against location-based data cached in the device.”
Second, Entier offers incremental text search. Using this technology, as users enter letters into a search window, Entier progressively executes the search, narrowing down the results with each key stroke. This is useful for any application that involves searching for entries by name, such as looking up numbers in a user’s phonebook, or entering text into a kiosk as part of a search for resources.
Hitachi will offer a Software Developer’s Kit running on Microsoft Windows, as well as royalty-based run time licensing for the Entier product on a variety of platforms used in small footprint devices. Use of the Entier product is expected to significantly speed time to market and reduce development costs for applications running on small devices.