All open databases are equal in front of the developers community. This is the message launched by Baron Schwartz in his announcement of the first Open SQL Camp. After the last MySQL Users Conference, there were some talks of alternative conferences organized by the users for users. This is the first such event. It will be held in Charlottesville, VA, USA, November 14-16, 2008.

Users, in the context of databases, especially open ones, means developers. Do you feel like hacking some database project? If your database of choice is open (MySQL, PostgreSQL, JavaDB, SQLite, Firebird), you may give the OpenSQLCamp a try!

If you're a Continuum user, here's are the simple steps to make the software run on GlassFish v2. This is a slightly more detailed version of this one from the product documentation. It is valid for the Continuum 1.1 release from late last year.

These steps could be even simpler if this was turned into an GlassFish Update Center module. Such a module could of course deploy the application (the WAR artifact) but more importantly create the JDBC resources before doing so using the Addon Configurator Interface ([1], [2]).

Overall, the GlassFish + JavaDB integration seems to be a simple, yet effective solution for many users.

Slynkr is an Open Source Social Tagging project that was recently added to the GlassFish community. The project started with a couple of Sun-internal special efforts and both of those used an Oracle DB but Jamey has just expanded it to also work with Java DB/ Derby.

Check Jamey's blog for more details.