H2 Database Engine

The H2 Database Engine is a free SQL database that is written in Java and can store data in memory or on disk. The engine supports client/server and local access and encryption.

H2, the free SQL database. The main feature of H2 are:
* It is free to use for everybody, source code is included
* Written in Java, but also available as native executable
* JDBC and (partial) ODBC API
* Embedded and client/server modes
* Clustering is supported
* A web client is included

Download

Download the current release (2006-02-04 / Alpha):

Windows Installer (4.2 MB)
Platform-Independent Zip (5.5 MB)

The current release runs slower than it could, because assertions are switched on.

History

The development of H2 was started in May 2004, but it was first published December 14th 2005. The author of H2 is Thomas Mueller. He is also the original developer of Hypersonic SQL. In 2001, he joined PointBase Inc. where he made PointBase Micro. At that point, he had to discontinue Hypersonic SQL, but then the HSQLDB Group was formed to continued to work on the Hypersonic SQL codebase. The name H2 stands for Hypersonic 2, however H2 does not share any code with Hypersonic SQL or HSQLDB. H2 is built from scratch.