# History and Roadmap

Change Log
Roadmap
History of this Database Engine
Why Java
Supporters

## Change Log

The up-to-date change log is available at http://www.h2database.com/html/changelog.html

## Roadmap

The current roadmap is available at http://www.h2database.com/html/roadmap.html

## History of this Database Engine

The development of H2 was started in May 2004, but it was first published on December 14th 2005. The main author of H2, Thomas Mueller, is also the original developer of Hypersonic SQL. In 2001, he joined PointBase Inc. where he wrote PointBase Micro, a commercial Java SQL database. At that point, he had to discontinue Hypersonic SQL. 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 code with Hypersonic SQL or HSQLDB. H2 is built from scratch.

## Why Java

The main reasons to use a Java database are:

- Very simple to integrate in Java applications
- Support for many different platforms
- More secure than native applications (no buffer overflows)
- User defined functions (or triggers) run very fast
- Unicode support

Some think Java is too slow for low level operations, but this is no longer true. Garbage collection for example is now faster than manual memory management.

Developing Java code is faster than C or C++ code. When using Java, most time can be spent on improving the algorithms instead of porting the code to different platforms or doing memory management. Features such as Unicode and network libraries are already built-in. In Java, writing secure code is easier because buffer overflows can not occur. Features such as reflection can be used for randomized testing.

Java is future proof: a lot of companies support Java. Java is now open source.

To increase the portability and ease of use, this software depends on very few libraries. Features that are not available in open source Java implementations (such as Swing) are not used, or only used for optional features.

## Supporters

Many thanks for those who reported bugs, gave valuable feedback, spread the word, and translated this project. Also many thanks to the donors who contributed via PayPal:

- NetSuxxess GmbH, Germany
- Poker Copilot, Steve McLeod, Germany
- SkyCash, Poland
- Donald Bleyl, USA
- lumber-mill.co.jp, Japan
- Frank Berger, Germany
- Ashwin Jayaprakash, USA
- Florent Ramiere, France
- Jun Iyama, Japan
- Antonio Casqueiro, Portugal
- Oliver Computing LLC, USA
- Harpal Grover Consulting Inc., USA
- Elisabetta Berlini, Italy
- William Gilbert, USA
- Antonio Dieguez, Chile
- Ontology Works, USA
- Pete Haidinyak, USA
- William Osmond, USA
- Joachim Ansorg, Germany
- Oliver Soerensen, Germany
- Christos Vasilakis, Greece
- Fyodor Kupolov, Denmark
- Jakob Jenkov, Denmark
- Stéphane Chartrand, Switzerland
- Glenn Kidd, USA