In programming jargon, the term “real time” is not used in its literal sense, which can be confusing. The literal definition means that when something happens in real time, it happens instantaneously. But in practice, something that occurs very quickly is mistitled as being real-time. Why does the misconception continue to occur, and what problems does it cause? This is the beginning of the discussion I had with Steve Graves, the Founder and CEO of McObject, on this week’s Embedded Executives podcast. Steve has to deal with this issue regularly, so his opinions are quite valid.

Seattle, Washington and München, Germany. McObject, the developer of the eXtremeDB embedded database system, shared that CORTEX Biophysik is now using eXtremeDB in its Cardiopulmonary Exercise Testing devices to deliver enhanced cardiovascular diagnostics for scientists, athletes, and healthcare providers.

So-called ‘real-time’ databases are popular these days. Here’s some quotes from the internet:

Firebase: “The Firebase Realtime Database is a cloud-hosted database. Data is stored as JSON and synchronized in realtime to every connected client.”

Hazelcast: “A real-time database is defined as a data store that collects, processes, and/or enriches incoming data in real time, immediately after the data is created.”

InfluxDB: “Today, a real-time database can mean different things. This glossary page considers two categories of real-time databases.

There is a tendency to conflate the terms embedded database and embedded system. That is a mistake.

There’s been an explosion of database systems since the late 90s. Whereas there were relatively few choices back in the day, now there are hundreds of choices of database systems that span different architectures, APIs, models, and more. This article will compare and contrast two database system architectures, embedded and client/server.

Seattle, Washington. McObject introduced the ratified eXtremeDB 8.4 delivering an abundance of enhancements to performance, security, and developer productivity. eXtremeDB 8.4 now carries SSL encryption and driver authentication capabilities in its ODBC driver ensuring secure connection between applications and database. To broaden possibilities in scalable environments, designers are able to leverage the new GO language API to seamlessly integrate eXtremeDB into their GO-based applications.

McObject® announced eXtremeDB®/rt 1.2, the latest release of its seminal embedded database management system for hard real-time systems.