COWDB: A functional mini-database

We now have a functional mini-database built on Copy-On-Write (COW) technology, beta version 0.3.

It is very very light-weight, and crash-proof. Indeed, there is no way to take it down gracefully--just pull the plug when you're finished.

It is built using constructor-based Insertion-Of-Context (IOC) and the factory pattern, so it is easy to modify or extend.

There are a number of primitive types defined, and you can just use them or add your own:

• PersistentInteger
• PersistentLong
• PersistentString
• PersistentTable (Keys are Strings, values are other PersistentObjects. Objects are nested within a table.)
• PersistentHandle (used to access persistent objects without nesting.)

The thing to note is that only tree-like structures are currently supported. So it is good for holding a directory structure of data that you want to access/update from a crash-proof program.

This is a Java library, not a standalone program. And it should be blazing fast--both XML and object serialization are studiously avoided.

What remains now is a bit of polishing and a lot of testing.