Environment Properties
Prev | Chapter 2. Database Environments | Next

## Environment Properties

You set properties for the `Environment` using the `EnvironmentConfig` class. You can also set properties for a specific `Environment` instance using `EnvironmentMutableConfig`.

### The EnvironmentConfig Class

The `EnvironmentConfig` class makes a large number of fields and methods available to you. Describing all of these tuning parameters is beyond the scope of this manual. However, there are a few properties that you are likely to want to set. They are described here.

Note that for each of the properties that you can commonly set, there is a corresponding getter method. Also, you can always retrieve the `EnvironmentConfig` object used by your environment using the `Environment.getConfig()` method.

You set environment configuration parameters using the following methods on the `EnvironmentConfig` class:

- `EnvironmentConfig.setAllowCreate()`

  If `true`, the database environment is created when it is opened. If `false`, environment open fails if the environment does not exist. This property has no meaning if the database environment already exists. Default is `false`.

- `EnvironmentConfig.setReadOnly()`

  If `true`, then all databases opened in this environment must be opened as read-only. If you are writing a multi-process application, then all but one of your processes must set this value to `true`. Default is `false`.

  You can also set this property using the `je.env.isReadOnly` parameter in your `env_home/je.properties` file.

- `EnvironmentConfig.setTransactional()`

  If `true`, configures the database environment to support transactions. Default is `false`.

  You can also set this property using the `je.env.isTransactional` parameter in your `env_home/je.properties` file.

For example:

    package persist.gettingStarted;

    import com.sleepycat.je.DatabaseException;
    import com.sleepycat.je.Environment;
    import com.sleepycat.je.EnvironmentConfig;

    import java.io.File;

    ...

    Environment myDatabaseEnvironment = null;
    try {
        EnvironmentConfig envConfig = new EnvironmentConfig();
        envConfig.setAllowCreate(true);
        envConfig.setTransactional(true);
        myDatabaseEnvironment =
            new Environment(new File("/export/dbEnv"), envConfig);
    } catch (DatabaseException dbe) {
       System.err.println(dbe.toString());
       System.exit(1);
    }

### EnvironmentMutableConfig

`EnvironmentMutableConfig` manages properties that can be reset after the `Environment` object has been constructed. In addition, `EnvironmentConfig` extends `EnvironmentMutableConfig`, so you can set these mutable properties at `Environment` construction time if necessary.

The `EnvironmentMutableConfig` class allows you to set the following properties:

- `setCachePercent()`

  Determines the percentage of JVM memory available to the JE cache. See the Getting Started with Berkeley DB Java Edition guide for more information.

- `setCacheSize()`

  Determines the total amount of memory available to the database cache. See the Getting Started with Berkeley DB Java Edition guide for more information.

- `setTxnNoSync()`

  Determines whether change records created due to a transaction commit are written to the backing log files on disk. A value of `true` causes the data to not be flushed to disk. See the Berkeley DB Java Edition Getting Started with Transaction Processing guide.

- `setTxnWriteNoSync()`

  Determines whether logs are flushed on transaction commit (the logs are still written, however). By setting this value to `true`, you potentially gain better performance than if you flush the logs on commit, but you do so by losing some of your transaction durability guarantees.

There is also a corresponding getter method (`getTxnNoSync()`). Moreover, you can always retrieve your environment's `EnvironmentMutableConfig` object by using the `Environment.getMutableConfig()` method.

For example:

    package persist.gettingStarted;

    import com.sleepycat.je.DatabaseException;
    import com.sleepycat.je.Environment;
    import com.sleepycat.je.EnvironmentMutableConfig;

    import java.io.File;

    ...

    try {
        Environment myEnv = new Environment(new File("/export/dbEnv"), null);
        EnvironmentMutableConfig envMutableConfig =
            new EnvironmentMutableConfig();
        envMutableConfig.setTxnNoSync(true);
        myEnv.setMutableConfig(envMutableConfig);
    } catch (DatabaseException dbe) {
        // Exception handling goes here
    }

Prev | Up | Next
Closing Database Environments | Home | Environment Statistics