For all of the moaning and groaning going in in the java blogosphere about JavaDB being integrated into the JDK, I feel a particular nuance needs to be pointed out...
For a great out-of-the-box development experience with database applications, the final Mustang development kit - though not the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) - will co-bundle the all-Java JDBC database, Java DB based on Apache Derby.I will admint I missed that the first few times, and whined about how bad the bloat is becoming, but it is a tool that is going into the Developers Kit, not the Runtime Environment. It's like JConsole, the swing demos, and all of the ohter cool stuff we play with as developers. Joe user won't have to deal with it, unless you bundle it yourself. So take a deep breath, ease of the keyboard, and don't bile it just yet.[What's New in Java SE 6 Beta 2 (Mustang) bullet point 3]