I'm trying to write a small accounting app, mainly for my dad's use. His PC is running Windows 98 (and upgrading is pretty much out of the question due to technical concerns as well as logistics). Java 4 and 5 still seem to work with Windows 98, but I'm totally lost about the DB part. Does anybody know a good, up-to-date database that installs and runs on Windows 98 and has a JDBC driver available? Of course, the driver should work with a Java version older than 1.6, for example no generics or automatic unboxing or other recent features.
Derby is always a possibility - it works both embedded into the application and as a stand alone database, and can be downloaded as an extension to java 5. Just a note - if this is a small standalone app, then Derby will work great. I cannot attest to it's performance beyond this, although I have heard positive reviews of it from co-workers.