Jan Kotek

Jan is a software developer and an amateur astronomer. Hi is guy behind MapDB, one of fastest Java database engine. Jan has over 12 years of experience in Java development and contributed to many open-source projects. He is also good with Scala, low level optimizations and data structure design. Jan is Czech and he lives in Prague.



MapDB

Jan's public work can be found on Github. He worked on number of astronomical open-source projects, but now works exclusively on MapDB.

MapDB is an innovative database engine written in Java. It has outstanding performance and very user-friendly API. Sometimes it is described as Redis for Java. In reality it is alternative memory management system for Java, its goal is to solve Heap limited scalability introduced by GC and memory limitations. MapDB started in 1999 under name JDBM, Jan leads this project since 2010.

MapDB uses number of optimizations for best performance. In some cases it outperforms java.util.TreeMap and other collections, despite doing its own memory management and serialization.

Employment

2013-Now - Self-employed, working full-time on MapDB and related projects. Also consulting.

2006-2013 - Work in Ireland for large international corporations

2001-2006 - Work in Prague on accounting applications, webdesign etc...

Education

Studied physics at MFF UK and IT & accounting at VSE. Has bachelor's degree from IT.

Other

Keen skywatcher, made number of trips to Tenerife, La Palma and Attacama to see truly dark skies. He also likes archery and ancient history.

Fluent in English language (7 years in Ireland), basic French and German language.