In general, Jena2 supports backwards compatibility for the Jena1 applications using the ModelRDB class. However, the Jena1 databases themselves are not compatible and cannot be directly read by Jena2. Instructions on migrating Jena1 databases to Jena2 are given below.
There are some changes to the API. The ModelRDB constructors are deprecated and applications should consider migrating to new factory methods for creating and opening persistent models (see the HowTo). The ModelRDB package name has changed. Jena1 applications that directly reference the package name jena.rdb must be modified to reference the package name jena.db. Jena2 does not support the StoreRDB class nor any of the Jena1 customization parameters (setProperty, getProperty). Jena2 uses a different technique for database configuration.
Jena2 does not support the hash layouts and proc layouts of Jena1. Applications that request these layouts under Jena2 will be given a generic layout. Jena2 supports MySQL, Oracle, PostgreSQL. Applications that require Interbase will not work. A Jena driver for Berkeley DB is available; see ModelJEB on the Jena contributions Web page. The driver configuration files (e.g., Mysql.config) are no longer used. Instead, get/set methods on the driver and modelRDB classes are used for configuration parameters (see Options).
In Jena2, all databases are multi-model. By default, models are stored separately and each model uses one table for asserted statements and another table for reified statements. To share tables among models, see migrating, below.
Performance of Jena2 persistent models is no worse than Jena1 and often better. However, Jena2 persistent models may consume more database space. See the performance notes (PerfNotes).
As mentioned above, most Jena1 persistent applications should run with little or no modification under Jena2. However, the ModelRDB class constructors are deprecated. In Jena2, persistent models should be created using a factory method. In some situations, the ModelRDB class constructors are still required because the factory methods do not yet support all the ModelRDB functionality (see HowTo).
The Jena2 persistence architecture and layout are different from Jena1. However, these differences are largely transparent to applications and only affect code that creates new persistent models. In particular, the way in which database configuration options are specified is changed. In Jena2, configuration options are specified using get and set methods on models or drivers. See Options for details on using them.
There is no utility provided to migrate databases. However, users can easily create their own. A small Jena1 application program is used to write Jena1 ModelRDB contents to a text file using an RDF writer. Then, a small Jena2 application program is used to read this file and store it in a persistent model. For small databases, the PrettyWriter (RDF/XML-ABBREV) should be adequate. For medium or large databases, use the N-Triple writer for better performance and consider using a pipe to connect the two small applications rather than using an intermediate file.