Database specialist Percona LLC is taking the concept of co-opetition to a whole new level this morning with a release of an open-source distribution of the popular MongoDB document store that is described as better than the vanilla version on almost every major count. But where the fork boasts the arguably biggest advantage is performance.

That’s thanks to support for PerconaFT, a speedy storage engine that the outfit gained through its acquisition of Tokutek, Inc. earlier this year. It’s based on a model known as the Fractal Tree Index that can handle writes much more efficiently than the four-decade-old B-Tree data structure implemented in MongoDB’s native alternative.

That theoretically makes Percona’s distribution better suited to run workloads such as email servers, simulations and transaction processing that generate a lot of data than the vanilla edition. The value proposition is made all the more attractive by the inclusion of TokuBackup, another one of the assets that the outfit obtained as part of its recent purchase.

As the name suggests, the command line tool is meant to simplify data protection for systems employing TokuDB’s storage engine. It’s specifically geared towards use in live deployments, with features such as backup throttling to help administrators ensure the process doesn’t impact the productivity of the users trying to access the data inside.

Rounding out Percona Server for MongoDB are two features only found in the commercial edition of the database: an implementation of the Simple Authentication and Security Layer framework and an audit plugin that enables organizations to keep a record of who accesses what in their deployments. That’s essential for complying with corporate governance regimes as well as most industry-specific regulatory standards on data management.

Percona hopes that offering these capabilities at no charge will draw some attention away from frenemy MongoDB Inc. and create new opportunities to sell its commercial database support services in the process. The distribution is available immediately under a GNU Affero General Public License.

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