IBM is offering developers free help to encourage them to work with its Cloudscape Java-based relational database.

Cloudscape is an embeddable Java-based transactional relational database with a 2Mb footprint, designed to require no database administration support.

IBM is offering free access to articles, technical advice, sample code and a free downloadable version of the Cloudscape code.

The move comes just three weeks after IBM contributed a copy of its 'Derby' Cloudscape relational database to the Apache Software Foundation.

Big Blue claimed that the decision to open source Cloudscape has generated "significant interest" in the technology, and that in three weeks there have been over 5,000 downloads of the Cloudscape binary code.

"IBM has a strong commitment to the Java community as well as to continued Java innovation," said Gina Poole, IBM vice president of developer marketing and web communities, in a statement.

"By providing resources on Cloudscape, IBM developerWorks is helping software developers help our customers and ISVs to be more innovative in developing business applications based on open standards."

The Apache Software Foundation and IBM have begun working with the community to establish Derby as an open source database offering.

The source code for Derby is available on the Apache Incubator project website here.

Free access to articles, technical advice, sample code and a downloadable version of the Cloudscape code is available on IBM's developerWorks site here.