Versant Object Database (VOD) is an object database software product developed by Versant Corporation. The Versant Object Database enables developers using object oriented languages to transactionally store their information by allowing the respective language to act as the Data Definition Language (DDL) for the database. In other words, the memory model is the database schema model. In general, persistence in VOD in implemented by declaring a list of classes, then providing a transaction demarcation application programming interface to use cases. Respective language integrations adhere to the constructs of that language, including syntactic and directive sugars. Additional APIs exist, beyond simple transaction demarcation, providing for the more advanced capabilities necessary to address practical issues found when dealing with performance optimization and scalability for systems with large amounts of data, many concurrent users, network latency, disk bottlenecks, etc. Versant Corporation Versant Corporation was an American-based software company building specialized NoSQL data management systems. Versant products are deployed in industries including: telecommunications, defense, life sciences, biomedical, transportation, finance, and online gaming. Versant was founded in Menlo Park, California (USA) in 1988. It was headquartered in Redwood City, California. Engineering teams were located in Hamburg, Germany and Redwood City. History The company was founded by Dr. Kee Ong in August 1988 as "Object Sciences Corporation". Ong previously worked with the open-source relational database management system Ingres. Around this time object-oriented programming (OO) became popular, and the company used research done at the University of Wisconsin for a commercial database system to complement OO languages. The company's initial executive team included Michael Seashols (CEO), Dr. Keo Ong (CTO), John Hughes (VP, Sales), Dr. Mary Loomis (VP, Services) and Susan Dickerson (VP, Business Development). In early 1990 the company was renamed “Versant Object Technology.” In April 1993 David Banks took over as CEO. On July 18, 1996 Versant had their initial public offering (IPO) on the NASDAQ stock exchange and traded under the symbol VSNT. The company raised $14.9 million from the IPO, and was based in Menlo Park, California at the time, but moved to Fremont, California in 1997. In January 1998 Nick Ordon succeeded Banks as CEO. on July 15, 1998 the company was renamed again to Versant Corporation. In March 2004, Versant acquired Poet Software GmbH, a European-focused company targeting the Windows product market which had traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. In 2005, Jochen Witte, president of Poet Software, took over as