Oracle has acquired open-source database vendor Sleepycat Software, strengthening its hand in the embedded database market and putting to rest at least one of the rumors about its plans to buy open-source companies.

The acquisition extends Oracle's embedded database product line, which also includes Oracle Lite for mobile devices and TimesTen, which it acquired last year, for high-performance in-memory database applications.

Sleepycat's Berkeley DB is embedded in several well-known open-source products, including the Linux and BSD Unix operating systems, Apache Web server, OpenLDAP directory and OpenOffice productivity suite, Oracle said Tuesday.

The acquisition means customers have access to a fast, open-source database at low cost and with "enterprise-class support," Oracle said.

Sleepycat Chief Executive Officer Mike Olsen said in a statement his company is "excited to join the world's largest enterprise software company." Oracle's resources will allow it to better serve customers and the open-source community, according to Olsen.

Oracle has been rumored for weeks to be in talks to buy open-source vendors. Citing unnamed sources, BusinessWeek reported last week that the company was in talks to buy Sleepycat, Java application server vendor JBoss, and PHP developer Zend Technologies.

Terms of the Sleepycat acquisition were not disclosed.

It is not Oracle's first open-source purchase. Last year it bought Finland's Innobase, which makes the InnoDB database engine used at the heart of MySQL AB's database. The move was widely seen as a competitive swipe against MySQL, an Oracle rival.

The moves by software vendors to snap up open-source companies are seen partly as a way to attract additional developers, in the hope that those developers will upgrade to paid-for products for wide application deployments.