derby.properties does not support this and it makes sense. It is read by the derby engine which must already be running in a jvm so it is too late to take effect.
I could write my own application that starts the derby database network server and use it instead but there is already one written that starts the network server: glassfish! It just needs to take a parameter similar to what it does for "dbport" or 'dbhost".
And I'm not the first one looking for a way to do this. Search the forum and you will find a few others that have run into the same trouble.
I've already coded and tested this and it works fine. I now start it like:
asadmin start-database --jvmoptions="-Xms128m -Xmx256m" and these options get passed on to the java process that runs the database network server.
Now should this change be merged back in? I think so, but if not, I can just replace the "admin-cli.jar" of the official installation with my own and viola I can do what I want.
I could provide a patch if it is of interest.
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