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It's pretty easy to run embedded postgres on the JVM: https://github.com/opentable/otj-pg-embedded

The defaults create a temporary DB which is useful for dev & tests, but a pair of calls to .setCleanDataDirectory(false) and .setDataDirectory("...") will change that.

If you don't like the default postgres version, you may select one from https://search.maven.org/search?q=io.zonky.test.postgres or include your own postgres binary.

You can put check constraints into your schema to make sure no one puts strings in your integer columns (for example). If you have an ORM you likely can automatically make it generate check constraints for each column based on the declared properties.

> But I don't know of any embedded DBs that do loads of type-checking.

Firebird Embedded: https://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/html/ufb-cs-embedded.h...