-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
On Thursday 24 October 2002 09:33, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Hey All,
>
> I am wondering if anyone has
> experience / thoughts on Interbase / Firebird (firebird.sourceforge.net).
i've talked with others who have run it and have heard generally good things
about it. i have actually used it myself as i already have a Free ACID
compliant database ;-)
> I've been using it a bit lately
> and so far prefer it to either of MySQL or Postgresql for several reasons:
most of these features you list are not unique to firebird.
these are found in postgresql's resume:
> 2) supports a very complete (AFIAK) SQL command set
> 3) very easy to setup and administer
> 4) supports run-time backups
> 7) good trackrecord.
> 9) interfaces with Java, Python, Ruby, PHP, C, ... quite well
> 10) stored procedures, triggers and other handy things
> 11) extensible through UDFs (User Defined Functions), calls to native
> libraries
> 12) domains are really, really cool
> 14) killer feature: quite cross plaftorm, runs happily on windows, linux,
> various unixes, ... (I hate it when apps require on platform or another :)
some comments on these:
> 8) quick recovery from crashes (usually fraction of a second) used in U.S.
> mil tanks for this reason
pgsql recovers quickly, especially since it uses a controller/backend model a
crash in one backend doesn't bring the entire system down. your next
connection will be handled by the next backend (or a new one if none were
available). if the postmaster were to crash (something i've never seen
happen, even during the crash happy days of 6.5 and before), start up time
seems to depend on database size.
> 13) small memory footprint (2M kernel, 10M for full system with client)
VSZ RSS COMMAND
12460 156 /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster
13452 52 postgres: stats buffer process
12496 172 postgres: stats collector process
12920 3248 postgres: postgres lizard [local] idle
of course, if you want to save the 224k, you can turn off the stats
collectors... of course, this is largely irrelevant for all but embedded
databases, in which case you'll probalby be using a different sort of
solution altogether. the vast majority of memory usage in a production SQL
database comes in the form of buffers for indexes, queries and results.
> 6) consistent reads
do you mean consistent as in "writers don't block readers, so all reads are
consistent tie-wise regardless of other activity"? if so, that's a pretty
common thing among quality databases these days. i don't know if pgsql
_guarentees_ constant time reads, but writers don't block readers which is
the big winner here. the only other hitch i can know of is that doing an
analyze after a lot of writes in pgsql can increase complex query speed.
> 1) has some very good commercial and free administration tools (some with
> GUI) that make it easy to get started.
MySQL and pgsql both have GUI admin tools you can get, but both tend to be
extremely low admin-overhead type dbs. firebird does have nicer GUI tools,
but then so does IIS over Apache ;-)
> 5) database shadows
this is really the only advantage that i know of. replication is lacking in
both MySQL and PostgreSQL. there are ways to hack it in, but they are all
chewing-gum-and-baling-wire type stunts. firebird's shadows are a step up
indeed; btw, are they read-only (e.g. master->slave type replication),
read-write (peered replication) or hidden (hot-backup only)?
some other observations / questions:
o which is better: their classic or "super" server?
o it's really hard to get a grasp on what they are doing developmentally on
the server. their email lists are all over the place, with hard to get to
archives (if any) and many of them are on yahoogroups =/ an open development
line is important to me.
o the license it is under is unique, complex and GPL incompatible. according
to the FSF it is similar in intent and allowances as the MPL. too bad they
had to go create Yet Another License.
o windows seems to be the preffered platform? while i see alpha releases of
v1.5 for windows, i see nothing for the other platforms. is this because the
devels work on windows? or because those on windows can't build the source as
easily (so those on Linux are just expected to track CVS for alpha/betas?)?
o are the JDBC drivers complete? i only see RC1 downloads available for JDBC
o what is the devel pace like? i notice they had the initial release at the
end of 2000, hit betas in late summer of 2001, and a final release in the
Spring of 2002. what took a over a year to develop exactly?
o what are they working on? features? important bug fixes? etc...
- --
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler"
- Albert Einstein
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux)
iD8DBQE9uCJj1rcusafx20MRAlhyAJ40vmUUTMTzwIRAht85QKSpATxAMgCgqsR1
lumYyA4x5tdEy0XMEst6FnQ=
=mK5e
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
