Ok, just following up to my complaints about Interbase the other week:
- The threading issue is still outstanding, and I've now emailed ib_support
about it. It doesn't happen if you're connected to a Linux server, only
Windows (and I've only tested it on W2K thus far). From Jason Wharton (IBO)
I've been told that someone else has reported the same problem. Since
others have said that they've successfully multi-threaded with IB5.X, I'm
assuming that it's specific to IB6. I'll let you know if and when I get
confirmation from the Interbase people about this.
- The delay while scrolling through the grid problem was caused in a very
specific case; only when I iterated through a database table with 25
composite indexes on it (ported from a system where these indexes caused no
overhead). Still an outstanding issue, but the problem disappeared when I
dropped the indexes (indices? :) and Interbase's performance even on
unindexed fields is good enough to make this a non-issue.
- IB Console (IB 6 only) still refuses to backup anything but metadata. But
the gbak command line utility works fine, so that's an acceptable
workaround.
There's another issue with Interbase that people considering a change should
be aware of. Interbase's performance when using TTables through the BDE is
absolutely abysmal. Fortunately I'm in a position to be able to rewrite
everything here using queries or, more likely, IBX. But if you found
yourself in the unfortunate position of needing to change databases
midstream, and the application you had to support made large use of TTables,
you really couldn't go to Interbase - you'd have to rewrite everything. Or
course if you were the person who originally wrote said application,
consider jumping out of a window or perhaps throwing yourself in front of a
truck. :)
But despite all these annoying issues, I presented Interbase as my database
of choice last week and we're almost certainly going to head down that path.
Why? Well, there's a lot of depth in the product which I haven't talked
about here (but which is clearly described in the help documentation, which
is extensive). Plus the results of my testing have been very favourable
compared with the old system (FoxPro - not really much of a comparison
because FoxPro is a complete load of crap). Plus it gets several million
points for being free (soon, anyway) - we really didn't have an option of
going with one of the big guns because of price. In fact it would be hard
for me now to argue that you shouldn't consider Interbase for _any_
application that isn't accessing humungously large databases. In short,
after all my griping it looks like I'm on the bandwagon after all... :)
Cheers,
Carl
-----Original Message-----
From: Carl Reynolds [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Wednesday, 19 April 2000 5:26 PM
To: Multiple recipients of list delphi
Subject: RE: [DUG]: Interbase problem??
It's been a long day. :-(
I've been having a problem with Interbase and threads. Got a little demo
where when I iterate through a table in two different threads (different
queries, databases and sessions), the threads hang (deadlock?) in the first
500 records. Doesn't happen with a local sql database, either, only with
Interbase (5K source available on request :-) ).
During my investigation of this, I found that the performance of Interbase
while scrolling down a grid ground to a halt when traversing a table with a
lot of indexes on it. Stepping from the 71st to the 72nd record in the
query (no relation to the size of the grid or the size of the datalink)
causes a delay of about 1 to 2 seconds, just long enough to be annoying.
Ditto when you step to the 144th record, et al.
Thinking my indexes may be stuffed, I attempted to backup and restore my
database. Then spent my time recreating said database, as discussed, and
berating the Interbase newsgroup. :-[
Is it Friday yet?
Cheers,
Carl
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