G'Day All,
I have a few issues / questions regarding Interbase as they relate to the
environment that we operate in, so please read our operating environment and
relate your comments to that if you would. I also have no experience with
Interbase and come from a MS-SQL 6.5 environment, so be kind. *grin*
We do live TV graphics. Essentially we have a delphi front end(s) that do
data capture to get all the information relating to the game / sport we are
covering. We then have other station(s) running other Delphi front ends to
take this captured information and utilise it to generate graphics for TV
via TV graphics card and custom written C++ DLL's.
So basically we have:
- Data Capturer * n Machines
- Graphics Generators * n Machines
This sounds rather complex, but generally the:
- Frequency of adding new records is not high. Say a record every couple of
seconds
- Frequency of amending records is not high. Say a record every couple of
seconds
- Retrieval of data for graphics purposes is rather frequent. Can be every
second
- Datasets are small. Peaks at about 2000 records for current game
information. (Historical data is more, but as a rule this is not accessed
all that frequently for graphics purposes)
We have got by at present, using Paradox, but we are starting to "outgrow"
it and have a need to move to Interbase for:
- Speed
- Data Integrity
- Referential Integrity etc. etc.
In making the move we would also like to increase data redundancy. At
present we have a central database (essentially, we also have copies so this
is not strictly true), so basically a central point of failure. What we
would be looking to do is replicate the data across the network. So have a
machine that is a "Master" and all clients operate off it for changes to the
data. Each of these changes is replicated to each machine locally and these
local copies will be accessed for data retrieval. In essence this means that
our graphics boxes get to the data that is closest to them, ie locally and
all the data enteres operate off a central box. If the "Master" dies (This
would be on one of the Data Entry boxes) we would nominate another Data
Entry box as the master and then carry on from there.
In order to do the replication we could:
1. Based on our data loads etc, I believe we could have triggers that would
call stored procedures on the "Master" that would apply the changes to each
of the "Slaves" in turn
2. Use the "Shadow" database option to replicate the data??
3. Use some other mechanism??
I am leaning towards 1. It would mean that we have an Interbase Server on
each machine on our LAN, but is there another / better way??
One finaly caveat. As we have a substantial investment in NT Workstation out
in the field, as well as the fact that we don't want any *special* (read
"server type") machines this would all have to happen using NT Workstation.
Comments, sugestions, solutions etc.
TIA
------------------------------------------------------------------------
--Donovan
Donovan J. Edye [www.edye.wattle.id.au]
Namadgi Systems, Delphi Developer
Web: www.namsys.com.au E-Mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Voice: +61 2 6285-3460 Fax: +61 2 6285-3459
TVisualBasic = Class(None);
------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Zealand Delphi Users group - Delphi List - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Website: http://www.delphi.org.nz
