Hi Mike, Thanks. I appreciate the insight. I think I remember the "sweeping" maintenance of the tables from the stuff I read at the Firebird sourceforge site -- called "vacuuming", right? That seemed like a serious pain in the butt. Also, I couldn't find any easy solutions for replication, which is why I finally chose MySQL.
Thanks again, --jeff ----- Original Message ----- From: "mos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Jeff Kilbride" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2002 8:14 AM Subject: Re: Best book on MySQL > At 04:34 PM 5/14/2002, you wrote: > >I'd be interested in how both of you compared them. > > > >Thanks, > >--jeff > > > Jeff, > I'm using MySQL for a webserver and didn't really want to use > Firebird (Interbase) for that type of application. It is my feeling that IB > requires more maintenance than MySQL. It's peculiar transaction scheme > requires the database to be swept from time to time (daily if you do a lot > of updates) to get rid of the old records. If you update or delete a > record, the old record isn't really deleted. The new record has a higher > transaction number so it gets retrieved over an older one. This means > updated/deleted records stick around until it is swept (which is an > automatic process) and this may have an effect on performance. This type of > transactions is really fast if you are doing a lot of rollbacks because > rolling back thousands of records takes just milliseconds. IB is a feature > rich relational database. It has everything you could ever want in a > database. Triggers, stored procedures, calculated fields. You can also > write your own functions in a Delphi or CB dll and call them as if they > were another IB function. People normally don't recompile the IB source, at > least not as much as with MySQL. IB runs on Windows, Linux, and Solaris. > > BUT IB is much more CPU intensive for the same # of users than > MySQL. There used to be a limit of 254 concurrent users but I believe that > limit has been surpassed with the Linux version. I don't know how well IB > will run with that many users because the CPU may max out before then. > There is also a question of connection speed on a web server. Most people > would use persistent connections and employ middleware to connect more than > 254 users at a time. Middleware like Midas (Borland) of course costs money. > The price of Midas has dropped in the past few years from around $2500 per > server to around $250. I would also be a bit hesitant to put more than say > a million rows in an IB database. This is just me, mind you. Some people > have successfully put 100 million rows into IB tables. My hesitation comes > from the fact that IB will slow down if there are a lot of updates, even > with sweeping. You need to unload and reload the data occasionally. And IB > inserts data at a much slower rate than MySQL. So if it is run on a > webserver, it means more down time. It could take a couple of days to > reload 100 million rows in IB. > > My personal feeling is that IB is better suited to vertical market > applications or for corporate databases where they absolutely need > referential integrity. Here they can take the database down overnight, do > maintenance on it, and it won't affect anyone. This is difficult to do if > it us running on a webserver. If your webserver is readonly and has a low > number of concurrent users, then IB might be worth a look. IB (Firebird) > licensing is also much more liberal than MySQL because Firebird > applications can be distributed freely on all platforms, even for > commercial use. Sadly there aren't any books on Interbase. The last one was > printed in 1997 (Ken Henderson) and dealt with accessing IB from Delphi > applications. All of the documentation is in PDF files and IB is well > documented (but fragmented in a lot of PDF files). For more information, > see http://firebird.sourceforge.net/ and http://www.ibphoenix.com/ . > > Well, that's my 2 cents worth. <g> IB (Firebird) is heavy duty > database and exceeds PostgreSQL in features. So if you're leaning towards > PostgreSQL, you may want to look at Firebird. It's not the fastest database > on the block, but it is feature-rich. (chubby?<g>). > > Mike > > > > >----- Original Message ----- > >From: "mos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >To: "Michael Grover" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > >Sent: Monday, May 13, 2002 7:35 AM > >Subject: Re: Best book on MySQL > > > > > > > At 09:25 PM 5/11/2002, you wrote: > > > > > > >I ported several applications from Firebird 1.0 to MySQL 4. > > > >The main things I ran into was little SQL Syntax differences, Stored > > > >procedures, and > > > >Triggers... > > > > > > > > > > > > mike > > > > > > Mike, > > > Out of curiosity, why did you switch from Interbase to MySQL? > > > (I've used both) > > > > > > Mike > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before posting, please check: http://www.mysql.com/manual.php (the manual) http://lists.mysql.com/ (the list archive) To request this thread, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, e-mail <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Trouble unsubscribing? Try: http://lists.mysql.com/php/unsubscribe.php
