Adam,

I'm impressed, I thought that nobody had read that article :-), and I will
try and answer your questions below...


From: "Adam Clarke" <Adam.Clarke@...>

<<I read the following (see end) in UpsideToday a while back and it had me
interested.

Paul Beach was commenting on the Cobalt developer program (www.cobalt.com).
This company makes Linux (RH) based network appliances.

I see great possibilities for a plug and play Interbase appliance. It sure
suits Interbase's low admin profile. We bought a Qube recently to
investigate this kind of device as a simple way to deploy linux based
solutions under the radar of large IT departments. These people often
question the viability of Linux based solutions but can see an obvious
support point for something like the Cobalt products, and no-one needs to
even mention Linux.

About a year ago I looked the possibility of using Interbase (4.1 for Linux
had just come out) on such a device but concluded that we would have to rely
on MySQL or Postgres since they have both been ported to the Qube's MIPS
architecture (Cobalt also recently announced a i386 based rackmount
product).>>

Thats about the time that I started looking at this too....

<<Since it seems that Intebase has been looking at Cobalt as a platform I
have
some questions. I understand that there may be reasons that they can not be
answered yet but here goes...

1. Given that Interbase went open is this relationship still happening?>>

Yes. More so than before. But for obvious reasons I can't go into any
details.

<<2. If so is an Interbase lead MIPS (Cube and MIPS based RAQ) port likely
or
is there only interest in the new i386 based products.>>

Done. Would you like to play with it :-) Just drop me an e-mail and I'll let
you know how to get a copy. InterBase is (unofficially) available for both
the Qube 2 & RaQ2 (MIPS), and also the RaQ3 (X86). In 5.6 mode as a free
developer / deployment server. Congrats to Stas who did the work.

<<3. How hard would a MIPS port be?>>

Harder than you think, but I don't want to go into all the gory details - it
wasn't the issue of the MIPS chip (we have done MIPS ports before....) but
we did have some problems with the O/S.

4. Is an Interbase branded appliance/support bundle one of the value added
products that Interbase will provide / is considering?>>

Ahhhh - somebody has been looking inside my head :-)

Regards
Paul