> Is Timothy telling lies?
>
> > "Firebird (based on Borland's InterBase 6.0) and SAP AG's SAP are
> > both new entrants in the open-source world, although both have
> > established commercial histories.
>
> We are only three or four years old, although many of us used
> InterBase previously.

That part is true - the name is new, the product is mature.

> > These are sophisticated products offering complete SQL support,
> > transactions, stored procedures and triggers.
>
> That is nice of Timothy to say.
>
> > However, they haven't established open-source developer or user
> > communities, and online support resources are limited.
>
> I guess most of us would disagree with this, but words like "limited"
> are open to interpretation. And "googling" with the words "Firebird
> help" does not return any Firebird references amongst the top 20 hits
> :=[ (hence, it may at least be difficult to find the support)

Of the "about 267.000" hits, at the 3rd page, there's on occurence of
our beloved engine, actually - it's all Mozilla Firebird up till page 8 or
9!!

> > After releasing InterBase 6.0 code, Borland backed away from its
> > open-source plans. The current InterBase, Version 6.5, is not an
> > open-source product, so Firebird and InterBase are now diverging
> > products.
>
> This is true, although InterBase does seem to include our bug fixes in
> their product (probably violating their own license with IB 6.0?).
>
> > All these products are primarily focused on delivering core SQL
> > database features and are not competitive with the big commercial
> > players in several important areas: online analytical processing,

Not "natively".

> > data warehousing,

?

>data mining,

?

>clustering for performance,

True.

>XML storage and query

Is that a FEATURE?

> Enterprise JavaBean support,

?

>plug-ins for a wide variety of specialty data types

That would be cool - and actually, this is part of the RDBMS "specs".

>distributed transactions

Which means exactly?

> external data gateways.

True.

> "All these products" refer not only to Firebird and SAP, but most
> likely to MySQL and PostgreSQL as well (if you read the whole article)
> . And I would expect us to not be able to compete with Oracle in these
> areas (albeit I do admit knowing very little about many of them, and
> not thinking of all of them as important for databases).
>
> > Graphical administration tools are available but simple in scope and
> > not competitive with the comprehensive configuration, control,
> > monitoring and tuning features found in the large commercial
> > offerings.
>
> I'm happy with Firebird Workbench and IB_SQL, but I do not know enough
> about the alternatives for Oracle or MS SQL Server to say whether
> Martijn can compete.

I do :-) ... And yes - Database Workbench can compete. However, it's
a 3rd party product - not packed with Firebird.

> >Management costs are higher among these database products as a
> >result."
>
> This is his one claim that I would claim to be wrong in the case of
> Firebird. Aage does not spend much time managing our databases, so our
> total management costs are very low. Though for very demanding and
> poorly designed databases, I can imagine that even Oracle could be
> cheaper. And there was a reason for Arno to fix the optimizer.

Oracle has problems as well... And believe me: managing Oracle
takes more time and more parameters... A lot more parameters...


With regards,

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - developer tool for InterBase, Firebird & MS SQL Server.
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com