I think that your decision on a DBMS is likely to have both Technical items
and Business Items. I'll let the rest of the team here talk to the
technical differences between the products, but from a business perspective
here's something to consider:

Firebird vs MS SQL Server is kinda like comparing Linux to Windows. The
advantage that Firebird has is that its Open Source and ported to so many
different operating systems. I suspect, although you didn't mention this
directly, that you are dealing with a Windows shop. This could mean that
the business differences between Firebird & MS SQL Server are simply, price
and support levels.

But if your company decided that it needed to host on Linux, or Solaris, or
even Mac OSX, you would have the option with Firebird. There would be no
option with MS SQL Server. The fact is, MS SQL Server comes with a Windows
requirement. Firebird doesn't.

Does this mean anything in your case? Maybe not. In our case, however, its
critical. Not only are we avoiding yearly licensing charges with Firebird,
but I have FAR more freedom to deploy the database on what box I want, where
I want, etc. Also in the case of servers (and I don't want to start a OS
'Holy War' here but), I just prefer Linux. Its more manageable and easier
to identify and fix problems. However with this said, due to the vast
history of Interbase and BOTH Unix and Windows, you won't lose out
regardless of platform with Firebird. The tools and stability are
comparable.

Myles

===========================
Myles Wakeham
Director of Engineering
Tech Solutions Inc.
Scottsdale, Arizona USA
Phone (480) 451-7440
Web: www.techsol.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jekke Bladt [mailto:jekke.bladt@...]
> Sent: Wednesday, September 15, 2004 8:13 AM
> To: Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [Firebird-general] New implementation
>
> All--
>
> I'm currently in the position of making architectural
> recommendations at
> work. The firm I've joined is an equity options market maker.
> Our team's
> primary development arena is real-time trading systems running on
> Windows. New applications are written in C++, C# and VB.net with
> additional legacy base in VB6.
>
> Because most of the nature of the options market, many of the
> applications exist without persistent state. Every time they're run,
> it's like the first time.
>
> OTOH, there are places where persistent state would be incredibly
> helpful, but solutions have been architected around the need for state
> information because that's the shape of other solutions.
>
> So, I'm advocating we install a DBMS and start persisting a lot of our
> core information. It will make a lot of existing applications more
> useful, more stable, and more accurate. By my best estimates, our data
> needs aren't terribly rigorous. By the end of 2005, we'll be
> doing about
> 70,000 database writes and 12,000 reads a day if current development
> continues apace.
>
> That being said, I'm ready to advocate that we use Firebird
> as our DBMS
> with the other two most likely options being Sybase on Linux or SQL
> Server on Win2k. But, so far, this is based entirely on external
> observation and research. I haven't used Interbase in about ten years.
> My DBMS experience since then is with SQL Server, Sybase, and
> Oracle. I
> am most proficient in SQL Server.
>
> My second option, after Firebird, is SQL Server. If I'm going to sell
> Firebird to the team, I need to compare the two products. Firebird
> already has the upper hand on price point, but it's going to take more
> than that.
>
> So, I have a couple of questions:
>
> If you were presenting Firefox as an alternative to SQL Server, what
> would your selling points be? We've already talked the
> benefits of open
> source vs. commercial products to death without a conclusion,
> so that's
> not going to sell it.
>
> What features of SQL Server am I going to miss if we use Firebird? Is
> there support for complex data types? Extended stored
> procedures? Native
> XML support?
>
> Any guidance y'all could provide would be deeply appreciated.
>
> --Jekke
>
>
>
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