Hi,

plinehan wrote:

>
> Maybe I'm asking for the moon (realistic usage figures),
> and *_AS FAR AS I CAN SEE_*, the *_MOST_* realistic
> figures (and these are only relative) are in terms
> of job offers, because if you have a particular db,
> the *_chances are_* that you will mention that particular
> db in your job ad - a good SQL programmer is
> great, but an experienced IB/FB one for an IB/FB
> project is surely better?

I don't know about Germany, Ireland and other countries, but I suppose
that it works along the same lines as here in Czech Republic. The
specialized job offering web sites and job agencies (especially the big
ones where is most easy to find and count offerings for you) are not
very used by small sw shops, but by big companies. Because big companies
still run more Oracle, IBM, Sybase, MSSQL, and now some MySQL in web
area, you'll see more such job offerings than for Firebird, because
these guys don't use it in areas with rapid growth in demand for new
developers (not to mention admins :-). Small sw shops use different
means to get new developers (word of mouth, local newspapers, *local*
county job agencies). And because I'm in contact with many such "small"
shops (1-50 people), I can tell you that there is a lot of FB apps, new
development and mass deployment in this area. Although I don't have hard
numbers to prove that, I'm pretty sure that there is far more deployed
FB servers that Oracle ones in CR.

best regards
Pavel Cisar
IBPhoenix Czech Republic