| Subject | Re: Interbase vs Firebird.. |
|---|---|
| Author | Svein Erling Tysvær |
| Post date | 2005-05-26T15:00:46Z |
--- In Firebird-general@yahoogroups.com, "cowmix3" wrote:
told the clients how horrible the vendor was for reliability? Joke
aside, I think the first things the Firebird developers did was fix
lots of errors in InterBase 6.0, e.g. trying to connect to a database
on C:directory and C:\directory was perceived as two separate
databases, easily corrupting databases. Firebird has also changed the
default from forced writes off to forced writes on. That means slower
execution of queries, but you don't get a corrupted database with
power outages. My impression is also that Firebird is (or at least
was) more conservative about adding new features than InterBase, i.e.
Firebird doesn't release features unless they work and fit with the
general design.
One thing that may seem horrible for clients at first, is that
Firebird refuses to execute ambigous requests, and produces an error
rather than attempts to guess what the user intended to ask
(admittedly, it does overdo this a bit - at least in some versions).
So quite a few programs that work with InterBase (although possibly
yielding wrong results) will fail with Firebird. I have to say that I
haven't used InterBase since 5.6, we upgraded our production database
from InterBase 5.6 to Firebird 0.9.4 and have never regretted that
decision. InterBase has probably improved considerably since then, but
Firebird 0.9.4 was undoubtedly a better database than InterBase 5.6.
If the vendor had said something about performance, features or
support, he might have had a point for all I know. Attacking Firebirds
reliability when comparing to InterBase simply lacks credibility.
Set
> I was as some trade show this past day and a vendor there told meAre you sure it wasn't the opposite way around, i.e. that the database
> that Firebird has been horrible for reliability for his clients and
> that Interbase is much more stable. Can anyone spell out the
> differences between the modern Interbase vs Firebird? I thought
> they were basically the same.
told the clients how horrible the vendor was for reliability? Joke
aside, I think the first things the Firebird developers did was fix
lots of errors in InterBase 6.0, e.g. trying to connect to a database
on C:directory and C:\directory was perceived as two separate
databases, easily corrupting databases. Firebird has also changed the
default from forced writes off to forced writes on. That means slower
execution of queries, but you don't get a corrupted database with
power outages. My impression is also that Firebird is (or at least
was) more conservative about adding new features than InterBase, i.e.
Firebird doesn't release features unless they work and fit with the
general design.
One thing that may seem horrible for clients at first, is that
Firebird refuses to execute ambigous requests, and produces an error
rather than attempts to guess what the user intended to ask
(admittedly, it does overdo this a bit - at least in some versions).
So quite a few programs that work with InterBase (although possibly
yielding wrong results) will fail with Firebird. I have to say that I
haven't used InterBase since 5.6, we upgraded our production database
from InterBase 5.6 to Firebird 0.9.4 and have never regretted that
decision. InterBase has probably improved considerably since then, but
Firebird 0.9.4 was undoubtedly a better database than InterBase 5.6.
If the vendor had said something about performance, features or
support, he might have had a point for all I know. Attacking Firebirds
reliability when comparing to InterBase simply lacks credibility.
Set