Aage Johansen wrote:

> Myles Wakeham wrote:
> > I'm working on a proposal with a government client in the USA, that has a
> > strong philosphy for open source software. This is great, as it mimicks our
> > company's direction. However their main IT shop is more 'comfortable' with
> > MySQL for some reason, and when we stated we are a Firebird shop we got a
> > bit of reluctance from them.
> > I would like to cite some 3rd party polls that show Firebird popularity in
> > the open source community, and ideally some independent comparisons between
> > MySQL & Firebird on performance, feature set, reliability and rugged
> > performance. It would also be helpful to cite any testimonials that large
> > organizations have in regards to Firebird (ie. Where its being used, case
> > studies, etc.).
> > ...
>
> IIRC:
> Some time (years!) ago, Dalton Calford described how they used
> Firebird at Distributel (telephone company in Canada). I don't have
> a copy of this here (maybe I could find it on one of my older
> pcs). It did show that Firebird can be a good choice for heavy duty
> use with high availability (99.999% uptime as required by law).
> Maybe they used IB at the time, but this shouldn't be important in
> this context

this is the message:



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [firebird-support] Are there any scalability guidelines
published for Firebird?
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2005 10:01:24 -0500
From: Dalton Calford <dcalford@...>
Reply-To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
References: <1107314863.15247.38.camel@...>



Hi David

What are you looking for?
If you are asking, what the limits are, and what platforms does FB support,
then that is easy to answer, but, all things are limited by the final design
of the database metadata.

You need to understand the needs of the design, then determine how those needs
are met by the software and hardware, then you must decide if the
implementation will scale to a larger needs environment without a redesign.

This is a very detailed area of design.

We have firebird processing customer calls (over 2 million phone calls a day)
in a 5 9's environment. That system is replicated in three different cities
across two provinces. A different Firebird system performs billing
functions - a very detailed process that bills based upon duration and time
of call, also centred around location called from, called to and what
services apply at the time of call for that particular customer. If you
consider the call volume, this should give you an idea as to the capabilities
of the system.
The billing database also serves the IVR(Interactive Voice Response) units
which allow a customer to dial a number to check thier current call usage and
minutes remaining. The IVR system has to query the database and respond in
under 2 seconds - impressive given the volume of data.
Our CSR's (customer service reps) link into another database that processes
orders, hookups, disconnects, and all other customer related issues.
For backup and other considerations, we have multiple history databases, that
allow us to generate a historic invoice for the past 6 years. This is used
by the CSR's to view customer calling paterns and build services better
suited to our clients (also it is required by law....)
Our web page is dynamically generated by php and firebird.
Our lines database controlling all the routers, fibre, servers etc is also
used by Firebird and is accessed by custom software on Sharp Zaurus PDA's.

So, can Firebird scale, yes.
Can any Database scale - if properly designed to handle the shortcommings of
the environment, yes.
Does Firebird ease the design burdon of developing a scalable environment -
very much so.

Please, if you need specific help, ask, overall generalities do nothing but
satify the needs of a marketing dept.

best regards

Dalton Calford


--
Alexandre Benson Smith
Development
THOR Software e Comercial Ltda
Santo Andre - Sao Paulo - Brazil
www.thorsoftware.com.br