Hi,

i think that Helens point of view is too optimistic for firebird.
I'm small hosting provider with long experience with firebird. Till last
week or two i thought that i'm at least advanced user :) How wrong i was
:)

Firebird is missing:
1. Lot of admin management tools. For example you do not know what
databases are opened in time, how much connections is there for server not
database and other monitoring tools.
2. security - nearly all about this topic :)
3. performance limitations. As hosting provider you cannot let wrong code
to kill your servers with infinite queries. Killing of query.
4. ability to have two different servers on machine without hard and
confusing work. This is MUST HAVE feature for upgrade procedure.
5. client connectors support. php support is not very good, java support
is good but lacks some features for example good hibernate integration.
6. Documentation. Try to put words "firebird bug" into google. Yes we are
working with mozilla-firefox. (One wrong decision long time ago from my
point of view. One small Pyrhos victory for firebirdSQL :)
But any kind of documentation is lacking. Only one good think was Helens
book. You have to browse several sites and read several release notes,
erratas, old documentations, notes, howtos to get tiny overview of
firebird.
7. good SMP support
8. good client applications. There are some for windows, but for linux
there is only flamerobin AFAIK which is not as user friendly as it should
be.
9. really long release cycle.
10. all things Helen mentioned :)
11. If we want it as ISP solution there have to be something like LAMP or
WAMP.

Firebird have lot of advantages to pgsql and mysql.
But:
pgsql is rock stable, have no more downtimes then firebird, have great
support, great documentation and it works on windows since some time ago.
And lot of other advantages. But it's old dinosaurs fork only, resources
hungry and sql planer is not very good.
mysql is pure web database, lacking lot of features by default. But it
have all things hosting provider need to manage it. Personally i hate it
:)
But Jim Starkey moved form firebird to mysql so lets get surprised.

I like firebird. It's like small Kal-El growing to superman. I'm looking
on it since it's born and i hope there will be no funeral :)

To Helen: Admin have to have "god" access to customers data in any way. At
least for legal reasons here in Europe.

Bye
Pavol

> At 06:08 AM 4/03/2008, you wrote:
>>Why do so few web hosting companies provide Firebird as a database
>> option, but most provide Mysql (or Postgresql) as an option?
>
> MySQL in the form that it's offered by most providers is "enough" when all
> that's wanted is a data store that can throw data at a web page. "Enough"
> is plenty for most providers. For those who want to provide "more", PG is
> already there on the distro CD. This is an industry entrenched in a
> culture of "acceptable downtime" so Firebird's benefits don't do much for
> them. Commercial service providers have more incentive to stick with the
> "known" than to explore this new thing that's only been around for 5
> years. Firebird is "boutique" - you can get it if you're looking for it
> but it'll cost you more than supermarket.
>
> Lack of database-level user authentication probably plays a significant
> part. The hosting service can't give you SYSDBA privileges because it
> makes your neighbours' databases available to you. Without SYSDBA
> privileges there are some essential housekeeping tasks you can't do
> yourself.
>
> Even if the hosting provider has staff with the know-how to do the
> housekeeping for you, it means that the hosting provider has "god" access
> to everyone's databases. Possibly some providers don't want to expose
> themselves to the legal risks; or believe (with some justification) that
> such a deal would be hard to sell. Better things are coming in Firebird 3
> to address that problem.
>
> Above all, though, is lack of administration expertise out there. There's
> no administrator's manual or certification process available. Slowly as
> the wheels grind, the FF committee is currently trying to convene a group
> to develop some rules and policy for a Firebird certification process.
> It's clearly going to need input and participation from firms that are
> already providing training services. It's proving difficult to pin such
> people down and get their commitment to the task. As always, it gets down
> to time and resources.
>
> Above all is simply lack of public recognition in most of the ways that
> count out there in the field. For example, I've just installed Mandriva
> 2008 on a new HDD: how pleasing to get Firebird 2.0.3 via the urpmi!
> Yet, even after all these years, the package description that pops up when
> you query urpmi is "Fork of Interbase". Ooops!
> Interbase==Borland==stuffed, not exactly a selling point for us.
>
> Helen
>
>