Thanks to Steve Ramacher, who sent me this info.

We run our business on a couple of AS400 mid range computers (we are
in the process of converting to MS Dynamics AX). We use BPCS for out
ERP system. 7 years ago we started running into situations where we
need to archive our reports to externals servers. This included
reports that are ran daily and invoicing.

We started with SharePoint services but quickly out grew the
capabilities of SharePoint (in regards to what MS indexing server
could do). I wrote a role based security web site using firebird as
the backend. I then wrote an administrators console to that allows
Administrators to add/remove users, control there access, deploy smart
client programs, and view reports.

The next task was very cool, I use MS DTS services (runs as a job in
system agent) to extract data from our AS400 (DB2) and load the tables
in our firebird server (running on windows). From that I am able to
power our invoice lookup. We spool 1500+ invoices a day for orders
through a product called reform which creates a PDF version of the
output at the same time that it prints the spool. I wrote a program
that matches up the customer, tracking, shipping to the invoice. So we
have a customer service application (Smart Client) that they are able
to lookup post shipment invoice information (Printed invoice, customer
information, tracking information, proof of delivery, etc.) all being
powered by Firebird and the .net providers.

I have used this provider with data tables, datasets, and custom
collections with absolutely phenomenal success. Over the years I have
upgraded the sites to include the new features of you provider (roll
provider etc). I mostly write custom collections so that I can control
my CRUD operations. If the power of linq makes it to firebird, that
would be amazing.

--
Jiri {x2} Cincura (CTO x2develop.com)
http://blog.vyvojar.cz/jirka/ | http://www.ID3renamer.com