I have been running come benchmarks comparing Hypersonic, Firebird
Embedded(Jdbc Type2) and Mysql on the same data set. Heres a summery
of the results for those interested:

CREATE CACHED TABLE abc
a INTEGER IDENTITY PRIMARY KEY ,
b VARCHAR(1024),
c VARCHAR(1024),
d VARCHAR(1024),
e SMALLINT,
f DATETIME,
g DATETIME,
h DATETIME,
i VARCHAR(255),
j INTEGER,
k INTEGER,
l INTEGER,
m CHAR(1));
CREATE INDEX jindex ON abc (j);

Inserting 75000 rows, Single transaction, ~50Mb data.
HYPERSONIC = 13 sec
FIREBIRD = 20.3 sec
MYSQL = 20.9 sec

Select ID from abc; returning all 75000 integer IDs
HYPERSONIC = 1.66 sec
FIREBIRD = 3.46 sec
MYSQL = 0.2 sec

Select count(*) from abc where J > 500; returning count of 68000
(index on column J)
HYPERSONIC = 1.41 sec
FIREBIRD = 30.26 sec
MYSQL = 0.06 sec

Select count(*) from abc where K > 500; returning count of 55000 (no
index on column K)
HYPERSONIC = 1.54 sec
FIREBIRD = 0.25 sec
MYSQL = 0.06 sec

Seem like firebird is quite quick at count(*) but slow at selects
returning large numbers of rows. There dosn't seem to be a way of
doing "LIMIT" to select only a range of the results either in firebird
which both the others can do. Any tips?

Many Thanks,

Jasper Potts