> The requirement is going to be relaxed in FB 2.0. However, if
> we talk about
> the real-world, I assume you talk about the development, not
> the production.
>
> In my real-world, change of the database schema in the
> production database
> is never done on the fly. Even adding a column or trigger is
> not done when
> active users are there. And the upgrade script is multiple
> times tested in
> the intergration environment before going into production.
> And there is
> still a down time, small, but a downtime. So far I have read
> about only one
> "hot" upgrade of the software - that was WallMart upgrading
> to JDK 5.0
> without stoping the servers, though no database schema changes.

Looks like we have different real-worlds. I'm not saying that adding FK
constraints to a table that's being banged against is an every-day
occurrence in the real-world. What I am saying is that the process of adding
new tables with FK constraints to an existing database IS a real-world
requirement. It makes no sense for me to have to take a whole database
offline because I need to add a new table with a FK constraint. Oracle,
MSSQL, and DB2 have no such limitation.

But, like you've pointed out - this isn't a Jaybird issue. This is an issue
for the Firebird server team. Perhaps our group will need to re-evaluate our
choice of Firebird. I can't say for certain, but I'd be willing to bet that
Postgres doesn't have this problem either.

Anyway, thanks very much for the information - particularly since it isn't a
driver issue.

Take care,

Marc Batchelor
Senior Architect and Engineer
Pentaho - Open Source Business Intelligence
Tel. +1 407-812-OPEN | http://www.pentaho.org