On 20-10-2011 10:49, mirmalag wrote:

> Nice to meet you Roman and Mark,
> I can't presently dig into deep detail.
> What I know for sure is that we will use EntityBeans
> wherever possible. The platform uses Jta for transaction control.

If you say EntityBeans, I assume you mean EJB 3.0 type beans with JPA.
If so, what JPA implementation are you going to use, EclipseLink or
Hibernate? I know that the Dialect implementation for Firebird in
Hibernate is missing some of the more advanced features, so you may need
to create your own implementation of Dialect.

JTA is supported by Jaybird, so you should be good there.

> For the parts of the application that will require explicit SQL, I'm pretty confident that current feature set doesn't pose big problems.
> In fact the application is a rebuild of a current pure C/S one and the current database design will be modified as little as possible.
> I feel unsure about the parts of the new application that will be
> implemented using platform components that will use the database
> through standard protocols and methods.
> I'm already in the process of building confidence with JavaEE 6,
> a new beast for me, and interfacing the database is a delicate issue.
> It seems that the standard choice is MySql, for this kind of project.

It depends what your goals or your budget is. I know enough people who
will avoid MySQL like the plague for its low quality in the past and its
oddities; I have also worked at companies where Oracle and/or MS SQL
Server (or other expensive DB) are dogmatically considered the only choice.

> Fact is we have deep knowledge of Firebird and want to stay with it.
> But I don't know directly of other experiences in using Firebird as a JavaEE backend.
> We will build the trial environment soon, I hope, then be able to
> come back with some result.

You should be aware that the ConnectionPoolDataSource and XADataSource
implementation in Jaybird 2.1.6 can sometimes behave incorrectly
(closing connections early, pool unable to get more connections when it
should be able to). This has been fixed in Jaybird 2.2 (see also
JDBC-176 and related issues in the tracker).
--
Mark Rotteveel