Hi,

great - let me play the Devils advocate... Or the IT managers one - whatever
:)

(comments wanted - text below does not reflect my own opinion on things that
are currently happening)

> Hey, Claudio! It was a very nice and precise description of
> the pass. Let's
> work it out into the future. That's why I think that
> sometime, somewhere, we
> must split out IB/FB. Maybe the little help of Borland could bring the
> people that are using IB now to move to Firebird, and give
> the project the
> money it needs.
>
> We all know that Borland have done a good job to kill it's
> own product, but
> Firebird can use it to grow. So, here we go:
>
> > Try to act as the IT manager's advocate, for a few seconds.
> Do you select
> IB
> > if you know that:
> >
> > - The product never was marketed appropriately in the past
> so it appeared
> as
> > if the company owning it was a bit ashamed of it?
> - Firebird is a new product, the 'big brother' of IB. It is
> supported not by
> a big company, it's open source. Let's clarify the beneficts
> of open source.

Firebird, you say? Never heard of it... Oh, wait - isn't that
the InterBase copy? What version have they reached yet?
Version 1? Hmmm, let's wait a couple of versions then... or
better yet, let's use MS SQL 2000 - it's fast, it has build in
replication and licenses aren't even that expensive...

> > - The product's open sourcing story was plenty of shakes and
> recriminations among several parties?
> But the future is un-writen. Who cares about a company that
> takes more than
> an year to implement some features and kill some bugs that
> are already done
> by the open source community?

Yeah, fixed alright - but no stable version available...

> > - Only the commercial version is actively backed by a
> company the size of
> Borland?
> Backup? Actively? Are you shure?

They're working on v7 with SMP support, right?

> > - There're still no clear plans nor clear route for the
> future WRT the IB
> OE
> > flavor? How does it fit in the lanscape? Does it receive
> only bug fixes?
> How
> > often? Does it receive features but in a delayed way? Will it exist
> always?
> > Will it become frozen at some time in the future so it
> turns irrelevant?
> Who cares?

Who cares about Firebird if there are a couple of _proven_
alternatives available. If I need a fast select only database,
I'll use MySQL (web-apps, anyone?!). If I need more advanced
features, I can use PostgreSQL - very actively maintained,
v7.2 has been released this week, I believe. And hey, why not
use MS SQL 2K - it's fast, it has build in replication, ODBC
drivers come with it, it has ADO, crappy GUI tools and if I
put 256Mb more in the server, it will use the memory and will
be even faster!

> > - There's a free version named Firebird, done by a bunch of
> crazy people
> and
> > backed by a tiny company named IBPhoenix?
> Ops. What's this? I like crazy people. Tiny company? Yes! I like small
> companies that we can talk to. Let's forget about IB and explore this.

Is this small company for real? Wonder when they will be out
of business then... Oh, it's people who do this in their spare-
time? Hmpf, I don't have time for that...

> > - We've been reading the forums and there appears to be
> quite a bunch of
> > bugs. How opportunely are they acknowledged and fixed? Where are the
> > reliable contacts we can address in case of those problems,
> that doesn't
> > entail purchasing a support ticked immediately?
> We've been reading the Firebird pages and the bugs are well
> documented, as
> well the open features. The RC1 & RC2 experience prove that a
> bug is often
> found after 2 to 3 days after the version release date.
> That's good: small
> companies could live with the bugs if they are documented,
> big companies
> could pay someone to kill the bugs. They are well documented.

Pff - what a long list of bugs... Some of them are really
strange too - what is this piece of software? Let's wait
until most of them are out... Or perhaps we should use
MS SQL 2K, not too expensive and at least they regularly
release service packs with bug fixes...

(note from self: I've been using Oracle for a couple of years,
and each product has it's bugs - some more obvious than others -
and hey, if you don't know about a certain bug, you don't care
about it)

> > - It seems that Borland's revenues come exclusively from
> selling their
> > closed version following the old good commercial model and
> IBPhoenix'
> > revenues come from optimizing applications and repairing
> databases. Is
> this
> > model profitable so that those companies won't drop the
> product? BTW, by
> > reading the forums we came to the conclusion that IB
> databases become
> > corrupt often and it's not uncommon that they cannot be
> restored, too.
> Ops, IB databases become corrupt often? Let's be Mr. Gates

And reading the forums also reveals backups not being able
to be restored... That's not very useful, right?

> > - We would like to take a risk if we know another company of some
> importance
> > that has decided on IB. Where are those companies listed?
> It seems that
> some
> > customers like Boeing and a processor manufacturer are history only.
> Yes. But perhaps they have old applications running waiting
> for a decision
> to re-code them in Oracle/MS. Perhaps if they start listening
> about a good
> RDBMS they will take a look, and find out that they don't
> have to recode
> nothing to use FireBird.

Aw man, we've been using IB for years - and now the product
has gone belly up... That shall we do? 'We can use Firebird,
the open source cousin of IB' - yeah right. Unless they have
reached a higher version and have been 'in business' for a
couple of years... Why not re-code it to Oracle, Db2 or MS
SQL 2K - if we do that, we at least know that it will be
around for another couple of years...

> > We can replace Oracle where it's a waste or resources of
> all kinds to run

But we KNOW Oracle - we know how it works, it knows Java, our
queries are written the Oracle way (from self: which is like
as non-standard as using a hammer to use on a screw)...

>
> Yes! That's the big approach! Someone recently say 'MySQL is a Jeep,
> Firebird is a Tank. Sometimes you need a Jeep, sometimes you
> need a tank.'.

I'd rather use a Jeep - fast but robust. A tank is just to
plain slow...







As said - a lot of stuff in the above piece of text does not reflect what I
think about InterBase or Firebird.


Martijn Tonies
InterBase Workbench - the developer tool for InterBase and Firebird
http://www.interbaseworkbench.com


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