I'm just going back, back, back in time to the days before the web, to the
days of the "standalone" PC ;-)

This is a single-user full-text search app. I'd like the client program to
access the data-store (on the same computer) without a lengthy database
engine startup. I'm thinking of the 15-30 seconds Personal Oracle takes to
start up -- I want instantaneous availability.

"If you mean to run a java app that uses the database on the same system and
you want to start the database from within the app, that should be no
problem."

That's what I mean. Can FireBird do this? If so, what is involved in
installing the FB engine on the target PC? Do you simply copy some FB files
to a folder, or is there a lot more to it?
Thanks
Tim

At 04:16 PM 9/11/02 -0400, you wrote:

>Hi Tim,
>
>You don't ask for much do you! :-)
>
>I'm not quite certain what you mean by #1 under "lightweight" below. Are
>you looking for something that runs a daemon that starts the database when a
>request is made to the database's port?
>
>That's the only way I can see to get around having the database server
>running if you want to serve data to a remote java app. That would be very
>cumbersome for more than a few hits a day.
>
>If you mean to run a java app that uses the database on the same system and
>you want to start the database from within the app, that should be no
>problem.
>
>Firebird is SQL 92 compliant, other folks on here can tell you about any
>caveats to that (all databases have caveats to that).
>
>As for Java compatibility, the pure Java JCA-JDBC driver available for
>Firebird on the SourceForge site is very good. A new version with lots of
>updates will be posted soon, so be sure to get the new one, or download the
>daily snapshot and build it.
>
>The Mac has a Java problem in that Apple didn't support anything beyond Java
>1.1.x in MacOS 9. To get JDK 1.2 or higher (Java 2) you have to use OS X.
>Interclient should work on the older Macs.
>
>The installation is non-trivial for anything that uses TCP/IP because of the
>security issues involved. Installing Firebird is fairly straight forward
>but it does require that your OS be set up to listen to port 3050, and
>possibly 3060 if you use Interclient.
>
>If you want to be able to have 1 program and one data file that you can drop
>on a system and it works, that's going to be difficult. You can try
>InstantDB or one of the other written-in-java sql databases, but most of
>them don't have full SQL 92 functionality. Most of them are slow too.
>
>Regarding the data file format, it differs from OS to OS but is a simple
>file. There are various ways to migrate your data file to to the Mac if you
>don't initially create it there. All the tables, data, and metadata are in
>one file.
>
>If you can give a few more details about how you want your users to access
>this database I could give you more specific answers.
>
>Rick
>
>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Tim Romano" <tim@...>
>To: <ib-support@yahoogroups.com>
>Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 1:14 PM
>Subject: [ib-support] FireBird
>
>
> > I am looking for a lightweight, sql-compatible, java-compatible database
>to
> > port a dotnet app to the Macintosh platform, since many of my potential
> > users are Mac fanatics. The application is a full-text search program
> > against a corpus of early medieval texts (see www.aimsdata.com/tim for
> > details if you're interested in this sort of thing.)
> >
> > FireBird has been recommended to me as a possiblity, and I'd like to get
> > more details on what is involved in installing FB onto a Macintosh.
> >
> > By "lighweight", I mean:
> > (1) the database engine does not have to run as a background service on
>the
> > deployment PC
> > (2) the db will allow me to ship a pre-built data structure contained in a
> > few files that can live in the same folder; there will be no need to
>create
> > the database as part of the installation and no need to go looking in many
> > places for pieces of the installed package
> > (3) I won't have to write an installation program but can tell the user to
> > copy the files to a folder and away they go...
> >
> > By SQL compatible I mean that the database understands the full range of
> > ANSI SQL -92 syntax.
> >
> > Does FB meet my personal definition of lightweight and SQL compatibility?
> > Thanks for the info!
> > Tim
>
>
>
>
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