Hello!

> > P IV 1.8GHz 256MB should be fine (P III or Xeon may be better),

256 is ok
I'm wondering why is Pentium III better than Pentium 4? Is the code
optimized for this processor? Even if so, is P4 not downwards
compatible with PIII?

> > but when several databases are open some more RAM would be nice.

Aha! Thanks for the tip!

> > I'm not
> > sure what "RAID HDD 40MB" means - 40GB disk? or 40MB database?

Whops! Typing error! I wanted to mean two IBM 40GByte / 7200RPM
mirrored.

> > It has generally been held that Firebird is faster on inserts and

slower on

> > selects (compared to MS sql server),

Aha! Good to know!

> > but Firebird (Fb1.5) has seen some
> > substantial improvements on the selects.

I will try FB 1.5 after these smart guys will get an final release. I
wonder if there are planned some features that are useful in MS-SQL
Server, like all those stored procedure implmented by the system
("sp_xxxx"). E.g., I miss the feature to add users via SQL
(the "sp_adduser" in MS-SQL Server) - yes, there-s an API-call to do
this, but I can't get the API-calls to work by Visual Basic (that's
the language I use), even if I'm not a newbie calling DLL's from VB.
I understood that it was easy to work with all API's from Delphi, but
Firebird has no more to be related to Borland environments, and each
developer should have the chance to get it's work don as easy as
possible - that's why I'm asking for tasks done inside Firebird, like
the one I've mentioned before.

> > use, but also periodically updating 100.000 records or more, or

exporting a

> > million records with hardly perceptible impact for other users.

Wow, that sounds good! ;)

Best regards,
Paul