Hi,

At February 7, 2004, 06:02, Werner F. Bruhin wrote:

> Wouldn't want to contradict and/or argue with Helen, BUT if I were you
> I would make sure to setup a test environment with at least 30 clients
> and go crazy on it, while on average you might only have 15 stations,
> when it counts you will have 33 stations working - AND at this point
> the system has to fly!

I have to agree. What needs to be done is proper load testing.

> The test should help you and your company to determine what kind of
> server configuration you need to have and to ensure that anything you
> can tune on Firebird is correctly tuned for the heavy load of 30 plus
> clients.

I would compare between using FB SS and FB CS, either on Windows
and/or Linux. The system would have a fast processor(or processors if
using FB CS on Windows) and enough RAM(1GB at least). Also consider
using switched network hubs, instead of non-switched hubs, this will
help in the network traffic.

I have a customer with 22 concurrent clients with FB SS 1.5 on a
Windows P4 3Ghz 1GB RAM. And, he is very satisfied with the
performance, because the response is practically immediate.

Also on a LAN, a sub second response by the application for a POS is
usually enough. On a slower network connection(10Mbps and less), the
response by the application shouldn't be more than 2-3 seconds. And do
realize that I'm referring to the application and not solely on the FB
connection time, since your application might be doing more than one
DML statement to perform a certain task.

--
Best regards,
Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)