Noel Cosgrave wrote:

>Yes, it is OT, and I would have replied to you directly if I could, so as to
>keep the signal to noise ratio in the group on the right side of good.
>
>As a DB developer, I use both Firebird and PostgreSQL, and I consider that
>each has it's niche. I have to agree that in terms of documentation,
>PostgreSQL is streets ahead. However, why not take something positive from
>such comments and use them as a basis for building a better Firebird in the
>future? For what it is worth, I have issues with the way PostgreSQL works,
>and in particular the way table inheritance is implemented.
>
>Anyway, I'm curious. Do you care to enumerate those features that FB has had
>for a long time that have only recently been introduced to PostgreSQL (apart
>from native Win32 capability)?
>
>Noel
>
>

Noel,

I am not a FB developer and I would love FB has as much features, be as
much fast, easy to use and deploy and stable as possible :-) What I have
now is ok for me, but of course I like it to evolve.

I have a brife read on the release notes of PG 8.1 I will enumerate some
features that FB/IB has for a long time:

2 phase commit
Bitmap indices (read the indices map the pages that has candidates, and
then read the data pages on order to minimize the I/O)
Combined indices bitmaps to narrow down the data pages that needed to be
fetched, combine multiple indices to "make" a composite index on the fly
avoiding a lot of multi-column indices.
Use index for MAX, MIN queries.

see you !

--
Alexandre Benson Smith
Development
THOR Software e Comercial Ltda
Santo Andre - Sao Paulo - Brazil
www.thorsoftware.com.br