Hello André,

My first point would be to ignore future features. This means that
features in FB 2 and MySQL 5 are not for the presentation except as a
5 minute future directions consideration.

I do not care if MySQL supports triggers etc in beta software. Until
it becomes a feature of a standard release, you can not consider it as
meeting any business requirements for triggers etc.

** Please correct me if any of this information is out of date. I do
not see these points as a criticism of MySQL. MySQL makes sense in
many cases. It is fast as a web backend and is well supported,
particularily coupled in LAMP. It is also heading in the right
direction as far as features go, but there are some pretty major gaps
still. **

Points that most people do not realise:

1. MySQL is NOT free for commercial use.
2. Can you safely backup a live MySQL db without third party
commercial software?
3. Crash recovery. With FB it is instant. With MySQL, you have to wait
for the log to finish processing.
4. ACID compliancy (this should really be point 1)
5. REALLY simply client install, a single small dll in the application
folder and a single port open on the server.
6. Triggers, Stored Procedures, Cascading foreign key constraints

An interesting read is one that compares Interbase to MySQL. Obviously
IB 7 has some performance monitoring stuff that FB still lacks, but
much of it is just as applicable to Firebird.

http://www.borland.com/resources/en/pdf/white_papers/ib_vs_MySQL.pdf

Hope that helps

Adam