--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, David Johnson
<johnson_d@c...> wrote:

> On Fri, 2005-08-12 at 21:33 +0000, Juan Jose Ochoa wrote:
> > The antivirus policy is a corporate policy and every computer in the
> > company must have it, unless I have a very good argument to take it
> > off. possible corruption, is a very good reason.
>
> The antivirus should only apply to executables and file that carry
> executable code. It should not have any business in the database data
> file unless you are storing executable code as data. I don't think it
> would cause corruption, but it would spend a lot of time, CPU, and I/O
> cycles scanning large data files and using resources to no benefit.
>

Some scanners sniff the TCP packets, and the OK delay can cause
timeouts etc. It can also exagerate the length of time transactions
are running, which is more likely to lead to lock contentions etc, so
performance doesn't just drop, on occasions it can drop exponentially.

Whether the AV can put some sort of read lock that FB doesn't like I
am not sure. I personally doubt it, but apparantly some people believe
copying the database can corrupt the source database (not just the
destination file). So if copying is a problem, I see no reason why
virus scanning is less of an issue.

Virus scanners also tend to get "excited" when files are changed, so
you may find it continuously scans the database. Even if your database
stores code, I still wouldn't have the virus scanner on it. Instead I
would have a separate machine that downloads each blob then scans it,
using events to detect changed blobs.

If there is no one using email, web, word or outlook etc on the
database server, and there is a firewall blocking the network attacks,
then I see no reason to waste time and money on a AV license for that
machine.

Adam