ian.billups@... wrote:

>>I am the developer of a free program with over 2,000 users, currently
>>using Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere for its database. For various
>>reasons, I'm considering switching to Firebird.
>
>
> A fortnight ago, we moved a large web-based system, with a large number
> of users, to Firebird. We use FB 1.5.2 Classic on a multi-CPU Windows
> 2003 server, and administer it using InterBase Expert.
>
> It's early days yet, so my experience should not be considered typical.
> But I can say that so far: i) we've had no database corruption; ii) once
> we'd re-designed our indexes and queries, performance has been good;
> iii)
> garbage collection causes us some problems--extended and uncontrollable
> periods when the database works very hard; iv) the database has hung on
> several occasions, and sometimes refused to accept new connections--we
> suspect these problems may be caused by IBE rather than Firebird; v)
> I've
> found this email list very helpful :-)

These problems mirror onces I've found. You have to figure out a way to
handle garbage collection nicely or it will cause problems which hurts
the zero admin side of things. Also you likely need to change your
indexes or Firebird will make bad choices and queries will be slow. So
far I've found it less rock solid than Sybase ASA personally though I
have high hopes that Firebird or Vulcan will get there!

--
Brad Pepers
brad@...