ksoft1 wrote:

> I'm looking for a new light weight database to deploy with some
> desktop software. My biggest concern is support for multiple
> simultaneous connections to the database while keeping the database
> installation and administration out of the user's way. I'm using
> SQLite right now and many users are putting their database files on
> network mapped drives. It works great for single user access but as
> soon as more than one person attaches to that database the performance
> slows to unusable.
>
> Ideally I'd like every installation of the software to maintain a
> server that other workstations could connect to so any install could
> be the server (seems like that would be less headache for users).

I disagree, if all those are on your lan, then have a single centered
server managed by you, and ust let the users cerate their databases on
the single server.

If you are distributing the software, I would put it in to packages
1.) Server part, to be installed on a server on your lan by the sysadmin
bla bla bla
2.) Client part, to be installe don you machine and will connect to a
previously installed server, bla bla bla.

The ordinary user has no power/knowledge to install a database server
(IMHO) it can just break other software packages that relies on a
specific FB database version, be it minor or major than what you provides.

> I'm
> reading about FireBird's embedded server and it sounds like what I'm
> looking for except for one (very large) thing.
>
> "But you should be aware that you cannot access single database from a
> number of the embedded servers simultaneously, because they have
> SuperServer architecture and hence exclusively lock attached databases."
>
> Just to make sure I understand that properly that means it's *not*
> going to do what I want, and allow other machines to connect remotely
> to the database. Right?
>

Right.

Just one user will access the datase at a time. No multi-user
connections with embedded server.

> The "real" server version of FireBird looks great but I hope to keep
> installs of my software to a single installer and do all the database
> installation and configuration automatically. I think I'd be asking
> for trouble if I required users to install FireBird separately.
>

Firebird it an extremelly compact database server, with a dozen (or so)
files that need to be installed over., you could use the provided
scripts passing the "silent" (very-silent or somthing like it) parameter
and the user will not even notice that a database server are being
installed.

The problem would be if the user would have a version of firebird
already installed. then you will have trouble

You could adapat the Firebird Innoscript setup to be merged with your
installation, but I really don't think it would be a good thing, that
are a lot of things realted to installing a "server software" tha could
lead to broke other applications.

> Thanks to all for any information!
>
> --
> - Mitchell
>
>

see you !

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