Added my comments below.

Kurt.

> --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Thomas Løcke wrote:
>

<SNIP>

>
> I've thought about moving the three databases to a new multicore
> Linux server with Firebird installed. I would then convert the two
> Microsoft Access databases to Firebird and still access them using
> ODBC.
>
> My questions are:
>
> Is the Firebird ODBC driver stable? I've noticed the latest versions
> are considered BETA, and the non-BETA versions are quite old. Which
> one should I opt for?

I've had no issues with the ODBC Drivers for Firebird. Using
ODBC/ADO/etc adds quite a bit of overhead, but if your application is
trim enough, it shouldn't matter.

> Is Firebird suitable for web access? I will be accessing the
> database from a PHP powered web application situated on a dedicated
> web server (Apache). The current solution where I access the
> Microsoft Access database using ODBC is by no means fast, so I'm
> not spoiled.

PHP on Apache is what we use to access our DB. It is solid and we've
never had an issue. The Firebird/Interbase functions are all ready in
PHP and only need to be configured.

> Classic or Super? I've read the papers on the subject, and it seems
> to me that I should go for Classic, seeing as I would like to fully
> utilize a multicore system. Is this assumption correct?

Others can answer this better than I can, but I use Classic even on
Windows. Classic spawns a new executable for each request while
SuperServer spawns threads. SS will be better for managing resources
on Windows systems. Classic is the old UNIX fork methodology...

> How important is RAM? The databases aren't very large (a few hundred
> megs total). On the Windows server it seems the Firebird instance
> never grows beyond 25-30 MB. I know from a few MySQL servers I run
> that RAM is God. The more the better. It seems this might not be the
> case for Firebird?

Not necessarily. Our applications acquire time sensitive data and
purge that data regularly after a couple days. Our DBs run from
50-200M. We run on a 1.0 GHz Via processor with 512M RAM and have
never had a single performance related issue. Understand that there
are VERY few applications/services running on our system; it is
basically Windows Embedded.

> How important is harddrive speed? IDE, SATA, SCSI?

We use 7200 RPM disks IDE...no problems. We're scaling and going to
SCSI so we can use a pizza box instead of the small footprint systems
we have now.

> Intel or AMD? I personally have no preference, except I tend to
> cheer for the little guy. :o)

No opinion here.

> OS suggestions? I plan on using Slackware, as all my other servers
> are running Slack (except of course for the one Windows server
> discussed above).

Our migration path is Ubuntu.