Helen Borrie wrote:

> At 16:19 9/10/2008, Julian wrote:
> ...
>
>> Helen, you said it'd be good to know what I'm doing to answer my
>> questions. Well I have a single un-dedicated computer running many
>> applications on it that will be collecting sensory data from devices
>> connected to the motherboard. Because the DBMS will not be the only
>> thing running on the computer, the DBMS must have a small memory
>> footprint. I am hoping it won't use more than 200MB, or 500MB
>> including some cache space.
>
> On 32-bit systems no application can use more than 2 GB of

memory. So, if there are hundreds of connections, the potential for
fatality is higher for SS than for Classic. If Firebird is competing
with a lot of other stuff that chomps memory then you shorten your options.

>
> ...

You can infer this from Helen's post, but as an example with
typical(?) parameters you have:
PageSize 8KB
CacheSize 8000 pages
This database will use about 64MB RAM (when open). Plus a small
amount (2MB) for each conection.
If you open (connect to) another database with the same PageSize and
CacheSize, it will use another 64MB.
As Helen said, RAM requirements for sorts are additional.

--
Aage J.