---------- Original Message -----------
From: "judlian23" <jtb3f@...>

> Hi everyone,
>
> I'm asking out of curiosity and as a sanity check:
>
> What is it about firebird's implementation of B tree indexing that
> allows me create a database of arbitrary size and keep insert speeds
> constant? On just about every other relational database that uses B
> trees, I've had major scalability issues (when using a non clustered
> index).
>
> If anyone has any clue, I'd love to hear about it.
>
> Julian

------- End of Original Message -------

It would be difficult for anyone to explain why Firebird can perform better than
"other databases" without knowing exactly what problems you ran into, on what
platforms, and then researching how each of those work. But the documentation
for Interbase/Firebird might give you some insight, if you already have some
insight into the problems you've had elsewhere and why:

File structure:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_ods

Intro to indexing:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_expert1

Page types (detailed):
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_expert2

How index nodes are written (carefully):
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_expert3

Shrinking the database, page-reuse:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_expert6

More documentation on related topics can be found through that site. Perhaps you
can take that information and compare it with what's available from other
database products, and find your answer?

-Philip