On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 6:19 PM, burmair <YahooSpam@...> wrote:

> --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Timothy Madden"
> <terminatorul@...> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 4:16 PM, burmair <YahooSpam@...> wrote:
>> > --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, "Martijn Tonies"
>> > <m.tonies@> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> ...In terms of performance, is it faster to do as much as
> possible in a
>> >
>> >> > single transaction (or maybe a few "chunks"), or is it
> essentially the
>> >> > same if each update is performed in its own transaction?...
>> >>
>> > ...You could think of my application as
>> > a REALLY big spreadhsheet, with Firebird as the persistence layer.
> ...
>

[...]

>
> I think I can reduce this to a simple question: in general, is a
> single large transaction or a lot of smaller transactions
> significantly (or even noticeably) faster, and if so, what Firebird
> parameters might be relevant?
>

Sorry I am no Firebird expert.
Generally (databases or not) the more, the better !
ForcedWrites on will defenetly affect a 'lot of smaller transactions'
that happen to be much smaller than what the OS can currently
cache.

If you really can not perform enough updates atomically perform
as many as you can and instruct your engine/application/component
/library etc so that it is able to pickup pending (but unfinished)
updates on your data structure on sight (at every access) and either
finalize or discard them.

I hope you get my idea.

Can someone who knows Firebird internals better shed some light
on its internal transaction setup and finalization ?

Thank you,
Timothy Madden