On Sun, May 8, 2011 at 6:52 AM, Randall Sell <randallsell@...> wrote:

> ...  In the early
> days, the people working on the optimizer assumed that database designers
> knew what they were doing, and would use indexes even if they seemed
> unpromising.  Over time, that assumption has been scaled back, and is
> likely to change with different versions of Firebird.
>
> What a polite way of say DB developer's are getting a bit dumberer :)
>

I try, at least sometimes. What is actually happening is that
relational databases
are becoming ubiquitous. At InterBase we had a target sale of $50K and wouldn't
think about anything less than $10K unless it was an add-on. So our new users
were spending $50K for software, maybe $200K for hardware, and they'd spend
several times that on the development team. And this was back when the dollar
was real money. So yes, the people designing databases these days have less
experience and less time to spend understanding the performance profiles of
different databases. And that's a good thing, even though it means that the
Firebird developers have to work harder to make the optimizer handle situations
that would not have come up 20 years ago.

Cheers,

Ann