Bill,
we have been running what in our understanding was a "huge" mixed
dBase/Delphi 7 application until 2006. DBFs until 2004, then switched
to Firebird for data, then replaced (nearly) all code by C#/.net.

When the performance of an application on a well equipped Classic
Server is worse or even much worse than on a weak SuperServer which
also runs RDP sessions, then definitely something is wrong in the
total application setup.

From 2004 to 2006 we have been using dBase/BDE to access a
ClassicServer 1.5.2 on a 4GB XEON. Even when the CPU runs at 70% and
there virtually is no RAM left, any query sent from a 2012 client
machine still runs much faster on the CS than on a locally installed
SuperServer.

There are people who can help you improving your application setup, to
get a huge performance boost, but it most likely requires some changes
in code and attitude.
The weakest among many weak points in using dBase/BDE as frontend for
SQL databases is the lack of a good datagrid. dBase/BDE requires
constant read/write connections and a lot of silly indexes to work
smoothly.

I think this stuff does not really belong here, but there is a
specialized Newsgroup for this: news.dBase.com, group "SQL-Servers".
You don't need a login and password there. You will meet several
people who are using dBase/BDE/Firebird. You will get step-by-step
help there to improve the Firebird experience.

> Thanks for the information. In regards to the Windows 2003 Server
> running RDP, it is running Firebird Superserver 2.1.3 32-bit. What I
> have noticed is it only uses 1 CPU and it is running at 60-100%
> utilization. In regards to the dbase Plus programs, there are some
> dbase files used in conjunction with the firebird files. We have
> experimented with a Windows 2008 Server, 64-bit with 8gb RAM, dual
> E5430 XEON processors and Firebird 2.5.2 64bit. Firebird utilized
> the multiple CPUs and the Utilization never went above 19%, but the
> performance was worse. We also encountered frequent not-responding
> messages during program execution. The screen goes white. There is
> no certain pattern to the not responding messages and in some cases
> the program ends normally, but in a few cases, the program ends
> without completing. If you run the same programs from a workstation
> with firebird 2.5.2 client-only install, they run properly, but run
> much slower. The test workstation is an Intel I5-661 with 4gb of memory and Windows 7 32-bit.

> --- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, André Knappstein <Knappstein@...> wrote:
>>
>> If you have enough know-how to manage all the basic linux stuff, then
>> go with a linux system. If you don't then better use windows.
>>
>> But something else needs your attention (or mine *g*).
>> Are you using StoredProc objects in dBPlus 2.6 to deal with stored
>> procedures in Firebird?
>> If so you should be warned, there is an undocumented bug in dBase
>> that - only on XEON systems - leads to exceptions in the dBase
>> StoredProc object. The bug persists in the freshly released dBase plus
>> 8.
>>
>> If your application experience is fine with RDP sessions, then keep
>> it. Never change something you are satisfied with!
>> If you will go real client/server, you might get a huge improvement,
>> because a lot of workload is transmitted to the quite
>> potential workstations. Depending on how complex your GUI stuff is,
>> this can render a huge performance gain for the server, which in turn
>> can much better use the power for the database stuff.
>> But if your implementation is not too clean, you also might
>> experience the opposite!
>> 2.6.2 still is firmly tied to the BDE, which means you need a special
>> approach to use dBase as front end for *any* SQL server backend.
>>
>> So far you only needed changes in pixels to go over the wire.
>> Full client/server would also mean that the data you operate on will
>> have to go over the wire.
>> You better make sure that data is as small as you really need.
>>
>> Typical dbase/BDE behaviour is: create many many many indexes with the
>> poorest of selectivity *and* doing a full table select as often as
>> possible. This will break your neck in client/server.
>>
>>
>>
>> > We are trying to determine the best platform for Firebird SQL
>> > 2.5.2. Our firebird databases are 40-60gb in size and are being
>> > accessed by dbase plus 2.6.2 programs. Currently we are running on
>> > Windows 2003 Server with dual Intel XEON E5430 quad-core processors
>> > and 8gb RAM. This server is being accessed with Windows Remote
>> > Desktop. We are in the process of replacing this server with a new
>> > server using 2 Intel XEON E5-2640 processors and 16gb of RAM. We are
>> > trying to determine whether we should go with Windows or Linux. We
>> > also want to consider client/server versus the current model we are
>> > using. We would use Intel I7-3770K processors with 8gb of ram for workstations.
>>
>>
>>