Hello Kjell,

> We're using Firebird 2.1 with UTF8 and ISO-8859-1 and WIN-1252 data on
> Windows systems. We do a lot of ad hoc queries that might be rather
> complex and use subqueries and joins in complicated ways. Indexing might
> not always be approprieate for what we want to do, and so we run the
> risk of accidently writing very slow-running queries from time to time.
>
> We've been using FlameRobin (latest version) but it has a few very
> annoying glitches:
>
> 1. Cant cancel a long-running query without opening a separate instance
> of FlameRobin and deleting the statement from the new monitoring tables.

If the Firebird developers make this available via the API, like InterBase
did, it would be much easier than running a query on the monitoring tables.

> 2. Can only execute one query at a time - no concurrency/multithreading.

Database Workbench has that.

> 3. No support for multiple result grids (need to open separate query
> windows for each query).

None of the Firebird tools have that.

> 4. Fails to handle UTF8 identifiers correctly in various places
> (messages, table/column tree, ...).

I can say that Database Workbench has some limitations in handling
unicode data as well, partly caused by IBObjects.

Hopefully, with Delphi 2009, this can be solved in a next major release
instead of having to jump through hoops with all sorts of 3rd party
components and so on.

> So, what alternatives would you recommend?
>
> Commercial tools are fine - we'll compare prices as well as
> features/functionality, stability etc.
>
> My colleague has had a quick look at Database Workbench but he wasn't
> very impressed. I'm interested to hear other's opinions on this tool,
> and also interested in comparisons between your recommended tool and
> FlameRobin as well as DB Workbench.

Sorry to hear that, I do wonder what you expect then.

> If the same tool can also support SQL Server 2008, it would be a plus,
> but not required.

Database Workbench does that ;-)

> Links to relevant resources (reviews, tool lists etc) are also welcome.

Martijn Tonies
Database Workbench - tool for InterBase, Firebird, MySQL, NexusDB, Sybase
SQL Anywhere, Oracle & MS SQL Server
Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com
My thoughts:
http://blog.upscene.com/martijn/
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