Re: [cobalt-developers] Does anyone use or care about Interbase?

[Keith Davis <cache@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Kevin Schaefer wrote:
> 
> Does anyone use or care about Interbase?

LOL!! I love the way you worded that! I've wondered the same thing.

I haven't used it yet but have a contract in progress which will require
it or some other open source Oracle-class DB. 

Interbase's lack of use is not necessarily a reflection on it's
capabilities. It has been open source for about a year so there are less
online help resources for it than MySQL and others. 

But whether to use it or something like MySQL is not a coin toss or
limited to php/perl interfaces. These two DBs in particular are designed
for very different types of use and using one where the other should
have been used will have adverse outcomes. MySQL is an excellent
speed-demon "analytical" database used to display fairly static data
that is updated infrequently or only through controlled channels, such
as from a legacy database. Interbase is an "operational" database. It
has write-lock/read-passthrough record locking and a unique snapshot
rollback for transactional integrity. If you have "balanced entries"
such as where a "debit" in one field requires a "credit" to another, you
need this type of feature. However, these highend features do come at a
cost in server resources and speed. 

If there are any Postgres users here who have also tried Interbase, I'd
like to hear from you offline. I can't decide....

keith