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Posted
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CmdrTaco
from the come-one-come-all dept.
Dacta writes "At last, Interbase 6.0 is available (with source) for download.
The announcement is here, with dowload mirrors in Chicago, Herndon and San Jose
You may also be interested in the licence - basically it is MPL with "Interbase" substituted for Mozilla/Netscape."
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Interesting...the beta has been out for only a few months and already he has uptime stats for a year? Gotta get me one of those time machines!
In previous posts, somebody mentioned that there was little support for backups. Well, from what I learned last week, gbak allows for hot backups as well as transportability of databases between machines.
Replication technology is also available, so there should be little reason for any downtime next to a nuclear strike, IMHO.
Also, the performance stats run a few months ago were based upon the classic architecture rather than the super server architecture. I'd like to see those stats run again using the released version of IB 6. I think the results will be most interesting.
I've had IB 6 beta running on a lowly 486 for several months. Granted, it doesn't get exercised very frequently or heavily, but even this version is pretty stable and is always there when needed.
Greetings, Yeah... Uh. Geez, since I did the port to Netware that got released, I should comment... The Netware version has gotten a lot better since then? *chuckle*
Seriously though, I'm really curious (and will find out soon!) if the ENTIRE thing is there, or if it's just the Unix + Windows code that's been released. It'd be fascinating if you could actually (with the right tools) go ahead and build it for VMS, or Netware (not that *I* ever want to touch that OS again), or any of the other OS's it was originally released for.
Anyhow, a few quick comments on Interbase, from someone who was deep in the guts of the code...
The source code was desperately ugly when I looked at it, and I was WAY too junior to even think about cleaning it up... I hope that they've gone ahead and cleaned it up before releasing it.
As databases go, it kicked MAJOR butt when I was working there, but they sold it as a 'departmental' RDBMS. They very clearly were NOT going after 'enterprise' level contracts. On the other hand, that may have been a 'choose your battles wisely' strategy.
As for 'trust', well, the entire source code for Interbase was stored in an Interbase DB... 'marion', they called it. It was a pretty good version control system, and it definitely showed that they trusted their own DB one hell of a lot.
For SQL conformance, well, how many open source DB projects do you know of who actually HAD developers on the ANSI commitee? They tracked it pretty closely. It wasn't perfect as I recall, but it was pretty darn close.
The 'SuperServer' was something they were talking about back when I worked there (just pre-5.0), which was basically a HEAVILY threaded version with a lot of performance tuneups. It was one of the things that excited the serious DB developers there, and in the bleaker moments of Borland I wondered if those guys would ever get to do the really cool stuff they wanted to do. I'm REALLY glad that they did!
Frankly, it's a good DB, it's stable, it's been around forever (quite a bit longer than either MySQL or PostgresSQL!), it had some truly devoted developers at Borland, who LOVED database development. It was a second tier database (behind Oracle and Informix), but on that tier system MySQL and PostgresSQL never even show up I'm afraid...
It's always been a very developer-friendly DB, and I will DEFINITELY snag a copy and use it myself, although I do a lot of stuff that wants indexed TEXT fields... *sigh*
If you have any interest at all, don't hesitate, go check it out! You won't be disappointed, I believe.
If PostgreSQL has a better query optimizer, I think I know of one ex-Interbase developer who's going to have a SERIOUS conniption fit. They were doing really good optimizations on the queries back 6+ years ago, before (I *think*) Postgres even HAD SQL. (Disclaimer, I used to work for Borland/Interbase back around the Delphi (which used IB as a backend) through 4.0 release timeframe, and I distinctly recall them talking about their query engine with some competent pride.)
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I will say I'd be mightily surprised.
SQL has nothing to do with the relational model as defined by Codd. Other than that it is one of the many query languages defined to work with implementations of the relational model. It turned into the most popular supplanting Sequel, Quel, QBE, etc. But popularity has nothing to do with essentiality.
In fact you could make a case that there are no true RDBMSs at all. Most, if not all, lack some features or have added shortcuts to the pure relational model. E.g. the addition of TOP to the SELECT statement in MS SQL. You can only have TOP if you supported relational sequences. As far as I am aware sequences are not part of the relational model. Besides which MS does not provide a rigorous definition of TOP in terms of the relational model.
TOP can only make sense given an ordering such that no duplicates can occur. From that sequence you can take the first N tuples. Since SELECT is defined without ordering or distinctness requirements how can TOP be explained? Within the relational model that know nothing about, not recorgnizes, orderings implied by an implementation?
Another thing are relations. I believe Codd included the notion of domains in his model. That would indicate valid relations/joins can only be made on keys of the same domain. In practice you can darned well join anything with whatever you fancy whenever you want. Though it can be defended I don't think it is what was intended.
On the insert speed of PostGreSQL, use the COPY command, it works a lot faster. (I get in 20 Mins with copy for what takes hours with individual inserts).
If you can be hurt by others commercializing your software then the choice is obvious.
GPL doesn't prevent commercializing of software.
A number of times I've seen the "if anyone's going to make money off my software it's going to be me" argument in favor of the GPL. Meanwhile, Red Hat (just one example) makes a bunch of money selling GPL'ed software.
GPL legally requires the source code be made available, but it doesn't otherwise prevent commercialization by third parties.
Actually I don't think this is much of a concern. Open source developers tend to work on projects that they find interesting. I think that these types of projects will attract different developers. However, I think that people working on the kernel and people working on the *BSD kernels are taken from the same pool. So, by following that logic, this may impact PostgreSQL, MySQL, and mSQL. However, I don't think that this is much of a concern anyway, as each of those products has a company backing them up and providing developers.
"While I'm here, did Slashdot miss [Red Hat]'s GPL release of Source Navigator?"
No, they just chose to ignore it. I've submitted the story.
This shows an extreme degree of cluelessness in the Slashdot editorial suite. Source Navigator is probably one of the most significant releases of the year for kernel hackers, let alone regular application developers. Well, it just shows you the difference between a journalist and a true geek.
Moderate this down as usual - for some reason this always seems to happen when I criticize Slashdot's editorial policy. --
having been working on getting a web-based commercial product converted over to linux/interbase for the last 3 months, i have this to say:
the database is nice, but the JDBC client for linux has given us nothing but problems. first it wouldn't talk to the database, second it still wouldn't, and now it finally does, but doesn't support what JDBC says it should (rs=st.getResultSet() after st.exec() returns a null?)
we have finally given up and are paying big money for Oracle and Oracle people...
and as far as I can see, there's no source code for the client (yet).
ok - i take that back - a third check reveals the source code for the client is further up the page... sadly, having already wasted so much time getting it to work without the source over the previous months, i no longer have time to hack on it with the source:-(
Incompatible with what exactly? Not with BSD, thats for sure.
As for GPL everything is incompatible with it, if you believe the zealots anyway, the so called compatible licenses merely allow sublicensing... in themselves they are not compatible, the code has to change license.
Interbase's license will play with any license which isnt viral: "You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Code."
I think the GPL has a questionable wording in the paragraph which makes it viral BTW... "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program" linking to an unmodified library is not modification in my book.
Correction: VARCHAR(1024) will use only the space needed for actual data, you were writing about CHAR datatype... OTOH, maximum size of index entry is 255 bytes, so you cannot index VARCHAR(1204) either, but I doubt it is necessary. I guess you had full text search in mind ? If so, you have to develop your own system for this.
That's what they used to say about minicomputers and later microcomputers. Sure, it has way less market share. But hardly less funcionality. In some regards it can probably still be considered to be more advanced (e.g. versioning engine) than the others.
Mini's, supermini's, microcomputers and LANs did eat into mainframe territory. There is a decided possibility Interbase can now eat harder into the market share kept by those vendors. Why not? Look at what MS did with their bought SQL Server.
But I do realize mainframes are still around and doing very well. Likewise will the mainframes in the RDBMS market.
Since you're good at Interbase, maybe you can help the fast decision makers amongst us.
I used to say go for MySQL if you need speed and do not expect too much concurrency, but go for ProgreSQL if you need transactions and complex SQL queries.
So according to you, what would be the main criteria for a quick decison regarding Interbase?
At first glance, this seems to be going to extremes. After all, when was the last time the number 128 changed to, say 127? Or 129? Odds are, most numbers won't change values on us...
On second thought, though, what about the social and political ramifications? Suppose that we wake up one morning and find that 128 has been declared "hate speech"? (It was nice knowing you, 128!) Now what do we do with the zillions of lines of code that have to be changed, in order to avoid jail time for "hate speech" or some other felony? The answer, of course, is to abstract these potentially hateful numbers as #define statements so that we can change them later to politically approved numbers. Like "the number formerly known as 128". Or "127 plus 1".
IMHO, the end user isn't usually interested in source code. I think that the MPL just makes it much easier for the people developing the product. They usually don't have an obligation to make software for people anyway. If they are doing it to provide a product for free, they should control it how they want.
Interbase burns. I don't have any nice stats for you, but we run it on a fairly low power server, with a small user base. It is pretty solid - about every 3 months it falls over; recovery is a 15 minute job (for an 85Mb DB) and _nothing_ is lost. Comparable queries to a MS SQL server machine take about the same time, only the SQL server was running on a machine with twice as much RAM and twice as many processors. BTW, Delphi and C++ Builder (and Kylix, presumably) now support native Interbase DB components; this eliminates BDE/ODBC overhead, and provides better transaction isolation. Nice one, and thanks a lot, Borland!
That's ridiculous. The GPL is restrictive. The restriction is to keep source access to anyone who purchases the product and to keep GPLed code GPLed. If that's not a restriction then you need to go check the dictionary.
Whether it is a good license or not depends on the software and use but please don't go around telling people that the GPL is not restrictive.
Wow! Thanks, Borland. I'm going to enjoy playing with this tonight.
I wonder how this is going to affect PostgreSQL and MySQL? It'll be interesting to see if it sucks developers away or not. I suspect it won't, as database specialists are few and far between...
And while I'm here, did Slashdot miss Redhat's GPL release of Source Navigator (Cygnus's IDE)? Hmmmm... I don't think I'm going to get any sleep tonight.:)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR "All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Well, The City of New York Department of Health [borland.com] is using it, with the size of the database adding 5 Gb in a year. Don't know if it's enough for you, though.:)
Seriously, after getting those indexes right and designing your relations with care, it should be fast enough.
I've searched the site for 10 minutes and have not been able to find anything so can someone please provide a link or answer how much it'll cost for a support license for DB that will be used by 20 to 30 employees who will all be accessing it over a local intranet via a web interface?
I am working on my final project for school which involves writing a project management application for a local business and unfortunately all the current RDBMS costs for Windows are in thousands of dollars (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2). We do not plan to support the software after the project is done so a support license is necessary.
PS: I didn't mention mySQL because it isn't an RDBMS. Read the definition of an RDBMS [whatis.com] as well as that of a relational database [whatis.com] or simply read C.J.Date's reviews [intelligen...rprise.com] of E.F. Codd's seminal 1970 work on relational DBs. Here's part two [intelligen...rprise.com] and part three [intelligen...rprise.com] of C.J. Date's work for anyone who's interested.
Nobody can tell us "in no uncertain terms". But let's have a close look at the current situation.
What we were looking forward to was a scenario (fairly reassured by public statements by Dale Fuller, over the months) in which an infrastructure was to be set up to ready InterBase for open source and ongoing technical supervision. The actual work of presiding over the creation of a sustainable business model around InterBase-related support, distribution, training and marketing was put into the hands of Ann Harrison, who was contracted to achieve that by whatever means possible. Markus Kemper and (I think) Wayne Ostiguy carried on with InterBase product support for Inprise's existing customers with Markus putting in long hours of voluntary time into the beta testing and support that you have all witnessed over the past 6 months.
Charlie Caro and Brett Bandy have put in a similar mix of paid and voluntary time in bringing the beta forward to release stage. Again, both have been very obvious donors of own time to helping those who have helped themselves to the betas.
Ann has been working the long hours, too, along with Paul Beach and Matt Larsen, to design and implement the business model for the support company and negotiate unendingly and frustratingly with Dale Fuller over the conditions for selling the operation to the new owner. Ann has unremittingly kept up her insightful problem support in this list. Paul has been actively marketing Interbase services and setting up business relationships with other companies, to be brought into reality once the operation passed out of Inprise hands.
Paul and Matt have remained unpaid throughout the entire time.
An important factor in the readying phase has been to get an ODBC driver. Originally, this work was outsourced. When Fuller closed down the InterBase operation in December, that contract was terminated. As many of you may know, Jim Starkey (the original architect of InterBase) stepped up and developed a driver which was in beta at the end of last month, the promised deadline for the handover of the operation to ISC and for releasing the source code and the full IB 6 release. Jim was not paid, either.
Out here in the community, several of us have been involved in the development of the InterBase community, through free support, providing documentation, running discussion lists, doing tools development, building networks around an open source InterBase, active beta testing. I've tried as best I could to keep information as up-to-date as possible, through the interbase2000 web site and the lists.
Given the problems that the ISC team have had to deal with in their negotiations with Inprise, some non-technical details haven't filtered out here to the public arena. We've gone as far as we could go without compromising the team. You know who we are - "the bad apples", as someone dubbed us.
For those of us who are passionate about the survival of InterBase and chose to be proactive about it, it has all been worth doing. Despite the delays, the whole handover and freeing of InterBase from Inprise shackles has made it every inch "worth it".
Until yesterday. First, Dale Fuller's statement on the early-morning conference call that the InterBase company probably wouldn't be spun off after all. Next, the releasing of the source and binaries by Inprise itself and the rewording of the IPL to remove all references to ISC as the owner of the assets. And, as soon as we began downloading from the Inprise site, it was clear that Inprise was keeping some crucial pieces back.
Fuller has put an irrational, outrageous price on the pieces - the test suites, documentation and the build environment, along with the trademarks, domain names and what-have-you. Who will not pay the price shall not receive. Technically speaking, these pieces are useless to Inprise, who ceased development of Interbase seven months ago. But withholding them gives them leverage to try and force acceptance of their outrageous ransom.
So - we resort to the fallback strategy. Now that the source code is openly available and the IPL is formally and very publicly sanctioned by Inprise, there is nothing to prevent anyone from forming an "ISC". Technically and economically, to be able to buy the ransomed pieces at a fair price would give such a company a kickstart. Technically and economically, that company could also reconstruct everything from scratch, fork mainstream development under new trademarks and really make InterBase Inprise-free forever.
This isn't just the newest bright idea. It has been Plan B ever since the day Fuller publicly announced the spin-off plan and its intention to kick off the operation with a 29% VC stake. The stumbling block of course is the price. If the condition of the deal is that the buyer has to spend R & D dollars and then give the product away, how can a company commit to a debt that is hugely out of proportion to the value of the purchase and expect to sustain itself? Fuller's ransom offers no resort except self-destruction. It puts the buyer company in the position of having to devour its own flesh.
It wasn't always Plan B. During the six weeks' delay between Fuller's New Year announcement that InterBase was going OS and his mid-February announcement of the spin-off plan, it was Plan A.
Now it is Plan A again. I reiterate what I wrote on the web site - to do this it needs (1) venture capital - that is, sufficient investment and financial commitment to get this thing moving and cash flowing. Equally, (2) it needs customers and, specifically, your commitment to bring that business to the company. Ann, Paul and Matt have spent 6 months putting together a business plan that can work. An expert and devoted community has coalesced around that core. We have the people. We have the source. We would all wish for the cooperation of Inprise but we can do without it if we have to.
MySQL's documentation is bad?? I always thought it was pretty good.
Interbase, on the other hand, looks sparse in the documentation department. There are no books available (one old hit [fatbrain.com] at FatBrain that was never published) and I cannot find anything online at www.interbase.com. There is a grassroots effort here [interbase2000.org] but there is no content!
I haven't installed the RPMs yet - anyone know if there is any documentation installed? I hope I don't have to read man pages to administer this thing.
So either the documents are still with the lawyers, or Dale Fuller has changed his mind.
Personally I hope ISC gets going, perhaps even with some borland ownership, as the original founders of interbase they are in a MUCH better position to support the product. And have supported the product through several poor owners including Borland.
Also after them investing 6months of hard work getting IB this far it would really piss them off if something doesn't happen along this line. And that would be pretty bad news for the product.
OK, call it "speculation" in stead of "theory"...:-)
I've seen some rather pissed-off posts on IB mailing lists today, for this very reason. And if it really were a case of Borland "ripping ISC off", then I'd be right there beside them, spewing venom.
But basically, I think it was, as you say, "the lawyers" who made them change their plans. You see, the plan of "first give away, then let the recipient (ISC) open it" implies that there is a monetary value to the code -- why else would a commercial entity like ISC want it? That's a legal no-no; Borland would just be giving their share-holders' money away.
Opening up source code, OTOH, is another thing entirely. Borland can do that, mumbling about "goodwill from the developer community" and intangible stuff like that, and carefully avoid ascribing any direct monetary value to the source code they're freeing up -- "giving away" -- to the whole community.
Normally, the company that does this would then be the one that tries to make at least some money from support, documentation, services like that. But there's nothing that says they'd have to; and, as someone pointed out in the mini-license-flamewar above, there's nothing to stop somebody else from doing it in stead.
See where I'm going with this? Yes, I think this was the only way they could do it -- give the code away not to a company, but "the community", to avoid lawsuits from share-holders. Then, when Borland just "doesn't happen to" go into the InterBase-support business, ISC can do so; they didn't get anything from Borland, but are using "the whole community's" open-sourced code.
Maybe I'm giving Borland too much of a "benefit of the doubt", here, I dunno, but I hope (and think) not... They've always been a developer-friendly company, in my experience. But I'll check the mailing lists again, later tonight (Finnish time) and get back to y'all.
Christian R. Conrad My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
That was a pretty revealing comment IMO, Php and Interbase both have awesome documentation.:) Now just what does Php need to be really useful?? A database of course
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
Well, first I'd like to say that I'm not good at Interbase, just to get that out of the way.
;-)
In answer to your question, though, here is a short summary of why you might find Interbase more appealing that MySQL.
a) Interbase has a high degree of SQL-92 compliance. This is very nice for portability and compatibility; it makes it easier to import and export databases and scripts that call SQL statements.
b) MySQL recently was GPL'ed, but they were still trying to charge for 'commercial use' up until that time. I think it took the looming InterBase release to force their hand; MySQL always had an, um, unusual licensing scheme.
c) InterBase supports some really cool features, including support for multi-dimensional arrays, triggers, stored procedures, event alerters, and shadowed databases. These features are incredibly advanced; they may not be necessary to your business now, but you might find them "useful" in the future.
Anyway, there are plenty of other things I could go into, but as I said before, I'm not that great at InterBase just yet. Give me a few weeks to tinker with it and I'll get back to you.
I agree with a lot of what you have said, these things get tricky when it gets to the legal tick tacks. I guess we'll all find out in the wash, but currently I'm very happy Borland has released the source. That I think was a real milestone for them and quenches my fear that some last minute problem (like selling it to someone else) was going to ruin interbase. <p> So full credit to Dale and Borland for releaseing interbase. <p> I also wish Ann and the rest in ISC the best of luck in getting to their finish post from here, although with the release they are part way there.
If you are paying Oracle, then you owe it to yourself to take a look at this robust, full-featured RDBMS. The features are there and the price is right.:-)
The documenation that is provided for earlier versions of Interbase (4 - 5.5) was actually pretty complete.
Since IB6 is a new animal from a new company, the effort seems to have been getting the program ready. Documentation seems a bit dated at the moment, but there seems to be an effort to remedy this deficiency.
There are references to sample code, utilites and support groups on the interbase website Interbase [interbase.com]
This license is even less restrictive than the GPL... It's not every day we get software of this quality under a license this non-restrictive. Lets all write to Borland and thank them, maybe it will send a message. If they got good feedback it could mean more quality open-source.
Isn't it interesting that the press release doesn't mention InterBase Corporation (www.interbase.com)? I suppose the delay was mainly due to problems with the new company since the software was finished already by end of June.
According to LWN, RMS was trying to persuade Debian that the QT licence was OK. They disagreed with him, so it's official: Debian is more anal about licenses than RMS!
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Yeah, I think the original poster reversed the licenses. BSD-style license are more free to the end-user/public domain while the GPL is more free to the developer(s). The main difference is that with a BSD style license, one can do almost anything with the source - it's almost like not taking the copyright at all. The GPL on the other hand restricts the usage of the code, allowing the developer more control, and therefore more freedom to do what he/she pleases with the source.
Depends entirely on your viewpoint and the circumstances. If you can be hurt by others commercializing your software then the choice is obvious. If you want any developer for any reason then the choice is equally easy. If you have a deep personal belief that all code should be and remain free then the choice is again easy.
GPLed software is not free in the anyone can do what he/she pleases view. It is free in the sense that no one can subvert it for his/her own public uses.
With (almost)truly free licenses like the BSD license the thing people seem to object to is the purpose of the license. You are allowed to make your project closed and commercial. This is not a drawback nor a feature. It is entirely dependant on your position and point of view. If you think all code should always be available then you of course dislike this license.
Software ultimately fulfills the needs of a customer. Sometimes that customer is the developer, other times it is end users, and sometimes it is both develoepr and users. I fail to see how the GPL is more free to the end user. The end user is not even involved with the code (maybe to compile it). It is however, sometimes, more *beneficial* to the end user. This is entirely dependant on having competent developers.
It seems to me that the vast majority of "Open" licenses are targeted almost entirely at developers. As others have said, the end user (unless a developer) doesn't care what the license is. They want a working product so they can get work done or have fun.
Finally, Interbase v6.0 is available to all: The developers and end users. Best of all, what used to cost over $10,000 a server license back in the early 90's can now be used freely. But, the best is that it does kick MySQL and all other wannabes asses big time. I high quality product for Windows, Linux, and Solaris. Great Job, Interbase Corp. I wish you the best of luck to survive and make enough money on the technical support.
Bet I was the first one to submit this story on Slashdot, but anyway, funny thing is that their license says you cannot use their trademark 'InterBase'. I'm pleased to see InterBase being Open Source, it probably 's got something to do with Kylix.
We've been running our stock trading system with Interbase for over four years, with great results and performance: 150 *heavy* simultaneous users, over 8000 avg daily financial transactions, over 800,000 avg daily db transactions on a midrange HP-UX machine, avg response times for interactive operations are sub-second (simultaneous with other heavy batch stuff).
Unfortunately, we *might* have to move over to Oracle because we're still not convinced that Borland takes Interbase seriously, and most big-iron development tools vendors aren't convinced either: they're *not* updating their support for Interbase (most still support up to Interbase 4.0C).
Let's see what develops in the open source community. I'm hoping that much of the functionality lacking in Interbase that commercial DBs already have will be integrated by "open sourcerers", and then we might not have to use Oracle:-).
Actually, Borland's cash cow is Delphi - not C++B In the Q2 results, Delphi/C++B made up 31% of revenues, JBuilder 23%. As the 31% is an aggregate, I'd say JBuilder is closer to being the "cash cow". Given that it was 18% in Q1, and combined with recent developments on the Java front (eg Mac OS X), it certainly will be before the year is out.
It would really be nice to see them open up some of their other great products, such as their compilers and IDE's. It would be nice to see them open these up, or at least port them to Linux
Interesting. Now that it's out people are having problems trying to build the thing. Apparently it has some weird conf tool.
Although everything you say is true I am afraind it has fallen behind in many ways. Even a cursory glance at a feature list shows that postgres has many many more features then IB. OTOH IB probably has the most imortant feature of all stability and speed. It will be interesting to see how many developers jump on and what they do with it. On my list of do it yesterday features are. Limit clause, nullif/coalesce, editable joins, better autoincrement support, longer object names, case insensitive collation, replication, clustering, raw device support. is that too much to ask for?:).
The O'Reilly MySQL book is great, so are some of the other third-party docs... I should have qualified that statement to say, the MySQL online docs and info that comes with MySQL is sorely lacking.
As you pointed out there are numerous good alternatives. I'd just rather have 'sparse' and well-written docs than the bramble of babblings that is the MySQL online docs.
I'm sure I'll get moderated down for this, but I have karma to burn. Hell, just to give all the misguided moderators something to do, I'll leave my +1 bonus turned on.
The above posting was not a troll. This message that I am posting now is off-topic. The person who moderated my above post down for being a Troll is a bozo.
I asked questions, and three different people were kind enough to put answers to my completely valid questions below my post. They could obviously tell that I had real concerns. However, the clueless moderator decided I was trolling.
By the way, asking "How much does the C library suck" was a completely valid question. Other vendors (I'm not going to mention any names, *cough*Oracle*cough*) have been known to have BADLY BROKEN libraries for making db calls via C. Oracle's library was responsible for many of the bugs in the database layer in Tivoli TME10, an enterprise management package now owned by IBM.
So, to all moderators: Think before you moderate. Don't use your points until after you've considered whether or not you're just being pissy, or whether a post has really said something interesting, insightful, or informative - I've seen plenty of bad up-moderating, too. And don't carry out personal vendettas. The post above this one should not have been moderated. This one should probably be moderated down as offtopic, and I suspect if anyone with points reads it, it will be.
Check it out: ftp://ftp2.interbase.com/pub/products/beta6.0/ib_b 60_doc.zip There's also a general clean-up of typos and errors underway as well as a whole book being written by the IBDI: http://www.interbase2000.com/ib_handbook.htm Baudtender
> Jim Starkey, the "Big Bad Wolf" of Interbase and original author claims to have invented the concept of a BLOB (binary large object) stored in a relational database.
It's quite a story, and you'll find at least 2 errors in the above sentence when you read about it:
Interbase also runs on Win98/NT. Unlike MS SQL, you can design/develop on those platforms, and deploy on any supported platform. This is truly great. Previous to ver 6, IB on Win98 would legally support up to 5 users. Don't know how this works now.
There is also the possibility this could have a direct negative impact on crappy MS ACCESS, once the ODBC drivers are stable. A real commercial quality RDBMS to deploy for those stuck in Win98/VB land (thankfully I am not).
The problem is that spinning off a separate company ("again!") is like the sheepherd crying out "Wolf!" too many times.
Even if the product and company does last another ten years, what will happen if nobody takes it seriously again?
Our migration (or not) to Oracle is very dependent on what happens in the next six months. If things don't change, we'll have to pay a gazillion dollars to change over and ensure the continuity of our business (hint, hint for Borland).
There is no per-user costs for Interbase 6.0. According to their new license [interbase.com], you are free [gnu.org] to distribute and modify the database.
Interbase does provide optional support contracts. Last I looked it was US$100 for 30 days of installation support, US$250 per support incident, or US$3150 per year for unlimited support.
Refer to Interbase.com [interbase.com] for more details.
by Anonymous Coward writes:
on Tuesday July 25, 2000 @07:32AM (#906888)
:)
/* these constants are purely idiotic; there's no point in having a predefined constant with no meaning, but that's Ed Simon the master programmer for you! */
An RDBMS is a program that lets you create, update, and administer a relational database. An RDBMS takes Structured Query Language (SQL) statements entered by a user or contained in an application program and creates, updates, or provides access to the database. Some of the best-known RDBMS's include Microsoft's Access, Oracle's Oracle7, and Computer Associates' CA-OpenIngres.
MySQL (notice the capital M) lets you create, update and administer a relational database through SQL statements. According to both your references, it is a full RDBMS.
You are probably referencing ACIDity [whatis.com], which can be achieved with a transaction logging RDBMS, and which is a completely different beast. Either you just experienced a brainfart after a long caffeine driven coding session, or you should have studied a bit harder.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Would love to see someone throw up even a seat of the pants review of the three open source databases that have been getting a lot of attention. Interbase, MySQL and PostrgreSQL. Would be great if it included a mix or performance, scalability information, and a look at the feature sets offered.
The event alerters are a way to communicate information to database clients. For example:
I have an alerter on the insert or update trigger of a particular table. Any application that listens to that alerter will get a notification when an insert or update of that table happens. This can be very useful. You don't need to keep polling the database when there are no changes.
Go to www.borland.com [borland.com], and take a look at the announcement. See the slogan? "The OPEN Source Database". Okay, you can argue that MySQL has only just gone GPL, and isn't really much of a database program. But what happened to postgresql [postgresql.org]? This kind of, uh, "marketing" does not inspire confidence.
Someday I hope the open source world will progress to the point where it will stop getting excited every time some corporation tosses a failing product over the wall.
Incidentally, from eavesdropping on the postgresql developer list, I gather that their take on interbase is that postgresql will be as good or better by around 7.1 or 7.2 (the current release is 7.0). I believe the only key feature postgresql is missing at the moment is outer joins.
(Warning, blatant religious evangelism follows.) Postgresql is BSD liscensed, and has a really good team of open source developers actively working on it, including Tom Lane and Bruce Momjian... (unlike Inprise, which is now in the position of trying to drum up community support using an MPL-style license).
Postgresql has been making rapid improvements over the last year or so (though it still has the worst name of any software project, ever...). Bruce Momjian has a book coming out about postgresql and the full text is available online [postgresql.org]. Commercial support for postgresql is available from places such as Great Bridge [greatbridge.com].
(And whatever you do, don't mention Perl in this thread, or you'll have the Python fanatics in here too.)
Dalton Calford has written Robots or agents that listen and react to IB events in different languages. This aspec tof Interbase is a potential goldmine for developers.
Dalton in a fit of immense generosity and goodwill has posted some other tips, tricks, musings here [interbase2000.org].
BTW a very poweful one two three punch is Delphi IBObjects, interbase or soon to be klyx, ibobjects, interbase.
One more thing. Have you downloaded the documentation yet? it ROCKS!. This is best documentation for a open source project I have ever seen (well maybe php is pretty awsome too).
Make no mistake this a serious contender for the database sweepstakes.
Well it's no Oracle but then what is? No clustering, no incremental backups, no raw device support, almost no tuning options (no really needed though), no JVM in the database etc. If you are not using the very high end features of Oracle switch otherwise you might need to stick with oracle.
Actually, I think the original post got it correct. When they said end-user, I think they meant the developers who end up receiving the modifications. Under BSD, no such modifications need ever be made available whereas under GPL, such modifications are mandatory if the binaries are distributed.
So, the GPL imposes more restrictions on a developer who wishes to modify and distribute in binary form a GPL'ed piece of code. But it provides increased access to that code by the developers who would use the modification and perhaps extend it.
BSD style licenses, on the other hand, provide more freedom to the developer who makes a modification to source code and wishes to distribute the binaries, as they may still choose to not distribute the source modifications. The developers who use/develop the original work no longer are guaranteed access to the changes made.
Quite simple, really. Of course, this comment will probably be lost in the noise... _lpp
A "pure end user" is somebody who will never look at the source. Therefore, unlimited distribution, in binary form only, is maximum freedom for the pure end user. Anything else is superfluous.
If it could be demonstrated that GPL, or any other Open Source license tended to increase the distribution of a program, then your argument might make sense from the point of view that the end user would have more software. Empirical data neither confirms nor denies this. Yes, Linux is widely distributed, but so are Internet Explorer, Napster, and a lot of other closed source programs.
The argument that GPL enhances end user freedom makes the most sense when applied in the long run, where binaries go "stale" and open source remains viable. However, there are many cases of open source going "stale" too. If the developers lose interest in developing a piece of software, and move onto something else, this is just as detrimental to end users as Microsoft's planned obsolescence.
The directories they chose for the RPM file are pretty bad.
They put files into a directory called/opt/interbase. Most Linux boxes don't have an/opt tree. That seems to be a Solaris thing.
Second, they stick their libraries and headers into/usr/include and/usr/lib. This is OK I guess, but they stick a single program into the directory/usr/local/sbin. Why not stick to the pattern they established and put it into/usr/sbin?
That's just a nit though. I suppose all that will be fixed once Debian includes it.
There was a discussion in this vein in the mers.interbase.list NG located at news.mers.com you might want to peruse their archives. go [mers.com] here to search or sign up.
In a nutshell IB compares very well with potgres and mysql. It all depends on the features you need.
Interbase (and Borland/Inprise) have a pretty loyal following of developers using Delphi and C++ builder. My guess is that this product along with Klyx will actually increase the developer pool of open source projects by luring them from the windows world.
Apparently there is nothing wrong with bad mouthing people who disagree with you either. Hey aren't you doing exactly what you are complaining about? So RMS speaks his mind and critisizes people who disagree with him so what? So his followers also speak out what of it? At least he does not pay people to pretend they agree with him, hire advertising agencies, or PR firms like every single corporation does. At least he does not spend a billion dollars a year telling you that GPL is better then MPL like coke and pepsi do.
He believes something passionately and speaks his mind. He is convincing and other people choose to help him carry his message. Hos is this different then Rush Limbaugh or Dubya bush? I guess it's OK for corporate lackeys to rail against Unions but not OK for RMS to speak out against insane IP laws.
I'm glad that they finally released the source to this; I've been looking at databases for a while, and out of the top three choices Interbase was my first, followed by MySQL and then closely thereafter by PostGre.
I was kind of forced to go with MySQL because I had to have my system up and running a couple months ago, but perhaps now I can re-evaluate them.
I am a bit concerned about the MPL and how long it has taken for the Mozilla builds to be released; I know they essentially had to rewrite the entire code base, but two years? Come on. Anyway, hopefully Interbase is well-written enough that it will only require minor modifications and developer extensions, and can avoid the two or three year development cycles.
My biggest issue with MySQL vs Interbase vs PostgreSQL is kind of overlooked, though; it's not transaction support, concurrent sessions, etc, although those factors are important.
The worst part of MySQL is the absolutely horrid documentation. It is the worst document set I have ever encountered that didn't come from Redmond. If I knew MySQL better I would rewrite it myself; lord knows it needs it.
I personally hope that the Interbase code release forces MySQL to completely rewrite their documentation. I'm just glad we have choices and competition.
Interbase has some very awesome features. The overview took the tone of a semi marketing type item yet it was infomrative and if you read through some of the garbage its rather clear to see as a programmer/developer what Interbase offers.
Some of the features that stuck out in my mind from the over view.
-Small memory footprint -Triggers -Stored Procedures -User Definable Functions with some 'libraries' per say already defined for math and string handling -Alert events EX:A certain item goes below xyz dollars it can send an alert using some sort of constant polling method. I am not sure exactly what this one was.. but basically it looks like whenever changes are done to the table if certain criteria are met it can call up a stored proc/UDF or something. This is a bit more powerful than a trigger or a stored procedure since you do not have to do any speical coding on a insert/update/delete.
Some other interesting things... There was a *LOAD* of case studies on the interbase site.
As far as I'm concerned, InterBase [interbase.com] is a pretty good piece of software. In my experiences with it, it's always performed up to expectations and it does everything I've ever needed it to do. I'm not saying it's right for everyone, but definitely check it out if you haven't done so yet.
If, on the other hand, you're already a devoted or knowledgable user, make sure you visit the Interbase developer's handbook [interbase2000.org]. It's a worthwhile project that could use your help.
I'm excited about this version of Interbase. (Insofar as one can conceivably be exciting about a database -- sign of a true geek, huh?)
Humm - I wonder if it wouldn't be worth switching my sites from MySQL to Interbase. I could certainly use the transactions, row level locking, constraints, etc... anyone knows how slow/fast Interbase is ?
"Home users and small mom-n-pop businesses are left high and dry."
Mom and Pop and all the consumers in general always take it in shorts. Your typical Mom and Pop will be left high and dry by commercial vendors too but at least with Open source they did not pay for the privledge.
That's because most linux distibutions ignore the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard [pathname.com]. I believe that this is part of the Linux Standard Base [linuxbase.org] which has most of the major distributions as members so IMHO they should be using/opt.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Except, with open source, you can hire a programmer to keep your system alive for long enough to either replace it/get it stable.
Only wealthy end users can do this. Home users and small mom-n-pop businesses are left high and dry.
If the upgrade cycle were a "wall function" that immediately required you to upgrade from x to y, then there would be a strong advantage to Open Source.
However, the upgrade cycle is not a wall. If I wanted to, I could still surf the net with Netscape 3.x and Windows95, and most of it would work.
I've seen legacy apps in business last even longer than that. Everybody poo-pooed them, but they worked, and the primary road block to getting them replaced was the expense of the custom programming and system integration that had to be done. An off-the-shelf solution, proprietary or otherwise, would have been preferable.
/* these constants are purely idiotic; there's no point in having a predefined constant with no meaning, but that's Ed Simon the master programmer for you! */
But, they do make it much easier to grep the source looking for potential buffer overflows to exploit. Thanks, Ed!
-- Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
I don't know how fast Interbase is. But there is one limitation of Interbase that made it useless for my purposes: the lack of an indexable TEXT field type. I am dealing with a piece of character data that can be anywhere from 1 character to 1024 characters in length, and there can be a million of these puppies in my database. I am *NOT* going to declare a VARCHAR(1024), I don't have enough disk space for a million VARCHAR(1024) records! (this allocates 1025 bytes for each string, regardless of how many bytes are actually needed for a particular string). PostGreSQL has had indexable TEXT forever (as well as most other features of Interbase), PostGreSQL's big problem for my purposes is insert speed (we are getting approximately 400 inserts per second on a blank database, w/fsync turned off, vs. 2400 inserts per second on MySQL). MySQL 3.23 allows indexing the first characters of a TEXT BLOB, which arguably is more useful even than the PostGreSQL version (do I *REALLY* need to index the whole bloody name, when there's only 5 people in the database whose name starts with MUNS ?!). And MySQL 3.23 has the beginnings of transaction support, though it's still six months or so before I would actually trust it for real deployment:-(.
Regardless of how fast Interbase is, I doubt it's anywhere as fast as MySQL. MySQL gets blazing speed at the expense of referential integrity support. Interbase's real competitor in the Open Source database world is PostGreSQL, not MySQL. From my preliminary look, query speeds are slightly faster than PostGreSQL, insert speeds are *MUCH* faster, and with the exception of the rather lame selection of types and built-in functions (PostGreSQL has a much richer types and functions system), it compares reasonably well feature-wise. On the other hand, PostGreSQL *DOES* have a much richer set of types, as well as a much richer set of extension languages and better interfaces from most scripting languages.... if it were a bit faster, PostGreSQL would blow Interbase out of the water.
In short: Interbase appears to fit somewhere between MySQL and PostGreSQL. It is not as full-featured as PostGreSQL (though most of the PostGreSQL feature set is utterly incomprehensible to mere mortals, and even to many of those who are working on improving it!), but, as with MySQL, it is faster. It is not as fast as MySQL, but it has many highly-desirable features that are currently only on MySQL's wish list. There is a large range of applications where it will be very valuable. It's too bad that lack of an indexable TEXT BLOB type means that my application isn't one of them... I would have loved its combination of decent speed and decent features, otherwise.
Interbase fits between MySQL and PostGreSQL on the features-vs-performance scale. MySQL is very small and fast, at the expense of having few features (lack of transaction support, in particular, being a real issue for many applications). PostGreSQL has just about every feature under the sun nowdays, it has a set of standard types and functions that would be the envy of any database, it has a huge number of server side function programming languages (you can program stored procedures in Perl or TCL!), it has language interfaces to every popular scripting language and programming language, but it is rather sluggish and its database files use a lot of disk space.
Interbase fits quite well between them. Interbase has the most-desired features wanted in MySQL (transactions in particular), though these features slow it down in comparison. But it is still quite a bit faster and more compact than PostGreSQL in many applications, at the expense of having a rather limited selection of types and predefined functions.
If I were using MySQL 3.22 and needed stable transaction support, I'd probably switch to Interbase. If I were using PostGreSQL and needed more speed, I'd probably grit my teeth and wait until the next revision of the PostGreSQL storage manager, which is promised for Real Soon Now -- unless its current speed was utterly unacceptable, in which case I'd strongly look at Interbase, while gritting my teeth. Not that Interbase is a bad database. It's just that PostGreSQL has gotten much, MUCH more featuresome over the past couple of years, and many of those features, such as an indexable TEXT type (which Interbase lacks), are quite useful in the kinds of applications that I write. Having to go back to fixed-size VARCHAR records would be a step backward for me. Even MySQL 3.23 doesn't make you do that (you can index the TEXT BLOB type in MySQL 3.23, or, rather, you can index the first {n} characters of it).
Why so many licenses? Now, this custom-written license for ONE specific product, Interbase. Does this imply that Borland is never going to release source under such an open license? Or will they carbon-copy-and-rename the license for every other "IPL" licensed product?
It's hard to have solid comparisons when the products themselves are shifting like jello. For example, MySQL now has an indexable TEXT type. Lack of that was one of the things that drove me to PostGreSQL a couple of years ago (I did not need transactions for that particular application, but I really did want an indexable TEXT type).
Now, if you want a jello comparison -- Interbase fits between MySQL and PostGreSQL on the features spectrum (that is, it has more features than MySQL, but lacks some features of PostGreSQL). Interbase also fits between MySQL and PostGreSQL on the speed spectrum, but is closer to MySQL speed-wise (PostGreSQL is a pig, especially on inserts... even selects are a good 10-20% slower than on most "name" databases). On the scalability spectrum, MySQL sucks (2gb limit on file size on 32-bit Linux), even the new RAID functionality is a kludge that's not going to change that significantly because it's too inflexible (have to pre-detirmine that "yes, I want to have 5 files for a max of 10gb", and woe to you if that is not enough), while PostGreSQL will happily build 50-gb database files and handle them all day long (on machines with a 2gb limit on file size, PostGreSQL automatically handles creating additional files as needed to handle the table's "data heap"). I did not have a chance to closely examine Interbase's specs on the scalability side, I know it will handle more than 2gb of data on Linux, but I don't know whether you have to pre-define how big it can get, like with MySQL. (Note that MySQL does not have the 2gb limit on OS's that properly support 64-bit filesystems).
Best bet: Download them all, create a sample database, try some sample queries, slam the @#$% out of them. Note that PostGreSQL's big speed problem for most people is going to be insert speed and its sluggishness at opening connections. Select speed will probably not be a problem for most people, because PostGreSQL is plenty fast there for the typical application. Interbase may be the solution to those woes if you need transaction support and speed too. Or you could wait for MySQL 3.23 to mature, it too has alpha-quality transaction support, though it will never have the more advanced features of Interbase or PostGreSQL ("never" is probably a strong word here, but given the MySQL author's desire for speed rather than features, it probably will remain accurate).
An application crashing every three months is not the same thing as a database crashing every three months.
Regarding speed, MySQL is and always will be the fastest SQL database on the planet, bar none. It gets that speed at a cost, though -- tossing out every feature that might possibly slow down the database. For many people, Interbase hits a very sweet point on the features vs. performance spectrum, it is faster and more compact than most "full-featured" databases, while still having the majority of functionality that most reasonable people would consider nice to have.
one thing to note is that the release version of Interbase does include the threaded database engine for Linux, which should significantly increase multi-user performance as compared with the ancient version tested in that article.
Also worthy to note that the user-friendly DBMS management tool is apparently written in Pascal, and is not going to be usable on Linux until Kylix is up and going.
There is a new ODBC driver in the works from Jim Starkey (the original architect of Interbase). Yes, there's a perl module. There's a python module. There's a zope module in the works. The C library is based on DB2 since it was the closest thing to a standard when they were writing it.
Check out www.interbase2000.org, there's even an alpha quality DB-OLE (or whatever the heck it's called) driver.
Free Pascal support seems to be in the works, but since Inprise open-sourced the IB-Express objects for Delphi, maybe they will eventually compile under FPC as well.
The sweetest way to connect is through Jason Wharton's IBObjects using Delphi or BCB. Hopefully these will eventually migrate over to Linux when the Kylix project releases Delphi 6 for Linux in late September.
Interbase's best attributes are: size (this is not bloatware, people!) and reliability (one of the case studies refers to usage in a tank because when the big gun goes, the computer reboots).
The super-niftiest feature is the multigenerational architecture where readers never block writers and writers never block readers. I'm sure other DBMS's have something like this, but Interbase was the first.
Jim Starkey, the "Big Bad Wolf" of Interbase and original author claims to have invented the concept of a BLOB (binary large object) stored in a relational database.
This database has been around for more than 15 years. It's interesting looking at the code - you can compile for some quite rare platforms. What is the Apollo?
So if I download a piece of real-free software and fix a minor bug that only manifests itself with my particular configuration, then I'm obliged to set up and maintain a public FTP site so everybody can download my fix? Man, that's a heck of a lot of freedom... --
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
Being a developer myself, I think my answer would be biased. :-)
Frankly, I don't think most true end users care about licenses or source code. They just want software that more or less works.
Re:MySQL vs Interbase ? (Score:1)
In previous posts, somebody mentioned that there was little support for backups. Well, from what I learned last week, gbak allows for hot backups as well as transportability of databases between machines.
Replication technology is also available, so there should be little reason for any downtime next to a nuclear strike, IMHO.
Also, the performance stats run a few months ago were based upon the classic architecture rather than the super server architecture. I'd like to see those stats run again using the released version of IB 6. I think the results will be most interesting.
I've had IB 6 beta running on a lowly 486 for several months. Granted, it doesn't get exercised very frequently or heavily, but even this version is pretty stable and is always there when needed.
RD
Re:Additional features (Score:1)
Yeah... Uh. Geez, since I did the port to Netware that got released, I should comment... The Netware version has gotten a lot better since then? *chuckle*
Seriously though, I'm really curious (and will find out soon!) if the ENTIRE thing is there, or if it's just the Unix + Windows code that's been released. It'd be fascinating if you could actually (with the right tools) go ahead and build it for VMS, or Netware (not that *I* ever want to touch that OS again), or any of the other OS's it was originally released for.
Anyhow, a few quick comments on Interbase, from someone who was deep in the guts of the code...
The source code was desperately ugly when I looked at it, and I was WAY too junior to even think about cleaning it up... I hope that they've gone ahead and cleaned it up before releasing it.
As databases go, it kicked MAJOR butt when I was working there, but they sold it as a 'departmental' RDBMS. They very clearly were NOT going after 'enterprise' level contracts. On the other hand, that may have been a 'choose your battles wisely' strategy.
As for 'trust', well, the entire source code for Interbase was stored in an Interbase DB... 'marion', they called it. It was a pretty good version control system, and it definitely showed that they trusted their own DB one hell of a lot.
For SQL conformance, well, how many open source DB projects do you know of who actually HAD developers on the ANSI commitee? They tracked it pretty closely. It wasn't perfect as I recall, but it was pretty darn close.
The 'SuperServer' was something they were talking about back when I worked there (just pre-5.0), which was basically a HEAVILY threaded version with a lot of performance tuneups. It was one of the things that excited the serious DB developers there, and in the bleaker moments of Borland I wondered if those guys would ever get to do the really cool stuff they wanted to do. I'm REALLY glad that they did!
Frankly, it's a good DB, it's stable, it's been around forever (quite a bit longer than either MySQL or PostgresSQL!), it had some truly devoted developers at Borland, who LOVED database development. It was a second tier database (behind Oracle and Informix), but on that tier system MySQL and PostgresSQL never even show up I'm afraid...
It's always been a very developer-friendly DB, and I will DEFINITELY snag a copy and use it myself, although I do a lot of stuff that wants indexed TEXT fields... *sigh*
If you have any interest at all, don't hesitate, go check it out! You won't be disappointed, I believe.
Cyberfox!
Re:My problems with Interbase (Score:1)
If PostgreSQL has a better query optimizer, I think I know of one ex-Interbase developer who's going to have a SERIOUS conniption fit. They were doing really good optimizations on the queries back 6+ years ago, before (I *think*) Postgres even HAD SQL. (Disclaimer, I used to work for Borland/Interbase back around the Delphi (which used IB as a backend) through 4.0 release timeframe, and I distinctly recall them talking about their query engine with some competent pride.)
I'm not saying it's impossible, but I will say I'd be mightily surprised.
Cyberfox!
Re:MySQL is an RDBMS, as stated in your references (Score:1)
In fact you could make a case that there are no true RDBMSs at all. Most, if not all, lack some features or have added shortcuts to the pure relational model. E.g. the addition of TOP to the SELECT statement in MS SQL. You can only have TOP if you supported relational sequences. As far as I am aware sequences are not part of the relational model. Besides which MS does not provide a rigorous definition of TOP in terms of the relational model.
TOP can only make sense given an ordering such that no duplicates can occur. From that sequence you can take the first N tuples. Since SELECT is defined without ordering or distinctness requirements how can TOP be explained? Within the relational model that know nothing about, not recorgnizes, orderings implied by an implementation?
Another thing are relations. I believe Codd included the notion of domains in his model. That would indicate valid relations/joins can only be made on keys of the same domain. In practice you can darned well join anything with whatever you fancy whenever you want. Though it can be defended I don't think it is what was intended.
Ah well, whatever
Re:MySQL vs Interbase vs PostGreSQL (Score:1)
Re:Better? (Score:2)
GPL doesn't prevent commercializing of software.
A number of times I've seen the "if anyone's going to make money off my software it's going to be me" argument in favor of the GPL. Meanwhile, Red Hat (just one example) makes a bunch of money selling GPL'ed software.
GPL legally requires the source code be made available, but it doesn't otherwise prevent commercialization by third parties.
Re:Thinning of Developers (Score:1)
Slashdot ignores release of Source Navigator (Score:2)
No, they just chose to ignore it. I've submitted the story.
This shows an extreme degree of cluelessness in the Slashdot editorial suite. Source Navigator is probably one of the most significant releases of the year for kernel hackers, let alone regular application developers. Well, it just shows you the difference between a journalist and a true geek.
Moderate this down as usual - for some reason this always seems to happen when I criticize Slashdot's editorial policy.
--
...but the JDBC client still ain't right (Score:1)
having been working on getting a web-based commercial product converted over to linux/interbase for the last 3 months, i have this to say:
the database is nice, but the JDBC client for linux has given us nothing but problems. first it wouldn't talk to the database, second it still wouldn't, and now it finally does, but doesn't support what JDBC says it should (rs=st.getResultSet() after st.exec() returns a null?)
we have finally given up and are paying big money for Oracle and Oracle people...
and as far as I can see, there's no source code for the client (yet).
-sciuro
Re:...but the JDBC client still ain't right (Score:1)
ok - i take that back - a third check reveals the source code for the client is further up the page... sadly, having already wasted so much time getting it to work without the source over the previous months, i no longer have time to hack on it with the source :-(
-sciuro
Its only incompatible with viral licenses AFAICS (Score:1)
As for GPL everything is incompatible with it, if you believe the zealots anyway, the so called compatible licenses merely allow sublicensing... in themselves they are not compatible, the code has to change license.
Interbase's license will play with any license which isnt viral:
"You may create a Larger Work by combining Covered Code with other code not governed by the terms of this License and distribute the Larger Work as a single product. In such a case, You must make sure the requirements of this License are fulfilled for the Covered Code."
I think the GPL has a questionable wording in the paragraph which makes it viral BTW... "You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus forming a work based on the Program" linking to an unmodified library is not modification in my book.
Re:MySQL vs Interbase vs PostGreSQL (Score:1)
Re:Effects on other free databases (Score:2)
Probably in 2 ways - the good side: stealing^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H sharing code.
The bad side: losing users (and possibly developers) to Interbase.
While I'm here, did Slashdot miss [Red Hat]'s GPL release of Source Navigator?
No, they just chose to ignore it. I've submitted the story.
Re:Nice License choice (Score:1)
Re:The question is (Score:1)
Mini's, supermini's, microcomputers and LANs did eat into mainframe territory. There is a decided possibility Interbase can now eat harder into the market share kept by those vendors. Why not? Look at what MS did with their bought SQL Server.
But I do realize mainframes are still around and doing very well. Likewise will the mainframes in the RDBMS market.
Interbase strength... (Score:1)
I used to say go for MySQL if you need speed and do not expect too much concurrency, but go for ProgreSQL if you need transactions and complex SQL queries.
So according to you, what would be the main criteria for a quick decison regarding Interbase?
Actually, it is good insurance :-) (Score:2)
On second thought, though, what about the social and political ramifications? Suppose that we wake up one morning and find that 128 has been declared "hate speech"? (It was nice knowing you, 128!) Now what do we do with the zillions of lines of code that have to be changed, in order to avoid jail time for "hate speech" or some other felony? The answer, of course, is to abstract these potentially hateful numbers as #define statements so that we can change them later to politically approved numbers. Like "the number formerly known as 128". Or "127 plus 1".
See, it all makes sense now.
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
I think that the MPL just makes it much easier for the people developing the product. They usually don't have an obligation to make software for people anyway. If they are doing it to provide a product for free, they should control it how they want.
Re:MySQL vs Interbase ? (Score:1)
I don't have any nice stats for you, but we run it on a fairly low power server, with a small user base. It is pretty solid - about every 3 months it falls over; recovery is a 15 minute job (for an 85Mb DB) and _nothing_ is lost. Comparable queries to a MS SQL server machine take about the same time, only the SQL server was running on a machine with twice as much RAM and twice as many processors.
BTW, Delphi and C++ Builder (and Kylix, presumably) now support native Interbase DB components; this eliminates BDE/ODBC overhead, and provides better transaction isolation.
Nice one, and thanks a lot, Borland!
Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
But whether you do that or not is irrelevant. You did not distribute the binary, so you don't need to give anyone the source.
ridiculous (Score:1)
Whether it is a good license or not depends on the software and use but please don't go around telling people that the GPL is not restrictive.
Effects on other free databases (Score:3)
I wonder how this is going to affect PostgreSQL and MySQL? It'll be interesting to see if it sucks developers away or not. I suspect it won't, as database specialists are few and far between...
And while I'm here, did Slashdot miss Redhat's GPL release of Source Navigator (Cygnus's IDE)? Hmmmm... I don't think I'm going to get any sleep tonight. :)
"I want to use software that doesn't suck." - ESR
"All software that isn't free sucks." - RMS
Re:MySQL vs Interbase ? (Score:2)
with the size of the database adding 5 Gb in a year.
Don't know if it's enough for you, though.
Seriously, after getting those indexes right and designing your
relations with care, it should be fast enough.
How much does it cost? (Score:2)
I am working on my final project for school which involves writing a project management application for a local business and unfortunately all the current RDBMS costs for Windows are in thousands of dollars (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2). We do not plan to support the software after the project is done so a support license is necessary.
PS: I didn't mention mySQL because it isn't an RDBMS. Read the definition of an RDBMS [whatis.com] as well as that of a relational database [whatis.com] or simply read C.J.Date's reviews [intelligen...rprise.com] of E.F. Codd's seminal 1970 work on relational DBs. Here's part two [intelligen...rprise.com] and part three [intelligen...rprise.com] of C.J. Date's work for anyone who's interested.
Re:Nice License choice (Score:1)
I prefer freedom of choice over freedom of source code (no doubt I'm in the minority, though).
Re:Actually, it is good insurance :-) (Score:1)
Actually, Borland's cash cow is Delphi - not C++B. (Score:1)
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Inprise Half-Open Source IB - The real Story (Score:1)
Nobody can tell us "in no uncertain terms". But let's have a close look
at the current situation.
What we were looking forward to was a scenario (fairly reassured by public
statements by Dale Fuller, over the months) in which an infrastructure was
to be set up to ready InterBase for open source and ongoing technical
supervision. The actual work of presiding over the creation of a
sustainable business model around InterBase-related support, distribution,
training and marketing was put into the hands of Ann Harrison, who was
contracted to achieve that by whatever means possible. Markus Kemper and
(I think) Wayne Ostiguy carried on with InterBase product support for
Inprise's existing customers with Markus putting in long hours of voluntary
time into the beta testing and support that you have all witnessed over the
past 6 months.
Charlie Caro and Brett Bandy have put in a similar mix of paid and
voluntary time in bringing the beta forward to release stage. Again, both
have been very obvious donors of own time to helping those who have helped
themselves to the betas.
Ann has been working the long hours, too, along with Paul Beach and Matt
Larsen, to design and implement the business model for the support company
and negotiate unendingly and frustratingly with Dale Fuller over the
conditions for selling the operation to the new owner. Ann has
unremittingly kept up her insightful problem support in this list. Paul
has been actively marketing Interbase services and setting up business
relationships with other companies, to be brought into reality once the
operation passed out of Inprise hands.
Paul and Matt have remained unpaid throughout the entire time.
An important factor in the readying phase has been to get an ODBC
driver. Originally, this work was outsourced. When Fuller closed down the
InterBase operation in December, that contract was terminated. As many of
you may know, Jim Starkey (the original architect of InterBase) stepped up
and developed a driver which was in beta at the end of last month, the
promised deadline for the handover of the operation to ISC and for
releasing the source code and the full IB 6 release. Jim was not paid, either.
Out here in the community, several of us have been involved in the
development of the InterBase community, through free support, providing
documentation, running discussion lists, doing tools development, building
networks around an open source InterBase, active beta testing. I've tried
as best I could to keep information as up-to-date as possible, through the
interbase2000 web site and the lists.
Given the problems that the ISC team have had to deal with in their
negotiations with Inprise, some non-technical details haven't filtered out
here to the public arena. We've gone as far as we could go without
compromising the team. You know who we are - "the bad apples", as someone
dubbed us.
For those of us who are passionate about the survival of InterBase and
chose to be proactive about it, it has all been worth doing. Despite the
delays, the whole handover and freeing of InterBase from Inprise shackles
has made it every inch "worth it".
Until yesterday. First, Dale Fuller's statement on the early-morning
conference call that the InterBase company probably wouldn't be spun off
after all. Next, the releasing of the source and binaries by Inprise
itself and the rewording of the IPL to remove all references to ISC as the
owner of the assets. And, as soon as we began downloading from the Inprise
site, it was clear that Inprise was keeping some crucial pieces back.
Fuller has put an irrational, outrageous price on the pieces - the test
suites, documentation and the build environment, along with the trademarks,
domain names and what-have-you. Who will not pay the price shall not
receive. Technically speaking, these pieces are useless to Inprise, who
ceased development of Interbase seven months ago. But withholding them
gives them leverage to try and force acceptance of their outrageous ransom.
So - we resort to the fallback strategy. Now that the source code is
openly available and the IPL is formally and very publicly sanctioned by
Inprise, there is nothing to prevent anyone from forming an
"ISC". Technically and economically, to be able to buy the ransomed pieces
at a fair price would give such a company a kickstart. Technically and
economically, that company could also reconstruct everything from scratch,
fork mainstream development under new trademarks and really make InterBase
Inprise-free forever.
This isn't just the newest bright idea. It has been Plan B ever since the
day Fuller publicly announced the spin-off plan and its intention to kick
off the operation with a 29% VC stake. The stumbling block of course is
the price. If the condition of the deal is that the buyer has to spend R &
D dollars and then give the product away, how can a company commit to a
debt that is hugely out of proportion to the value of the purchase and
expect to sustain itself? Fuller's ransom offers no resort except
self-destruction. It puts the buyer company in the position of having to
devour its own flesh.
It wasn't always Plan B. During the six weeks' delay between Fuller's New
Year announcement that InterBase was going OS and his mid-February
announcement of the spin-off plan, it was Plan A.
Now it is Plan A again. I reiterate what I wrote on the web site - to do
this it needs (1) venture capital - that is, sufficient investment and
financial commitment to get this thing moving and cash flowing. Equally,
(2) it needs customers and, specifically, your commitment to bring that
business to the company. Ann, Paul and Matt have spent 6 months putting
together a business plan that can work. An expert and devoted community
has coalesced around that core. We have the people. We have the
source. We would all wish for the cooperation of Inprise but we can do
without it if we have to.
Re:Documentation (Score:2)
Interbase, on the other hand, looks sparse in the documentation department. There are no books available (one old hit [fatbrain.com] at FatBrain that was never published) and I cannot find anything online at www.interbase.com. There is a grassroots effort here [interbase2000.org] but there is no content!
I haven't installed the RPMs yet - anyone know if there is any documentation installed? I hope I don't have to read man pages to administer this thing.
-tim
My theory on ISC's and Borland's roles: (Score:1)
I've seen some rather pissed-off posts on IB mailing lists today, for this very reason. And if it really were a case of Borland "ripping ISC off", then I'd be right there beside them, spewing venom.
But basically, I think it was, as you say, "the lawyers" who made them change their plans. You see, the plan of "first give away, then let the recipient (ISC) open it" implies that there is a monetary value to the code -- why else would a commercial entity like ISC want it? That's a legal no-no; Borland would just be giving their share-holders' money away.
Opening up source code, OTOH, is another thing entirely. Borland can do that, mumbling about "goodwill from the developer community" and intangible stuff like that, and carefully avoid ascribing any direct monetary value to the source code they're freeing up -- "giving away" -- to the whole community.
Normally, the company that does this would then be the one that tries to make at least some money from support, documentation, services like that. But there's nothing that says they'd have to; and, as someone pointed out in the mini-license-flamewar above, there's nothing to stop somebody else from doing it in stead.
See where I'm going with this? Yes, I think this was the only way they could do it -- give the code away not to a company, but "the community", to avoid lawsuits from share-holders. Then, when Borland just "doesn't happen to" go into the InterBase-support business, ISC can do so; they didn't get anything from Borland, but are using "the whole community's" open-sourced code.
Maybe I'm giving Borland too much of a "benefit of the doubt", here, I dunno, but I hope (and think) not... They've always been a developer-friendly company, in my experience. But I'll check the mailing lists again, later tonight (Finnish time) and get back to y'all.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Re:Interbase (Score:1)
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
Re:Interbase strength... (Score:1)
;-)
In answer to your question, though, here is a short summary of why you might find Interbase more appealing that MySQL.
- a) Interbase has a high degree of SQL-92 compliance. This is very nice for portability and compatibility; it makes it easier to import and export databases and scripts that call SQL statements.
- b) MySQL recently was GPL'ed, but they were still trying to charge for 'commercial use' up until that time. I think it took the looming InterBase release to force their hand; MySQL always had an, um, unusual licensing scheme.
- c) InterBase supports some really cool features, including support for multi-dimensional arrays, triggers, stored procedures, event alerters, and shadowed databases. These features are incredibly advanced; they may not be necessary to your business now, but you might find them "useful" in the future.
Anyway, there are plenty of other things I could go into, but as I said before, I'm not that great at InterBase just yet. Give me a few weeks to tinker with it and I'll get back to you.VMS is a Digital OS; InterBase was born there. (Score:1)
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
A least it's going in the right direction (Score:1)
<p>
So full credit to Dale and Borland for releaseing interbase.
<p>
I also wish Ann and the rest in ISC the best of luck in getting to their finish post from here, although with the release they are part way there.
RMS (Score:3)
Re:RMS (Score:1)
(Damn. I'm replying to you again. Stop that, will you?)
Re:How is it in practice? (Score:1)
Re:Documentation (Score:1)
Since IB6 is a new animal from a new company, the effort seems to have been getting the program ready. Documentation seems a bit dated at the moment, but there seems to be an effort to remedy this deficiency.
There are references to sample code, utilites and support groups on the interbase website Interbase [interbase.com]
Nice License choice (Score:3)
InterBase Corp.: still alive? (Score:1)
Re:RMS (Score:2)
HH
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Re:Nice License choice (Score:1)
Better? (Score:5)
GPLed software is not free in the anyone can do what he/she pleases view. It is free in the sense that no one can subvert it for his/her own public uses.
With (almost)truly free licenses like the BSD license the thing people seem to object to is the purpose of the license. You are allowed to make your project closed and commercial. This is not a drawback nor a feature. It is entirely dependant on your position and point of view. If you think all code should always be available then you of course dislike this license.
Software ultimately fulfills the needs of a customer. Sometimes that customer is the developer, other times it is end users, and sometimes it is both develoepr and users. I fail to see how the GPL is more free to the end user. The end user is not even involved with the code (maybe to compile it). It is however, sometimes, more *beneficial* to the end user. This is entirely dependant on having competent developers.
It seems to me that the vast majority of "Open" licenses are targeted almost entirely at developers. As others have said, the end user (unless a developer) doesn't care what the license is. They want a working product so they can get work done or have fun.
Re:RMS (Score:1)
--
Re:MySQL vs Interbase ? (Score:5)
FWIW - PHP 4.0 [php.net] also supports native Interbase connections.
--
Interbase Rocks (Score:1)
The question is (Score:1)
Couple of oddities (Score:1)
I'm pleased to see InterBase being Open Source, it probably 's got something to do with Kylix.
Interbase Performance (Re:MySQL vs Interbase ?) (Score:3)
Unfortunately, we *might* have to move over to Oracle because we're still not convinced that Borland takes Interbase seriously, and most big-iron development tools vendors aren't convinced either: they're *not* updating their support for Interbase (most still support up to Interbase 4.0C).
Let's see what develops in the open source community. I'm hoping that much of the functionality lacking in Interbase that commercial DBs already have will be integrated by "open sourcerers", and then we might not have to use Oracle
wh00t!!! (Score:1)
Re:Actually, Borland's cash cow is Delphi - not C+ (Score:1)
Re:Nice License choice (Score:1)
Ever heard of JBuilder or Kylix?
Take a look [inprise.com]
Re:Additional features (Score:2)
Although everything you say is true I am afraind it has fallen behind in many ways. Even a cursory glance at a feature list shows that postgres has many many more features then IB. OTOH IB probably has the most imortant feature of all stability and speed. It will be interesting to see how many developers jump on and what they do with it. On my list of do it yesterday features are.
Limit clause, nullif/coalesce, editable joins, better autoincrement support, longer object names, case insensitive collation, replication, clustering, raw device support. is that too much to ask for?
Oh yea make Delhi the SP language.
Re:Documentation (Score:1)
As you pointed out there are numerous good alternatives. I'd just rather have 'sparse' and well-written docs than the bramble of babblings that is the MySQL online docs.
Re:Connectivity from other apps? (Score:2)
I'm sure I'll get moderated down for this, but I have karma to burn. Hell, just to give all the misguided moderators something to do, I'll leave my +1 bonus turned on.
The above posting was not a troll. This message that I am posting now is off-topic. The person who moderated my above post down for being a Troll is a bozo.
I asked questions, and three different people were kind enough to put answers to my completely valid questions below my post. They could obviously tell that I had real concerns. However, the clueless moderator decided I was trolling.
By the way, asking "How much does the C library suck" was a completely valid question. Other vendors (I'm not going to mention any names, *cough*Oracle*cough*) have been known to have BADLY BROKEN libraries for making db calls via C. Oracle's library was responsible for many of the bugs in the database layer in Tivoli TME10, an enterprise management package now owned by IBM.
So, to all moderators: Think before you moderate. Don't use your points until after you've considered whether or not you're just being pissy, or whether a post has really said something interesting, insightful, or informative - I've seen plenty of bad up-moderating, too. And don't carry out personal vendettas. The post above this one should not have been moderated. This one should probably be moderated down as offtopic, and I suspect if anyone with points reads it, it will be.
Re:Documentation - How about 10 megs worth! (Score:1)
The True History Of Blobs (Score:1)
It's quite a story, and you'll find at least 2 errors in the above sentence when you read about it:
http://members.tripod.com/cvalde/misc/blob_true
Re:IPL?? (Score:1)
Open source law practice - now there's a concept I could sink my teeth into.
Additional features (Score:1)
There is also the possibility this could have a direct negative impact on crappy MS ACCESS, once the ODBC drivers are stable. A real commercial quality RDBMS to deploy for those stuck in Win98/VB land (thankfully I am not).
Hurray
Please no flames, just pointing out facts.
InterBase Longevity (Re:Interbase Performance) (Score:1)
The problem is that spinning off a separate company ("again!") is like the sheepherd crying out "Wolf!" too many times.
Even if the product and company does last another ten years, what will happen if nobody takes it seriously again?
Our migration (or not) to Oracle is very dependent on what happens in the next six months. If things don't change, we'll have to pay a gazillion dollars to change over and ensure the continuity of our business (hint, hint for Borland).
Re:How much does it cost? (Score:2)
There is no per-user costs for Interbase 6.0. According to their new license [interbase.com], you are free [gnu.org] to distribute and modify the database.
Interbase does provide optional support contracts. Last I looked it was US$100 for 30 days of installation support, US$250 per support incident, or US$3150 per year for unlimited support.
Refer to Interbase.com [interbase.com] for more details.
--
Didn't get the source quite cleaned up (Score:4)
/* these constants are purely idiotic; there's no point in having
a predefined constant with no meaning, but that's Ed Simon the
master programmer for you! */
#define BUFFER_LENGTH128 128
#define BUFFER_LENGTH155 155
#define BUFFER_LENGTH256 256
#define BUFFER_LENGTH360 360
#define BUFFER_LENGTH400 400
#define BUFFER_LENGTH512 512
#define BUFFER_LENGTH80 80
#define BUFFER_LENGTH60 60
#define BUFFER_LENGTH120 120
#define BUFFER_LENGTH180 180
Re:MySQL is an RDBMS, as stated in your references (Score:2)
MySQL (notice the capital M) lets you create, update and administer a relational database through SQL statements. According to both your references, it is a full RDBMS.
You are probably referencing ACIDity [whatis.com], which can be achieved with a transaction logging RDBMS, and which is a completely different beast.
Either you just experienced a brainfart after a long caffeine driven coding session, or you should have studied a bit harder.
Okay... I'll do the stupid things first, then you shy people follow.
Solid Comparisions (Score:2)
Re:Interbase (Score:2)
I have an alerter on the insert or update trigger of a particular table. Any application that listens to that alerter will get a notification when an insert or update of that table happens.
This can be very useful. You don't need to keep polling the database when there are no changes.
My problems with Interbase (Score:2)
Someday I hope the open source world will progress to the point where it will stop getting excited every time some corporation tosses a failing product over the wall.
Incidentally, from eavesdropping on the postgresql developer list, I gather that their take on interbase is that postgresql will be as good or better by around 7.1 or 7.2 (the current release is 7.0). I believe the only key feature postgresql is missing at the moment is outer joins.
(Warning, blatant religious evangelism follows.) Postgresql is BSD liscensed, and has a really good team of open source developers actively working on it, including Tom Lane and Bruce Momjian... (unlike Inprise, which is now in the position of trying to drum up community support using an MPL-style license).
Postgresql has been making rapid improvements over the last year or so (though it still has the worst name of any software project, ever...). Bruce Momjian has a book coming out about postgresql and the full text is available online [postgresql.org]. Commercial support for postgresql is available from places such as Great Bridge [greatbridge.com].
(And whatever you do, don't mention Perl in this thread, or you'll have the Python fanatics in here too.)
Re:Interbase (Score:3)
Dalton in a fit of immense generosity and goodwill has posted some other tips, tricks, musings here [interbase2000.org].
BTW a very poweful one two three punch is Delphi IBObjects, interbase or soon to be klyx, ibobjects, interbase.
One more thing. Have you downloaded the documentation yet? it ROCKS!. This is best documentation for a open source project I have ever seen (well maybe php is pretty awsome too).
Make no mistake this a serious contender for the database sweepstakes.
Re:How is it in practice? (Score:3)
Re:Documentation (Score:2)
Re:Interbase strength... (Score:2)
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
So, the GPL imposes more restrictions on a developer who wishes to modify and distribute in binary form a GPL'ed piece of code. But it provides increased access to that code by the developers who would use the modification and perhaps extend it.
BSD style licenses, on the other hand, provide more freedom to the developer who makes a modification to source code and wishes to distribute the binaries, as they may still choose to not distribute the source modifications. The developers who use/develop the original work no longer are guaranteed access to the changes made.
Quite simple, really. Of course, this comment will probably be lost in the noise...
_lpp
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
A "pure end user" is somebody who will never look at the source. Therefore, unlimited distribution, in binary form only, is maximum freedom for the pure end user. Anything else is superfluous.
If it could be demonstrated that GPL, or any other Open Source license tended to increase the distribution of a program, then your argument might make sense from the point of view that the end user would have more software. Empirical data neither confirms nor denies this. Yes, Linux is widely distributed, but so are Internet Explorer, Napster, and a lot of other closed source programs.
The argument that GPL enhances end user freedom makes the most sense when applied in the long run, where binaries go "stale" and open source remains viable. However, there are many cases of open source going "stale" too. If the developers lose interest in developing a piece of software, and move onto something else, this is just as detrimental to end users as Microsoft's planned obsolescence.
A nitpick (Score:3)
They put files into a directory called
Second, they stick their libraries and headers into
That's just a nit though. I suppose all that will be fixed once Debian includes it.
Re:Solid Comparisions (Score:2)
In a nutshell IB compares very well with potgres and mysql. It all depends on the features you need.
Re:JDBC 2.0 driver coming ?? (Score:2)
Re:Thinning of Developers (Score:2)
Re:That Stallman guy.. eh? (Score:2)
At least he does not pay people to pretend they agree with him, hire advertising agencies, or PR firms like every single corporation does. At least he does not spend a billion dollars a year telling you that GPL is better then MPL like coke and pepsi do.
He believes something passionately and speaks his mind. He is convincing and other people choose to help him carry his message. Hos is this different then Rush Limbaugh or Dubya bush?
I guess it's OK for corporate lackeys to rail against Unions but not OK for RMS to speak out against insane IP laws.
Documentation (Score:2)
I was kind of forced to go with MySQL because I had to have my system up and running a couple months ago, but perhaps now I can re-evaluate them.
I am a bit concerned about the MPL and how long it has taken for the Mozilla builds to be released; I know they essentially had to rewrite the entire code base, but two years? Come on. Anyway, hopefully Interbase is well-written enough that it will only require minor modifications and developer extensions, and can avoid the two or three year development cycles.
My biggest issue with MySQL vs Interbase vs PostgreSQL is kind of overlooked, though; it's not transaction support, concurrent sessions, etc, although those factors are important.
The worst part of MySQL is the absolutely horrid documentation. It is the worst document set I have ever encountered that didn't come from Redmond. If I knew MySQL better I would rewrite it myself; lord knows it needs it.
I personally hope that the Interbase code release forces MySQL to completely rewrite their documentation. I'm just glad we have choices and competition.
Re:What can it do? (Score:2)
http://www.interbase.com/op en/research/ib_overview.html [interbase.com]
Interbase (Score:5)
So I dug through their site (not hard to find) and found this lil gem
Interbase Product Overview [interbase.com]
Interbase has some very awesome features. The overview took the tone of a semi marketing type item yet it was infomrative and if you read through some of the garbage its rather clear to see as a programmer/developer what Interbase offers.
Some of the features that stuck out in my mind from the over view.
-Small memory footprint
-Triggers
-Stored Procedures
-User Definable Functions with some 'libraries' per say already defined for math and string handling
-Alert events
EX:A certain item goes below xyz dollars it can send an alert using some sort of constant polling method. I am not sure exactly what this one was.. but basically it looks like whenever changes are done to the table if certain criteria are met it can call up a stored proc/UDF or something. This is a bit more powerful than a trigger or a stored procedure since you do not have to do any speical coding on a insert/update/delete.
Some other interesting things... There was a *LOAD* of case studies on the interbase site.
Case Studies [borland.com]
I looked at some of these and they were real industry proven case studies IMO.
Its Free.. and it has a good reputation
You can buy support for it
It appears to be VERY ANSI Compliant and supports all the trappings of MS SQL Server..
It also claimed to be self optimizing... anyways hope this provided a little information.
Jeremy
If you think education is expensive, try ignornace
Excellent (Score:3)
If, on the other hand, you're already a devoted or knowledgable user, make sure you visit the Interbase developer's handbook [interbase2000.org]. It's a worthwhile project that could use your help.
I'm excited about this version of Interbase. (Insofar as one can conceivably be exciting about a database -- sign of a true geek, huh?)
yours,
john
MySQL vs Interbase ? (Score:2)
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
Mom and Pop and all the consumers in general always take it in shorts. Your typical Mom and Pop will be left high and dry by commercial vendors too but at least with Open source they did not pay for the privledge.
Re:A nitpick (Score:3)
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
Except, with open source, you can hire a programmer to keep your system alive for long enough to either replace it/get it stable.
Only wealthy end users can do this. Home users and small mom-n-pop businesses are left high and dry.
If the upgrade cycle were a "wall function" that immediately required you to upgrade from x to y, then there would be a strong advantage to Open Source.
However, the upgrade cycle is not a wall. If I wanted to, I could still surf the net with Netscape 3.x and Windows95, and most of it would work.
I've seen legacy apps in business last even longer than that. Everybody poo-pooed them, but they worked, and the primary road block to getting them replaced was the expense of the custom programming and system integration that had to be done. An off-the-shelf solution, proprietary or otherwise, would have been preferable.
Re:Didn't get the source quite cleaned up (Score:2)
a predefined constant with no meaning, but that's Ed Simon the
master programmer for you! */
But, they do make it much easier to grep the source looking for potential buffer overflows to exploit. Thanks, Ed!
--
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
The GPL is more free for the end user.
In your opinion, which is the greater good?
Re:RMS (Score:2)
I think I just put too many TLAs in this posting
Yea especially when you f one up, are you trying to say "prefers the GPL to the LGPL," or "prefers the LGPL to the GPL"???
MySQL vs Interbase vs PostGreSQL (Score:2)
Regardless of how fast Interbase is, I doubt it's anywhere as fast as MySQL. MySQL gets blazing speed at the expense of referential integrity support. Interbase's real competitor in the Open Source database world is PostGreSQL, not MySQL. From my preliminary look, query speeds are slightly faster than PostGreSQL, insert speeds are *MUCH* faster, and with the exception of the rather lame selection of types and built-in functions (PostGreSQL has a much richer types and functions system), it compares reasonably well feature-wise. On the other hand, PostGreSQL *DOES* have a much richer set of types, as well as a much richer set of extension languages and better interfaces from most scripting languages.... if it were a bit faster, PostGreSQL would blow Interbase out of the water.
In short: Interbase appears to fit somewhere between MySQL and PostGreSQL. It is not as full-featured as PostGreSQL (though most of the PostGreSQL feature set is utterly incomprehensible to mere mortals, and even to many of those who are working on improving it!), but, as with MySQL, it is faster. It is not as fast as MySQL, but it has many highly-desirable features that are currently only on MySQL's wish list. There is a large range of applications where it will be very valuable. It's too bad that lack of an indexable TEXT BLOB type means that my application isn't one of them... I would have loved its combination of decent speed and decent features, otherwise.
-E
OT sig comment (Score:2)
... whereas weak typing is for those with strong stomachs.
It fits between PostGreSQL and MySQL (Score:3)
Interbase fits quite well between them. Interbase has the most-desired features wanted in MySQL (transactions in particular), though these features slow it down in comparison. But it is still quite a bit faster and more compact than PostGreSQL in many applications, at the expense of having a rather limited selection of types and predefined functions.
If I were using MySQL 3.22 and needed stable transaction support, I'd probably switch to Interbase. If I were using PostGreSQL and needed more speed, I'd probably grit my teeth and wait until the next revision of the PostGreSQL storage manager, which is promised for Real Soon Now -- unless its current speed was utterly unacceptable, in which case I'd strongly look at Interbase, while gritting my teeth. Not that Interbase is a bad database. It's just that PostGreSQL has gotten much, MUCH more featuresome over the past couple of years, and many of those features, such as an indexable TEXT type (which Interbase lacks), are quite useful in the kinds of applications that I write. Having to go back to fixed-size VARCHAR records would be a step backward for me. Even MySQL 3.23 doesn't make you do that (you can index the TEXT BLOB type in MySQL 3.23, or, rather, you can index the first {n} characters of it).
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IPL?? (Score:2)
Is the IPL approved by the Open Source Initiative [opensource.org]?
Methinks all these new licenses are bloating the license namespace
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Jello Comparisions (Score:2)
Now, if you want a jello comparison -- Interbase fits between MySQL and PostGreSQL on the features spectrum (that is, it has more features than MySQL, but lacks some features of PostGreSQL). Interbase also fits between MySQL and PostGreSQL on the speed spectrum, but is closer to MySQL speed-wise (PostGreSQL is a pig, especially on inserts... even selects are a good 10-20% slower than on most "name" databases). On the scalability spectrum, MySQL sucks (2gb limit on file size on 32-bit Linux), even the new RAID functionality is a kludge that's not going to change that significantly because it's too inflexible (have to pre-detirmine that "yes, I want to have 5 files for a max of 10gb", and woe to you if that is not enough), while PostGreSQL will happily build 50-gb database files and handle them all day long (on machines with a 2gb limit on file size, PostGreSQL automatically handles creating additional files as needed to handle the table's "data heap"). I did not have a chance to closely examine Interbase's specs on the scalability side, I know it will handle more than 2gb of data on Linux, but I don't know whether you have to pre-define how big it can get, like with MySQL. (Note that MySQL does not have the 2gb limit on OS's that properly support 64-bit filesystems).
Best bet: Download them all, create a sample database, try some sample queries, slam the @#$% out of them. Note that PostGreSQL's big speed problem for most people is going to be insert speed and its sluggishness at opening connections. Select speed will probably not be a problem for most people, because PostGreSQL is plenty fast there for the typical application. Interbase may be the solution to those woes if you need transaction support and speed too. Or you could wait for MySQL 3.23 to mature, it too has alpha-quality transaction support, though it will never have the more advanced features of Interbase or PostGreSQL ("never" is probably a strong word here, but given the MySQL author's desire for speed rather than features, it probably will remain accurate).
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Speed, stability (Score:2)
Regarding speed, MySQL is and always will be the fastest SQL database on the planet, bar none. It gets that speed at a cost, though -- tossing out every feature that might possibly slow down the database. For many people, Interbase hits a very sweet point on the features vs. performance spectrum, it is faster and more compact than most "full-featured" databases, while still having the majority of functionality that most reasonable people would consider nice to have.
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Threaded Interbase (Score:2)
Also worthy to note that the user-friendly DBMS management tool is apparently written in Pascal, and is not going to be usable on Linux until Kylix is up and going.
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How is it in practice? (Score:3)
We're building a portal on EJB, and we need a rock-solid backend. Everyone of course trusts Oracle, but my GOD do you ever pay for it.
What've been people's experiences so far with this DB?
Re:Connectivity from other apps? (Score:2)
Check out www.interbase2000.org, there's even an alpha quality DB-OLE (or whatever the heck it's called) driver.
Free Pascal support seems to be in the works, but since Inprise open-sourced the IB-Express objects for Delphi, maybe they will eventually compile under FPC as well.
The sweetest way to connect is through Jason Wharton's IBObjects using Delphi or BCB. Hopefully these will eventually migrate over to Linux when the Kylix project releases Delphi 6 for Linux in late September.
Interbase's best attributes are: size (this is not bloatware, people!) and reliability (one of the case studies refers to usage in a tank because when the big gun goes, the computer reboots).
The super-niftiest feature is the multigenerational architecture where readers never block writers and writers never block readers. I'm sure other DBMS's have something like this, but Interbase was the first.
Jim Starkey, the "Big Bad Wolf" of Interbase and original author claims to have invented the concept of a BLOB (binary large object) stored in a relational database.
This database has been around for more than 15 years. It's interesting looking at the code - you can compile for some quite rare platforms. What is the Apollo?
Cobalt RaQ4 ships with Interbase (Score:3)
Re:Nice License choice (Score:2)
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