Release of Interbase Beta For Linux

Baudtender was one of the folks who wrote to say that Interbase has been released for public testing. This is the open source release, with the code and more information available at Interbase.com

Comments

Well behaved

[deefer]

Nice. I've used Interbase on NT for the last year, and it's pretty much rock solid. Three crashes last year, full recovery each time - nice.
The real kicker for Interbase is the fact it's so bloody small - it hardly eats any resources. OK, it does lack some features, but you can get around these with a little effort.
As Linux gets ported to more and more embedded devices, there will be situations when a database will be useful. Interbase would plug that gap admirably.
Inprise are to be congratulated on this bold move - I am hoping to see a resurgence of Borland as a market leader in compiler technology. They already are, IMHO, except in market share...

Strong data typing is for those with weak minds.

Interbase and Others

[jallen02]

Okay I have read a few reviews where they stackerd Interbase up to PostgreSQL and talked about the limitation sof MySQL.

MySQL
Good Stuff
Very fast for read heavy or low user-load apps.
Good Security
Good Support with web publishing systems
Not So Good Stuff
No Transaction Support
Table locking system behaves poorly with many connections
Noy SQL-92 Compliant.

Okay a little about interbase and PostgreSQL now. PostgreSQL has a shared cache, something interbase DOES not have in the Linux version as of yet. Interbase blows PostgreSQL out of the water for single user queries.
Interbase TPS on OLTP Single Read test was over 150
The same test for PostgreSQL was at the 50 mark. for transactions per second.

But if you are expecting many concurrent connections interbase does not have the *best* setup and PostgreSQL will actually outperform Interbase under lots of connection/high-load.

Without the shared cache PostgreSQL was like three times faster than interbase. Go PostgreSQL. Another nice thing about Interbase is that it IS SQL-92 compliant. Okay Enjoy and I hope this was a litle useful.
Oh BTW Interbase is under the Mozilla License

(lol I was asked to check out the two database like last eek :-)

Jeremy

Interbase scalability vs. Postgres scalability

[dhogaza]

Postgres beat out Interbase on throughput with many connections because the version of Interbase being released for Linux is the non-threaded version. This version doesn't maintain a shared cache between the separate database processes. Postgres isn't threaded, either, but uses shared memory to cache blocks between backend processes.

Though the released version of Interbase is the non-threaded one, apparently the source for the treaded version WILL be released, and I've seen a quote from one of the Interbase folks stating his hope that folks in the Linux community will port over the threaded version, too.

In that case, scalability shouldn't really be an issue for Interbase, because the threaded version does implement cache sharing between threads.

Postgres reached its maximum throughput on the artificial benchmark at 50 users on a dual P450 with (I think) 512MB RAM, according to the PC Week guy.

Also, note that Postgres v7.0, now in beta, implements some of the missing SQL features mentioned in the article. In particular, referential integrity complete with "on cascade/update delete/set null/default" referential actions is included.

Regarding mySQL, yes, it is very fast for simple queries. For high-volume use it is less than ideal, though, as it implements concurrency control by locking entire tables. Postgres, Interbase and Oracle all implement concurrency control such that readers NEVER wait for writers, and writers only lock affected rows during a transaction (unless the user does a "select for update" or otherwise imposes a more stringent lock ).

Table locking is evil for high-volume sites. This is one reason for Oracle's popularity at high-end e-commerce sites.

Re:Other databases

[shadrack]

In addition to the other comments here, it also supports an external event notification system. You can program in events that are received by external processes that have registered for them. Superior alternative to having external processes poll the database for info. It also supports multiple transactions against multiple databases (through the native API, not through the Borland database engine). It has a mature and tested API for both C and Delphi programmers, and there is an ODBC driver available. It supports SQL statements up to 64k in length. It also supports automatic Database shadowing, and allows a single database to span multiple drives.

Now to balance things. Interbase server side User defined functions are not threaded in the current Linux release (5.x). This can cause slow downs if lots of users are setting them off.
On the windows side where IB is truly and fully threaded, UDFs can't make calls to external programs/DLLs (ala SQL Server). Has poor support for temporary tables, though that can be easily overcome with good design and programming.

Overall though, IB is truly multiplatform and very easy to setup and maintain. You don't need a high priced Oracle style DBA to manage it.