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Release of Interbase Beta For Linux

Posted by Hemos on from the get-the-data dept.

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

2 of 67 comments (clear)

  1. Interbase and Others by jallen02 · · Score: 5

    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

  2. Interbase scalability vs. Postgres scalability by dhogaza · · Score: 5

    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.