Firebird 2 Project Vulcan

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wayne avatar
wayne
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Joined: 07-Apr-2004
# Posted on: 08-Nov-2004 21:14:24   

Hi Frans

Have you seen what is planned for FireBird 2 (Project Vulcan)?

I read the specs / todo's for Project Vulcan and it seems like this will put firebird in a very strong position. especiall with all the added features?

I must say that it also sounds like Broland made a @#$*up of the Database in the way they implemented things.

Any inside info from your friends in low places on Project Vulcan?

Otis avatar
Otis
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# Posted on: 08-Nov-2004 22:12:05   

This is the first time I hear about it, Wayne simple_smile Do you have links to Vulcan material?

Frans Bouma | Lead developer LLBLGen Pro
carlosga
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Posts: 31
Joined: 02-Jun-2004
# Posted on: 08-Nov-2004 22:12:21   

wayne wrote:

Hi Frans

Have you seen what is planned for FireBird 2 (Project Vulcan)?

I read the specs / todo's for Project Vulcan and it seems like this will put firebird in a very strong position. especiall with all the added features?

I must say that it also sounds like Broland made a @#$*up of the Database in the way they implemented things.

Any inside info from your friends in low places on Project Vulcan?

Unless i'm worng simple_smile The integration of the Vulcan source code into the firebird CVS will be done for Firebird 3

carlosga
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Joined: 02-Jun-2004
# Posted on: 08-Nov-2004 22:16:55   

Otis wrote:

This is the first time I hear about it, Wayne simple_smile Do you have links to Vulcan material?

The Firebird RoadMap

http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=devel&sub=engine&id=roadmap

Vulcan information:

http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&s=1099943372:248006&page=vul_development

wayne avatar
wayne
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# Posted on: 09-Nov-2004 08:40:34   

carlosga wrote:

Unless i'm worng simple_smile The integration of the Vulcan source code into the firebird CVS will be done for Firebird 3

"Vulcan" is the project name for the next major version of Firebird,

I thought I the next major version will be 2 as we are still only busy with 1.5.

but

then i found this:

Beyond that, Firebird 2.0 would be merged with Vulcan for release as Firebird 3.0

omar avatar
omar
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# Posted on: 10-Nov-2004 03:38:54   

hi guys,

Just curious... could anyone here give us some background info about this FireBird and for what platforms and applications should we consider it rather than any of the big 3

OMAR

wayne avatar
wayne
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# Posted on: 10-Nov-2004 08:49:03   

You can find the full history of Firebird at : http://firebird.sourceforge.net/index.php?op=history&id=beginning

But here is a short history: Firebird use to be a commercial datasbase called Interbase. It has been around for a few decades.. Interbase was owned by Borland during the 90's. and was made open source in August 2000.

Interbase or now firebird is fully functional Relational Database. It has all the modern functionality that the current commercial Relational Database has.

It has SQL Language, Data definition Lanaguage, Tables, views, triggers, Indexes, Foreignkey constraints, generators (Identities), Domains, Stored Procs and USer Defined Functions - wow, i hope i did not miss anything.

Firebird and Interbase runs on a multitude of different OS's most commonly used OS platforms for Firebird are Linux and Windows (incl. MS Terminal Servers and Citrix Mainframes). Other supported platforms are Mac OS X, Solaris and HP-UX.

Interbase was mainly used with FAT-Clients in the past - but Firebird now has build-in paging facility that makes it perfect for the web aswell. Actually you can use it anywhere - if my memory is right - i think the U.S. Army uses Interbase.

Otis avatar
Otis
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# Posted on: 10-Nov-2004 09:57:20   

Firebird is a good database, I'm not sure if it can hold terabytes of data for thousands of concurrent users, but it's definitely a winner for systems which have, say, 100 users or so. The small footprint is really great and it is quite fast. What's also great is that you can use the firebird embedded dll as the server, so all you need to do is place the firebird .net provider + the .fdb file (your database) + the firebird embedded dll in your bin folder of your asp.net site and you have a site connected to a database which is much faster than access simple_smile

Frans Bouma | Lead developer LLBLGen Pro
wayne avatar
wayne
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# Posted on: 10-Nov-2004 10:01:49   

Otis wrote:

I'm not sure if it can hold terabytes of data for thousands of concurrent users

I have personally never seen a Interbase or Firebird Database over 2 GB - but i have worked on databases in the region of 400 - 600 MB.

Quote from [urldescription="IBPhoenix"]http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&l=;FAQS;NAME='System+Limits'[/url]

IBphoenix wrote:

Most of the actual limits on a firebird database are practical rather than defined by the software. For example, you can define up to 32767 columns in a table, but why?

The two significant restrictions are:

Max indexes per table is 64. This restriction exists in Firebird 1.02 but will be removed in subsequent versions

Max size of an index key is 254 bytes and less for compound keys. Character columns that sort in dictionary order rather than byte order require more than one byte per character to represent their collating sequence. As a result, the effective limit on key size may be as low as 90 bytes for some languages.

Other limits:

Metadata names are restricted to 31 characters

Rows are restricted to 32767 bytes

A database can contain no more than 32767 tables.

The maximum size for a database is something like 7 terabytes.

Each table can hold approximately 2**31 rows. The record identifier is an unsigned 32 bit value, but the name space is not dense. A table with long rows - either lots of fields or long fields - will hold fewer records than a table with very short rows. I've never heard of anyone hitting that limit.