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Microsoft SQL Server |
Firebird
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| Any version of Microsoft SQL server from version
2005 or newer. This includes SQL Express as well as SQL
Server. Versions older than 2005 (i.e. SQL server
7) are not supported |
Firebird is a free open source database server. We looked
long and hard at many different alternatives to support in
addition to Microsoft SQL server and tested many out thoroughly.
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Firebird is a
relational database offering many ANSI SQL-99 features that runs
on Linux and Windows. Firebird offers excellent concurrency,
high performance, and powerful language support for stored
procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems
since 1981.
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Pros: |
Pros: |
| Very powerful, can be scaled from a small
network using one of the free versions up to an enterprise class
solution involving clusters of SQL servers capable of supporting
hundreds of thousands of simultaneous users. |
Very powerful, in testing we’ve found in most cases Firebird
is only slightly slower than SQL server 2000 with all hardware
being equal. However much depends on the exact operation being
performed. |
| Free for the “light” version such as SQL Express
2005 |
Requires little to no administration, once set up it just
keeps working. |
| Light versions can be replaced with the full
blown server editions as required |
Free with a very solid history in production use. |
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Has a very active community of developers. |
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Can be backed up while running with included utilities. |
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Can be run on a non Windows computer such as Linux saving
the cost of an operating system for a computer being used solely
as a database server. |
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Just as reliable as Microsoft SQL server in our experience,
we have had no issues with either platform. |
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stand-a-lone FireBird database engine which is only 2MB in size |
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Cons: |
Cons: |
| The free light versions such as SQL Express 2005
may be too limited for some offices depending on the amount of
data and how heavily AyaNova is used. 10 users or less will
find performance good, as you go over that and add more and more
data you may find performance decreasing as the light versions
of SQL server have a built in throttling mechanism to limit
their use to lighter loads. |
Slightly slower under heavy loads: If for example, you
were to display a huge list of thousands of records of data in
AyaNova rather than filtering it by a date range as is
recommended we have found Microsoft SQL server to be noticeably
faster. On the other hand when doing normal work in AyaNova
entering work orders, printing them etc there is no significant
difference. |
| Full SQL server can be relatively pricey. |
It’s open source free software, for some that is a bonus,
others may find that worrisome. We’re not normally great
proponents of free software for obvious reasons, but we did look
at both commercial and open source alternatives to offer with
MS-SQL server and it was technically the best match for the
requirements of AyaNova. |
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Slower performance has been noted if
hyperthreading is used, or dual processors in some cases.
Recommended to compare with or without to see what works
best for you. For examples of
topics suggested reading
http://ibdeveloper.com/issues/issue-1-sep-1-2005/hyperthreading-smp-and/
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| You can find more information about
SQL 2008 at:
http://www.microsoft.com/sqlserver/2008/en/us/overview.aspx |
You can fine more information about Firebird at:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/ |
