Re: Oracle glob/blob handling

Hi,

Lucyna Witkowska schrieb:
> Hi,
>
> Michael Gast <michael.gast_at_seppmed.de> wrote:
>

>> We recommended our customer to use Oracle under Linux. Unfortunately
>> Oracle changed its pricing scheme during the decision phase. With the
>> new scheme, Oracle became to expensive for our customer and therefore we
>> switched to another db system. Additional information: MS SQL-Server 7
>> did not fit on the same hardware. It was much to slow and had a lot of
>> painful restrictions regarding our needs.

We started with Interbase 6.0 (published under some flavor of open source by Borland) and switched during the realization phase to Firebird (the open source successor of Interbase 6.0, please see firebird.sourceforge.net). The db server is running RedHat Linux as OS. It is a hot standby cluster with two servers, each with two Intel Xeon processors and 512 MB of RAM. Mass storage is managed with two Fibre SCSI loops and two independent SCSI storage subsystems, mirrored on SCSI driver level. The server design and realization was done by Siemens.

Compared to MS SQL Server 7.0 Firebird is much faster (between 4 and 8 times) and is much better in parallel access to the data. Compared with Oracle it is about 25% to 50% faster. But it lacks some functionality compared with Oracle:

• No redo logging facility - after a crash, you can recover only the state of your last backup (IMO the main disadvantage). But doing an online backup of a running db works very good. We do a backup each night. Our customer can manage data loss of up to one day. The Firebird development group is working on a redo log extension for one of the next releases.
• No table level triggers. But it has all row level trigger types. I have implemented about 150 triggers, a lot of them are fired in cascades, in the system without any problems. In some of our huge transactions we fire more than 100000 triggers.
• It is not possible to access other databases from within a trigger or a stored procedure.
• Compared to Oracle, the physical storage options are poor.

There is no doubt for me that Oracle is the much better database, but it has its very high pricing level.

IMO Firebird can be used very good for small and medium size systems with a stored volume of up to about 100 GB of data - if you can manage a possible data loss since your last backup.

We have a throughput of about 300 GB per year in our system. The maximum size for the database is about 70 GB. The data remains in the system for typically 60 days and is transferred to Easy Archive after this period.

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Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Best Regards
Michael Gast
SEPP MED GmbH