Hello:

I wouldn't take that risk.
How come that you are evaluating the chance to change ton another database on the middle of a project?, Mysql is powerful enough to support that and more, has more than 4 million of instalations on the world, has support, courses, certification program and more.

What has Firebird?
no one has ever heard of it although it claims to be on the IT bussines since 1981.

Best Regards
Microturbian

Yes and what's the problem with that? I have 3 servers (Win 2K, Win XP and Linux) with 50 databases with a dozen tables over 60 million rows all handled smoothly with InnoDb. *Some* features (like fulltext search) are only available with MyISAM but guess what, do you have fulltext search with Firebird ?

I am not saying one is better than the other (By the way, DB2 addict here)! I am just saying MySQL can handle the load properly (see Yahoo Finance, Genome project and lots of other examples) and it has a very active community and lots of resources/addons/documentation on the web. That can't be compared to what the Firebird community has to offer.

Need to do some Perl/ASP/PHP/Java/C##/VB with MySQL? You can find a zillion links/forums/mailing lists! I don't think Firebird is as popular as MySQL.

Yes they promise lots of new stuff every release but at least it shows that the product is well and alive and that lots of development is underway. Can you say the same thing about Firebird? Just finding a decent (not to say functionnal) free ODBC driver for Firebird is impossible...

And hey, stop talking about "PR flacks" when your RDBMS is only at version 1.5 and has prooved nothing in a real production environment. MySQL has *shown* it can be used in real life.

My 2 cents.

well that make more than 2cent *g*,
but to save you from reading firebird.sf.net, no it's not a newcomer, and yes, it has been in use since 22 years, and at least on sale since 1984. the developer is still working on the code, it was alway ment to be a RDBMS, it's trade name was interbase, sold by borland, the default db deliverd with nearly every development software the sold in the las 8 or 10 years.

just one fact for the stats "war":
the larges public known (as of 2001) db system using interbase 6 (the point it went open source->firebird was "born") is a 90GB single database, spread over 48 files
with roughly 250.000 sim. users.

i used it in a cluster enviroment, and esp. during development i loved the fact, that you can work on disk, i.e. without running db-daemon, to remove and insert data with command line tools.
it also survied all crashes, missuses and stress tests the system hat to take. but mysql would have been atleast 30% faster, and , well, fulltext serach is nothing you would need a db for, a db is to organise data, not to pile it up

Regards Onno

p.s.
yes i'm a fan of firebird, it is truly platform independent, allows for high security (in terms of system security), and you can even store tables in individual files, it's fully j2ee integrated,.....
here is a (long) article
http://www.ibphoenix.com/a494.htm

I suggest that you should approach this question from a business point of view:

• You apparently have in-house expertise on both database platforms. (If you don't... if there is actual experience using only one of these and the other team is speaking from hearsay, then the hearsay is disqualified.)
• Assume that the conversion will cost, ex minimus, at least $250,000 to complete. A quarter of a million dollars! Is that justified now?
• If you are going to open up the question of switching to another database, do not limit your search to only the two you've so-far thought of. A technical, blow-by-blow comparison, and an assessment of risks, costs, internal and external support issues, will all be needed to select the best candidate for your company and your circumstance.
• A sound business decision, when it is made, may of course turn out to be dead-wrong but you can always systematically present your arguments, your data, your decision processes, and your conclusions before and after the fact.

Right now, it seems to me that you are in the process of making the decision, without first having concluded or even identified why or if such a decision should be made. Start by picking a "devil's advocate" within both teams. This is much more than just a "technical" decision. Don't make it by the seat of your pants.

{notez vous: My colorful language here is simply intended to be "blunt, direct and to the point." It should not be interpreted as a personal affront to you or to anyone. "I didn't mean it that way!"}

Incidentally...

I, too, have personal experience with Firebird (nee Interbase) and so can vouch for the stability of both products. "But that's not the big point, either." I'll stand by my original admonition as to how to approach the overall decision.

that is probably even true, since my last lamp system is quite some time ago, i only made "big" stuff, thus speed was a lesser issue(i.e. buy more boxes, instead of touching software).

so i wont say mysql is wrong, not in this forum

Regards Onno

I'm currently in the process of migrating from MySql to Firebird.
We were using mysql with perl/tk, VB front ends(non website). We loosing lot of money in fixing db crashes and support. MySql Replication is joke. See each Mysql release changelog as to how many bugs related to replication are there and fixed). With Firebird we plan to put all our buisness logic in firebird right now it sits in perl and VB has no idea what's going on.

I think migration from MySql to Firebird is very easy but in other direction people will have problem.
Also mysql should name there products as MySql_InnoDb, MySql_MyISAM, MySql_ISAM, etc because you cannot comfortably mix these table types infact they were originally different databases.

Most people who do websites and use java they go for hsqldb...fast and light db.

We need a database that once set can run without any further attention from DBA.

Some other forum i hear that yahoo still use old version of mysql, besides they are big and can afford the mysql support fee. We pay hundred's of dollars to buy MySql commercial license while Firebird is free (more free). I don't know how well mysql handle unicode or other collate type.

Also MySql (production)version <= 4.0.x is not real RDBMS. No foreign key support, recently they have removed the paragraph from documentation which suggested that for database you don't need foreign keys.
I have used MySql since 2000 and it has *shown* me that its not good for real db intensive applications.

Checkout Firebird's mailing list there you will get free support from the core developers and don't be surprised if you get reply's within minutes.