Re: Firebird vrs Postgresql

--- Derek Hamilton <derek@capweb.com> wrote:
> I'm not sure this is still the case, but I recently
> chose PostgreSQL over
> Firebird because Firebird requires direct access to
> the database file.
> There is no way to access it via TCP/IP with
> drivers, etc.  That killed
> Firebird in my mind.
>
> Derek

It's my understanding that direct access is one of the
access modes that you can choose.  Networked,
client-server options are available.

For what it's worth, when I looked at Firebird, I
noted:

1. Multi-table updates were not available as a single
SQL statement.  There were programming work-arounds
for this, of course; but why work so hard?

2. You could import a fixed-width data file; but not a
delimited file.  In PostgreSQL, you could COPY a data
file that uses a single delimiter; but COPY does not
handle fixed-width data files. (Please correct me if
I'm wrong on this.)

3. Firebird is available for Windows and Unixish
operating systems such as Linux, FreeBSD, etc.

4. I couldn't find the documentation to tell me where
to start once I installed the database server. (This
may have been obvious to a DBA.)

(Regarding #3: What is the proper way to refer to
Unix, Linux, FreeBSD, etc., collectively?)

Have fun,

Andrew Gould