in reply to SQLite vs Firebird vs ...

gone Postgres for almost everything nowadays [...]

Does anyone have experience with Firebird to share?

And there you have it; you really said it yourself in a nutshell. I'd be somewhat interested in firebird too. But who is going to mess with a relative unproven option like firebird? (except perhaps for the embeddedness -- which Pg does not offer)

IMHO, even if one assumes that firebird can catch up with postgres at all, it would take quite some time before it will be able to match postgres' stability and 'ecosystem'.

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Re^2: SQLite vs Firebird vs ...
by erix (Prior) on Mar 29, 2013 at 09:20 UTC

    Drifting a bit off-topic perhaps, but I thought this was interesting (we love lists after all, and both your (lightweight?) db's are in the list too).

    Below is this month's list from a (apparently) monthly updated list of database "popularity" (measured by mentions on google, bing, by job offers, and some other things). 

    Rank March 2013            DBMS               Database Model      Scor
+e   Changes
        Rank Last Month
----------------------------------------------------------------------
+-----------
1.            1.          Oracle              Relational DBMS    1533.
+39   -34.54
2.            2.   Microsoft SQL Server       Relational DBMS    1318.
+36    +7.75
3.            3.     MySQL (Oracle-owned)     Relational DBMS    1295.
+22   +10.44
4.     up     5.        PostgreSQL            Relational DBMS     177.
+16    -6.31
5.     down   4.     Microsoft Access         Relational DBMS     170.
+17   -15.88
6.            6.            DB2               Relational DBMS     159.
+33    -2.72
7.            7.          MongoDB             Document store      124.
+22    +8.09
8.            8.          Sybase              Relational DBMS      85.
+41    +0.89
9.            9.          SQLite              Relational DBMS      83.
+26    +2.25
10.           10.          Solr               Search engine        43.
+16    -4.19
11.           11.        Cassandra            Wide column store    36.
+36    +0.20
12.           12.          Redis              Key-value store      32.
+43    +0.40
13.    up     14.        Memcached            Key-value store      24.
+97    +1.69
14.    down   13.        Informix             Relational DBMS      23.
+90    -1.53
15.           15.          HBase              Wide column store    20.
+45    -0.29
16.           16.         CouchDB             Document store       18.
+29    -1.40
17.           17.        Firebird             Relational DBMS      13.
+77    +0.18
18.           18.         Sphinx              Search engine         9.
+47    +0.62
19.    up     20.          Neo4j              Graph DBMS            7.
+44    +0.32
20.    up     21.         Vertica             Relational DBMS       7.
+40    +0.97
21.    down   19.      Elasticsearch          Search engine         6.
+76    -0.64
22.    up     23.          Riak               Key-value store       6.
+09    -0.07
23.    down   22.         Ingres              Relational DBMS       5.
+51    -0.88
24.           24.        Interbase            Relational DBMS       5.
+16    +0.19
25.    up     30.         RavenDB             Document store        4.
+23    +0.60
26.    up     27.        Couchbase            Document store        4.
+18    +0.20
27.    down   26.        Sybase IQ            Relational DBMS       3.
+97    -0.02
28.    up     34.        MarkLogic            Native XML DBMS       3.
+91    +0.84
29.    down   25.        DynamoDB             Key-value store       3.
+83    -0.24
30.    up     33.       Jackrabbit            Content store         3.
+81    +0.72
31.    down   28.      SQL Anywhere           Relational DBMS       3.
+52    -0.40
32.    down   31.          Derby              Relational DBMS       3.
+26    -0.21
33.    down   32.       Berkeley DB           Key-value store       2.
+94    -0.36
34.    down   29.         Adabas              Multivalue DBMS       2.
+78    -1.10
35.           35.         MariaDB             Relational DBMS       2.
+64    -0.42
36.           36.        SimpleDB             Key-value store       2.
+47    -0.11
37.           37.          mSQL               Relational DBMS       1.
+99    -0.09
38.           38.           H2                Relational DBMS       1.
+90    +0.06
39.           39.        Virtuoso             Relational DBMS       1.
+85    +0.06
40.                        MaxDB              Relational DBMS       1.
+71
41.           40.        TimesTen             Relational DBMS       1.
+57    -0.11
42.                        Caché              Object oriented DBMS  1.
+50
43.           41.          Db4o               Object oriented DBMS  1.
+32    -0.11
44.           44. Versant Object Database     Object oriented DBMS  1.
+28    +0.20
45.           43.        Accumulo             Key-value store       1.
+28    +0.08
46.           42.        HyperSQL             Relational DBMS       1.
+11    -0.09
47.                         IMS               Navigational DBMS     0.
+97
48.           45.       ObjectStore           Object oriented DBMS  0.
+90    -0.06
49.           47.         Drizzle             Relational DBMS       0.
+85    -0.05
50.           46.         Tamino              Native XML DBMS       0.
+80    -0.13
51.           51.       Infinispan            Key-value store       0.
+70    -0.03
52.           49.      Oracle NoSQL           Key-value store       0.
+64    -0.14
53.           50.          Sedna              Native XML DBMS       0.
+63    -0.11
54.           52.          Jena               RDF store             0.
+62    -0.04
55.                        IDMS               Navigational DBMS     0.
+60
56.                       Mnesia              Document store        0.
+50
57.           48.         VoltDB              Relational DBMS       0.
+50    -0.34
58.           53.         Sesame              RDF store             0.
+48    -0.07
59.           57.        OrientDB             Graph DBMS            0.
+41    +0.09
60.           54.         solidDB             Relational DBMS       0.
+39    +0.01
61.           55.          GT.M               Key-value store       0.
+36    +0.00
62.           56.         Xapian              Search engine         0.
+33    -0.03
63.           65.         Compass             Search engine         0.
+33    +0.10
64.           59.           DEX               Graph DBMS            0.
+29    -0.02
65.           60.         MonetDB             Relational DBMS       0.
+26    -0.05
66.           58.       Hypertable            Wide column store     0.
+26    -0.06
67.           61.      Tokyo Cabinet          Key-value store       0.
+26    -0.03
68.           63.        Clustrix             Relational DBMS       0.
+25    -0.00
69.                   Pervasive PSQL          Relational DBMS       0.
+24
70.           64.        OpenBase             Relational DBMS       0.
+24    -0.00
71.           67.          BaseX              Native XML DBMS       0.
+23    +0.02
72.           66.        InfiniDB             Relational DBMS       0.
+22    -0.00
73.           62.         VistaDB             Relational DBMS       0.
+21    -0.06
74.           70.         Cubrid              Relational DBMS       0.
+17    +0.01
75.           68.          NuoDB              Relational DBMS       0.
+16    -0.03
76.           80.          Kdb+               Relational DBMS       0.
+15    +0.09
77.           71.      AllegroGraph           RDF store             0.
+15    +0.00
78.           75.      Tokyo Tyrant           Key-value store       0.
+14    +0.02
79.           72.        Aerospike            Key-value store       0.
+14    -0.00
80.           73.    Project Voldemort        Key-value store       0.
+14    +0.01
81.           69.          Perst              Object oriented DBMS  0.
+13    -0.04
82.                       Hibari              Key-value store       0.
+13
83.           76.         Akiban              Relational DBMS       0.
+11    -0.00
84.           77.         LevelDB             Key-value store       0.
+11    +0.01
85.           78.       CloudSearch           Search engine         0.
+10    +0.02
86.           81.        eXtremeDB            Relational DBMS       0.
+05    -0.01
87.           74.        Scalaris             Key-value store       0.
+05    -0.08
88.           82.        Meronymy             RDF store             0.
+04    -0.01
89.           79.         MemSQL              Relational DBMS       0.
+03    -0.03
90.           85.         Stardog             RDF store             0.
+03    -0.00
91.           83.         LucidDB             Relational DBMS       0.
+02    -0.02
92.           88.         4store              RDF store             0.
+02    +0.00
93.           86.         Mulgara             RDF store             0.
+02    -0.00
94.           89.         Exasol              Relational DBMS       0.
+01    -0.00
95.           90.        ObjectDB             Object oriented DBMS  0.
+01    -0.00
96.           84.        InfoGrid             Graph DBMS            0.
+00    -0.03

    [download]

    I haven't looked much at the scoring precedure yet.

    There is the expected top-3, with the expected downward trend of "Big" Oracle. That the trend of "Small" Oracle (=mysql) is still upward is therefore surprising. (Then again, these numbers are over a single month; I should probably look further back for real trends)

    There is a huge gap between mysql and postgres, numbers 3 and 4. One would expect that that gap is closing; this is obviously not happening in these month's numbers. Ah well...

    PostgreSQL has overtaken both DB2 and MS-Access in the last 6 months. Surprising, as I had expected DB2 to be much higher on any such list.

    Anyway, the whole list is here. (They also seem to publish blog posts discussing the changes every now and then, like here)

[reply]
[d/l]
Re^2: SQLite vs Firebird vs ...
by sedusedan (Pilgrim) on Mar 12, 2013 at 16:37 UTC

    Although I usually use Postgres now, embedded/serverless mode still has its uses, for example when a program which is run by normal users wants to store data/statistics in some relational database without having to deal with system-level permissions or a system-wide daemon. Another approach would be to run a per-user database daemon, like in KDE's akonadi which starts its own MySQL daemon; this is not really feasible for a command line-based program.

    Firebird is not unproven, it has a long (as in decades-long, in some form or another) track record. Though perhaps it's still not popular in Unix/Linux circles. Kind of sad, because SQLite really sucks "SQL-wise".

    I think I'll bite my finger and just start to use it. I'll share my experiences later.

[reply]
      SQLite really sucks "SQL-wise".

      SQLite rules for what it is: an utterly free, stable, embeddable, minimalistic engine. Saying it sucks because it doesn't match your use case is like saying a saw sucks because it won't drive nails well.

[reply]
        I was actually saying "SQLite's SQL features sucks (as in: are lacking)". To be more specific: no dates, very limited ALTER TABLE. Is that more objective now? (Although now that I think of it, those two lacking features are crippling *for my use cases*, others might not be bothered with that).
[reply]
      I used Firebird a long time ago and remember it was as solid as Postgres is today, providing concurrency, transactions and everything else on the flakiest Windows versions, which is something. The problem I see with using it now is that it has very little support in hosting services, so your application would have to remain in a server you have complete control of.
[reply]

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