3/08/2010
Why IBSurgeon supports Firebird?
Recently we have joined MindTheBird Campaign, and it's a good time to explain our attitude to Firebird.
As you know, currently there are lot of big and small companies involved in open source support and development. Some big companies (like IBM or Oracle) use open-source as mass destruction weapon against competitors, and also split development and/or testing and (definitely!) marketing costs with open-source community.
Some companies (like majority of Firebird Foundation members) support open source because they rely on them as part of their business - as platform or in other way.
And I doubt that there is company that supports open source project as complete charity, without intention to use its code in this or that way. If you know such company - please refer to it, I'm interested to know.
For IBSurgeon the answer for the question "why you support Firebird" is pretty obvious. Our main business is related with database recovery. Our statistics for last 8 years shows that there is a pretty stable ratio between overall Firebird users and databases crashes. There were some peaks related with pre-release bugs but the baseline is rather stable and has slow growth tendency.
If we will exclude peaks we can see for sure that corruptions are mostly caused by lack of administration and hardware failures. This is the part of nature - people make mistakes, hardware is being broken. So ratio is pretty predictable and will be predictable as human nature and hardware will be at the current level.
So we can consider the whole Firebird user base as potential customers which will be converted to recovery solution consumers and, for serious enterprises, to consumers of our protection tools and services.
Last years we saw amazing growth of Firebird, both in terms of users and in terms of installations (official Firebird installer for Windows has optional URL to notify Google Analytics about fresh install, and it shows more than 2000 Firebird installations every day and it grows over time!).
So we see the great potential of Firebird growth, because proprietary databases have serious issues due to the increasing open-source adoption and, of course, due to tough economics.
As you know, currently there are lot of big and small companies involved in open source support and development. Some big companies (like IBM or Oracle) use open-source as mass destruction weapon against competitors, and also split development and/or testing and (definitely!) marketing costs with open-source community.
Some companies (like majority of Firebird Foundation members) support open source because they rely on them as part of their business - as platform or in other way.
And I doubt that there is company that supports open source project as complete charity, without intention to use its code in this or that way. If you know such company - please refer to it, I'm interested to know.
For IBSurgeon the answer for the question "why you support Firebird" is pretty obvious. Our main business is related with database recovery. Our statistics for last 8 years shows that there is a pretty stable ratio between overall Firebird users and databases crashes. There were some peaks related with pre-release bugs but the baseline is rather stable and has slow growth tendency.
If we will exclude peaks we can see for sure that corruptions are mostly caused by lack of administration and hardware failures. This is the part of nature - people make mistakes, hardware is being broken. So ratio is pretty predictable and will be predictable as human nature and hardware will be at the current level.
So we can consider the whole Firebird user base as potential customers which will be converted to recovery solution consumers and, for serious enterprises, to consumers of our protection tools and services.
Last years we saw amazing growth of Firebird, both in terms of users and in terms of installations (official Firebird installer for Windows has optional URL to notify Google Analytics about fresh install, and it shows more than 2000 Firebird installations every day and it grows over time!).
So we see the great potential of Firebird growth, because proprietary databases have serious issues due to the increasing open-source adoption and, of course, due to tough economics.
2/24/2010
MindTheBird! is started
You may notice a nice banner at the left side of our blog with the "MindTheBird!" slogan.
It means that MindTheBird! campaign goes public.
MindTheBird! is a Firebird community activation campaign to support Firebird 2.5 Launch.
Firebird 2.5 release is very important event for Firebird, but we can turn it into even more valuable thing and use upcoming release of new version to gain attention from IT world.
Join MindTheBird now: download MindTheBird materials and put Firebird 2.5 banner or embed presentation like you see below.
With this very small help from each Firebirder it's possible to gain significant attention from the other world.
Now it is time to make the world to mind the bird!
It means that MindTheBird! campaign goes public.
MindTheBird! is a Firebird community activation campaign to support Firebird 2.5 Launch.
Firebird 2.5 release is very important event for Firebird, but we can turn it into even more valuable thing and use upcoming release of new version to gain attention from IT world.
Join MindTheBird now: download MindTheBird materials and put Firebird 2.5 banner or embed presentation like you see below.
With this very small help from each Firebirder it's possible to gain significant attention from the other world.
Now it is time to make the world to mind the bird!
Why Firebird? Facts for decision makers
View more presentations from mindthebird.
1/10/2010
Evans Data Corp. included Firebird into survey, devoted to development tools
At last, analysts in Evans Data have noticed the one of the largest open source databases - Firebird.
Considering the fact that MySQL is almost dead (and never was true open source database, especially for ISVs who wanted to bundle their apps with database engine), I would say that Firebird and PostgreSQL are the only open source databases of choice (and in my experience Firebird is much more suitable for bundling with Windows apps ).
It took only 10 years, and we now see Firebird as a choice in Evans Data Corp. survey:
http://surveys.evansdata.com/EDC_CUST_JAN_2010/EDC_CUST_JAN_2010.html
I encourage all Firebird users and developers who use Firebird participate in this survey (it's open and free) and mark Firebird as their choice. It is very important for recognition of Firebird for newbie developers, journalists and other influencers.
Considering the fact that MySQL is almost dead (and never was true open source database, especially for ISVs who wanted to bundle their apps with database engine), I would say that Firebird and PostgreSQL are the only open source databases of choice (and in my experience Firebird is much more suitable for bundling with Windows apps ).
It took only 10 years, and we now see Firebird as a choice in Evans Data Corp. survey:
I encourage all Firebird users and developers who use Firebird participate in this survey (it's open and free) and mark Firebird as their choice. It is very important for recognition of Firebird for newbie developers, journalists and other influencers.
12/27/2009
Why We Love Christmas
So, it's Christmas again. Definitely it's one the most pleasant holidays, and almost everybody loves it.
We here in IBSurgeon love it too, but, frankly speaking, not for presents and good wishes and discount season.
After the Christmas we always have a hot season - many databases are being broken during holidays. While administrators are drinking toasts and enjoy winter vacations, Firebird and InterBase databases are keep working.
Since now there are at least several millions of Firebird installations (only www.webceo.com made more than 1 million installations) it's just a matter of statistics fluctuations when unattended database becomes corrupted - due to the lack of space or due to the HDD crash and - oops, no backups were stored or all of them were corrupted too.
Firebird can be reliable, but it can't fight statistics and human factor impact (as any other database software too) . It's always a small chance to miss configuration item or don't pay enough attention to log files...
Now we are beta-testing second generation of our FBDataGuard, intended to decrease such risks and help Firebird run smoothly. In 2010 we will release it and, I hope, it will leave us without urgent recoveries after next Christmas. This year we are on the alert.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
We here in IBSurgeon love it too, but, frankly speaking, not for presents and good wishes and discount season.
After the Christmas we always have a hot season - many databases are being broken during holidays. While administrators are drinking toasts and enjoy winter vacations, Firebird and InterBase databases are keep working.
Since now there are at least several millions of Firebird installations (only www.webceo.com made more than 1 million installations) it's just a matter of statistics fluctuations when unattended database becomes corrupted - due to the lack of space or due to the HDD crash and - oops, no backups were stored or all of them were corrupted too.
Firebird can be reliable, but it can't fight statistics and human factor impact (as any other database software too) . It's always a small chance to miss configuration item or don't pay enough attention to log files...
Now we are beta-testing second generation of our FBDataGuard, intended to decrease such risks and help Firebird run smoothly. In 2010 we will release it and, I hope, it will leave us without urgent recoveries after next Christmas. This year we are on the alert.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
12/02/2009
11/08/2009
Firebird 2.5 Benchmark: Firebird shows great results against MySQL and PostgreSQL
Tsutomu Hayashi performed series of tests with Firebird 2.5, 2.1 and MySQL/Postgresql.
Definitely Firebird need more evidences of its superior quality and advantages among other commercial and free open-source databases.
Definitely Firebird need more evidences of its superior quality and advantages among other commercial and free open-source databases.
Firebird2.5 Benchmarks(English)20091031
View more presentations from tomneko.
10/28/2009
Are you ready?
Tough day
Today I had a problem with video adapter at my computer.
Computer was shut down correctly, but won't start any more - shows black screen, HDD lamp is blinking.
Once I saw these showings, I've opened computer case, plug out my Gigabyte GeForce, get VGA cable from the desk and plug it to the on-board video adapter. Now it works (though with pretty bad resolution).
Tomorrow I'll buy new video adapter (probably Asus with 9500GT) and situation will be resolved.
Outage of my work computer is less than a hour, and it will be back to the normal performance in less than 1 day.
This is quick because I had recovery plan.
Why I have recovery plan
Approximately 2 years ago I had the same problem, and it took almost 3 days to discover and resolve the problem. It was awful - at first I thought that my soft RAID crushed, then - that motherboard is the reason, and also at the same time UPS died and gave more issues (I suppose, it was coincidence, but very bad coincidence). I've spent 2 days to fix hardware problem and 1 day to restore data and computer configuration because RAID was broken and I rebuilt it (pump data to the backup USB-drive and back).
Hold yourself in readiness
After that I decided to be prepared.
I knew that it is not possible to get 100% reliable hardware, but I wanted to minimize possible outage and reduce possibility of data loss as much as possible.
At new computer I've installed motherboard with integrated video-adapter to be able to quickly check problem with video adapter. Also I've bought new LCD monitor, which have not only DVI, but VGA input too to be able to work with on-board VGA.
I've set another mirrored RAID - if one disk dies, I have another, and I've got 1000W UPS which is more than my 500W power supply.
...it happens
Today it happened, and I managed situation much quicker than 2 years ago. I knew that I was protected with my preparation and now this feeling is confirmed.
Why it is written in Firebird blog?
In our practice we often see very strange reasons of corruptions. People install Firebird at workstations and never bother to make backups. They never check firebird.log and system logs...
To be honest, work computer is only work computer - source code is in SVN, emails copies are at server mailbox and at notebooks, also there are backups.
But database is another story. It runs for business, and business run on it.... And free license of Firebird does not mean that stored data is also free. Or outage of business running on Firebird costs zero.
And - do you have recovery plan for your Firebird database?
Today I had a problem with video adapter at my computer.
Computer was shut down correctly, but won't start any more - shows black screen, HDD lamp is blinking.
Once I saw these showings, I've opened computer case, plug out my Gigabyte GeForce, get VGA cable from the desk and plug it to the on-board video adapter. Now it works (though with pretty bad resolution).
Tomorrow I'll buy new video adapter (probably Asus with 9500GT) and situation will be resolved.
Outage of my work computer is less than a hour, and it will be back to the normal performance in less than 1 day.
This is quick because I had recovery plan.
Why I have recovery plan
Approximately 2 years ago I had the same problem, and it took almost 3 days to discover and resolve the problem. It was awful - at first I thought that my soft RAID crushed, then - that motherboard is the reason, and also at the same time UPS died and gave more issues (I suppose, it was coincidence, but very bad coincidence). I've spent 2 days to fix hardware problem and 1 day to restore data and computer configuration because RAID was broken and I rebuilt it (pump data to the backup USB-drive and back).
Hold yourself in readiness
After that I decided to be prepared.
I knew that it is not possible to get 100% reliable hardware, but I wanted to minimize possible outage and reduce possibility of data loss as much as possible.
At new computer I've installed motherboard with integrated video-adapter to be able to quickly check problem with video adapter. Also I've bought new LCD monitor, which have not only DVI, but VGA input too to be able to work with on-board VGA.
I've set another mirrored RAID - if one disk dies, I have another, and I've got 1000W UPS which is more than my 500W power supply.
...it happens
Today it happened, and I managed situation much quicker than 2 years ago. I knew that I was protected with my preparation and now this feeling is confirmed.
Why it is written in Firebird blog?
In our practice we often see very strange reasons of corruptions. People install Firebird at workstations and never bother to make backups. They never check firebird.log and system logs...
To be honest, work computer is only work computer - source code is in SVN, emails copies are at server mailbox and at notebooks, also there are backups.
But database is another story. It runs for business, and business run on it.... And free license of Firebird does not mean that stored data is also free. Or outage of business running on Firebird costs zero.
And - do you have recovery plan for your Firebird database?
10/20/2009
FBScanner 2.6
We are proud to announce the new version of FBScanner, our tool to solve all types of performance problems with Firebird.
Slowdowns, disconnects and networks errors, transactions' issues and ineffective SQLs - FBScanner can help developer or IT Pro to find the reasons and solve these problems.
New version of FBScanner introduces significant increasing of SQLs processing, new logging approach to database with one-click log creation, real time configuration (restart of not required).
Now it also has full support of Firebird 2.5 (including SuperClassic architecture).
For administrators FBScanner 2.6 offers additional security options:
Here is short presentation regarding main FBScanner features and usage scenarios:
Slowdowns, disconnects and networks errors, transactions' issues and ineffective SQLs - FBScanner can help developer or IT Pro to find the reasons and solve these problems.New version of FBScanner introduces significant increasing of SQLs processing, new logging approach to database with one-click log creation, real time configuration (restart of not required).
Now it also has full support of Firebird 2.5 (including SuperClassic architecture).
For administrators FBScanner 2.6 offers additional security options:
- ability to restrict number of connections
- white and black lists of databases
- white and black lists of IPs.
Here is short presentation regarding main FBScanner features and usage scenarios:
10/19/2009
Why Firebird is cool?
I've seen a lot of discussions between developers, students, administrators and other geeks regarding "what is cool and what is not". Definitely such talks are good with good beer in hand (like Czech's Velvet one :)), and they are very similar to any other "holy war" regarding software, cars, movies, etc.
Though such discussions are pretty common and may seem to be useless (especially without beer :), they actually represent the powerful marketing activity, the highest dream of every marketing manager - "word of mouth". Don’t omit the chance to tell someone about Firebird – it really helps, believe me.
So I decided to consider here 3 main talking points to help all of Firebird fans, developers and adopters to spread the word in the right and effective way:
1) Firebird is universal. By universal I mean not only the really wide range of supported range of platforms with (very important) 100% compatibility and easy one-step migration, but also the ability of Firebird to perform all types of database tasks: it can be used in ERP, CRM, billing, reporting/BI, web-site and other applications.
2) Firebird is flexible. Multi-generation architecture, suitable triggers and stored procedures allow developer to develop applications and achieve business goals in very fast way. Deployment is also very easy: small deployment packages without registration/activation can be supplied "as is" or built-in to enable silent installation, with choice of 4 architectures to bundle with your application: Embedded, SuperServer, Classic and SuperClassic (2.5).
Also flexibility means that you can use Firebird in almost all development environments and tools: .NET, Delphi, Java, PHP and dozens of less known languages.
3) And, the most important, Firebird is good enough. I like the comparison of Firebird with well-priced Japanese car: good-looking, comfortable, safe, with low fuel consumption and reliable. Definitely you cannot put 250 tons of rocks into its trunk, and you can't outrun flying Boeing... But do you really need it or ever wanted to do it? The same thing is about Firebird: it is enough for the majority of business tasks and fits 99% needs of enterprises in SMB segment (SMB states for Small and Medium Business, i.e., for people who count on real values and live in real world without personal jets).
Firebird is equipped very well to handle business, and it remains compact, fast and transparent for developers.
Of course, during the holy wars there are always objections and attempts to raise old dead myths from graves:
1) Firebird is for small databases and it cannot handle large database. This is really funny myth, especially after our test with 1Tb database and many examples of real-world multi-gigabyte databases. But there are one thing to be highlighted every time when you see this stupid statements: the density of stored data. It's not well-known fact that Firebird keeps data in compressed way, approximately 2 times more than MS SQL and Oracle. So 10Gb Firebird database actually will be ~18-20Gb database in MSSQL or Oracle (if someone would like to check it, I will be glad to publish the results here and everywhere).
2) Firebird is a slow database. The flexibility of Firebird has the other side: it forgives developers much more ugly things than other databases. Firebird keeps working when Oracle will say something regarding "rollback segments", it keeps working when lucky MS SQL administrators buy the second set of licenses and 30k hardware to deploy reports-only instance.
Definitely Firebird has limitations of self-tuning and out-of-box performance endurance. Guys, even the best Japanese cars can be broken, especially without right maintenance in heavy conditions and while driving by inexperienced driver.
3) Firebird is not reliable because it has no transactional log. This is as far from truth as statements that all Russians love vodka and all Americans love Kim Bassinger.
The concept of reliability cannot be based only at one technical feature. The right approach to provide stable work of overall IT system, reduce risks of outages and corruptions is to develop and prepare whole infrastructure to be ready for emergency situation and have in place realistic recovery plan (btw, that's we are doing in IBSurgeon :)).
When next time you'll hear this bollocks regarding absence of transaction log, just ask your opponent: "Do you have recovery plan for your full-blown 5k-per-CPU powerful database system? NO? So keep your fingers crossed, you'll need it sooner or later".
I think this is a bit more for three-beers-talk, but I hope it helps. :)
Though such discussions are pretty common and may seem to be useless (especially without beer :), they actually represent the powerful marketing activity, the highest dream of every marketing manager - "word of mouth". Don’t omit the chance to tell someone about Firebird – it really helps, believe me.
So I decided to consider here 3 main talking points to help all of Firebird fans, developers and adopters to spread the word in the right and effective way:
1) Firebird is universal. By universal I mean not only the really wide range of supported range of platforms with (very important) 100% compatibility and easy one-step migration, but also the ability of Firebird to perform all types of database tasks: it can be used in ERP, CRM, billing, reporting/BI, web-site and other applications.
2) Firebird is flexible. Multi-generation architecture, suitable triggers and stored procedures allow developer to develop applications and achieve business goals in very fast way. Deployment is also very easy: small deployment packages without registration/activation can be supplied "as is" or built-in to enable silent installation, with choice of 4 architectures to bundle with your application: Embedded, SuperServer, Classic and SuperClassic (2.5).
Also flexibility means that you can use Firebird in almost all development environments and tools: .NET, Delphi, Java, PHP and dozens of less known languages.
3) And, the most important, Firebird is good enough. I like the comparison of Firebird with well-priced Japanese car: good-looking, comfortable, safe, with low fuel consumption and reliable. Definitely you cannot put 250 tons of rocks into its trunk, and you can't outrun flying Boeing... But do you really need it or ever wanted to do it? The same thing is about Firebird: it is enough for the majority of business tasks and fits 99% needs of enterprises in SMB segment (SMB states for Small and Medium Business, i.e., for people who count on real values and live in real world without personal jets).
Firebird is equipped very well to handle business, and it remains compact, fast and transparent for developers.
Of course, during the holy wars there are always objections and attempts to raise old dead myths from graves:
1) Firebird is for small databases and it cannot handle large database. This is really funny myth, especially after our test with 1Tb database and many examples of real-world multi-gigabyte databases. But there are one thing to be highlighted every time when you see this stupid statements: the density of stored data. It's not well-known fact that Firebird keeps data in compressed way, approximately 2 times more than MS SQL and Oracle. So 10Gb Firebird database actually will be ~18-20Gb database in MSSQL or Oracle (if someone would like to check it, I will be glad to publish the results here and everywhere).
2) Firebird is a slow database. The flexibility of Firebird has the other side: it forgives developers much more ugly things than other databases. Firebird keeps working when Oracle will say something regarding "rollback segments", it keeps working when lucky MS SQL administrators buy the second set of licenses and 30k hardware to deploy reports-only instance.
Definitely Firebird has limitations of self-tuning and out-of-box performance endurance. Guys, even the best Japanese cars can be broken, especially without right maintenance in heavy conditions and while driving by inexperienced driver.
3) Firebird is not reliable because it has no transactional log. This is as far from truth as statements that all Russians love vodka and all Americans love Kim Bassinger.
The concept of reliability cannot be based only at one technical feature. The right approach to provide stable work of overall IT system, reduce risks of outages and corruptions is to develop and prepare whole infrastructure to be ready for emergency situation and have in place realistic recovery plan (btw, that's we are doing in IBSurgeon :)).
When next time you'll hear this bollocks regarding absence of transaction log, just ask your opponent: "Do you have recovery plan for your full-blown 5k-per-CPU powerful database system? NO? So keep your fingers crossed, you'll need it sooner or later".
I think this is a bit more for three-beers-talk, but I hope it helps. :)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)