What is the Right Database For Me??

  • Thread starter Thread starter Charles A. Lackman
  • Start date Start date
C

Charles A. Lackman

Hello,

I am trying to find a database that will not cause me to go bankrupt.

Looking for a database that:

1) Has ADO.NET Drivers
(I have noticed that ODBC Drivers loose Data integrity if there are
more than 150 Columns)
(I ran a test sending 254 Characters per column to a table with 200
columns, it was a mess!)

2) One that will allow more data per line (Row) than 2000 Characters.

3) One that I can deploy with my custom built applications without having
to buy a new license for each computer.

4) Must be stand alone.

The database does not need to be fancy, it will only be used as a datastore.
The front end is not important to me.

I have tried,
dBasePlus (Level 7) - Only ODBC drivers
Access (Jet 4.0) - 2000 Character Limit per Row
IBM's DB2 - License required for all client machines
JDatastore - Way to expensive

Any Suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Chuck
 
Hi,

I would say MSDE is a very good choice. First of all it is free. Second, it
is just a light version of SQL Server database with some limitations, like
database cannot be bigger than 2G. Third, you could distribute it for free.
Fourth, you could use exact same syntax that is available for SQL Server -
stored procedure, triggers etc. Fifth, if it is not enough for you and you
decide to upgrade to SQL Server later on, the all you need to do is buy
license for SQL Server, install it and attach your database to SQL Server -
no code or other changes required. Sixth, you could use SQL Server .NET
Managed provider and get better performance
 
Hi Alexander,
Are you using Firebird? I would be interested to know about your
experiences if you are. I have been using Jet and been happy but that
was in the VB6/DAO world. Now I am open to a change and have been
intrigued by Firebird.

In particular, I need to create a database and required tables
programmatically. Have you done this with Firebird?

Thanks for your time,
John
 
I would suggest firebird.
www.ibphoenix.com

It also runs on Linux, so that (if/when) Mono is completed for Linux,
hopefully your .NET app and database will port right over to it.
 
Hi,

Yes, I'm using Firebird in my current project. So far so good. Although I
haven't done any benchmarking, it definitely feels much lighter weight than
Jet. 3rd party tools are in bigger numbers and I'd say of better quality
than for Jet. I can recommend IBExpert from www.ibexpert .com -- excellent
suite of tools and there's a free personal edition.

The biggest irritation for me is the lack of GUIDs, or better say the
incomplete support for it in tools. The most recent .NET provider for
Firebird can work with GUIDs, but IBExpert can't display them as GUID in
grids and in the SQL Editor window. I'm thinking of changing all of my GUID
primary keys to server-side generated integer values (through the use of
Firebird's Generators) just because of that.

John, for the particular example on how to create a database
programmatically look here:
http://www.dotnetfirebird.org/blog/2005/01/creating-database-programmatically.html

Alexander
 
Hi Alexander,
Thank you for your response and the links. I do not use GUID's so that
is not a problem.

I do have one more question if I may...I have been wanting to ask this
of someone and hope it is not a "silly" question.

1. Currently my apps create thier database from scratch
programmatically using DAO and Jet. When you distribute an app using
Firebird (or any other SQL server) do you include a shell database?

2. How do you handle modifications/updates to the structure once it is
installed?

3. How do you determine where to install it?

4. Do your customers have to learn to be DBA's to support Firebird?

Well, that turned into more than one question. But any advice you can
give is greatly appreciated.

Thanks,
John
 
jl, i've started a project with firebird and am mostly happy with what it
offers so so and i can answer a few of these,
1. Currently my apps create thier database from scratch
programmatically using DAO and Jet. When you distribute an app using
Firebird (or any other SQL server) do you include a shell database?
Click to expand...

no, my app creates the db (i think it takes maybe 4 lines of code) and then
generates the required tables as needed thru their .net provider using
standard ddl
2. How do you handle modifications/updates to the structure once it is
installed?
ddl


3. How do you determine where to install it?
Click to expand...

i have a default location, but it is configurable from within the app

4. Do your customers have to learn to be DBA's to support Firebird?
Click to expand...

using the embedded engine there isnt really config/support so far (aside
from a few parameters in the inital db creation, but the project hasent
reached full production yet. so far the customers dont know that there is
even another db to support. we'll see when it starts to load up further.
 
Hi Gabe,
Thank you for your insights. They are very helpful.

So far I am using Access primarily out of habit. As soon as I get the
rush job out, I think I will look at using Firebird. I have built a
Data Access Layer that should work with it.

One last question, if I may...how is the performance compared to
something like Access? By that I mean speed of selecting and updating
records.

Thanks again,
John
 
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