About putting back Firebird experimental

[Alexander Thurgood]

Le 22/08/2019 à 12:12, Jean-Pierre Ledure a écrit :

Hi all,

> (3) the limits are different: e.g. VARCHAR max. length is < 2Gb in
> Hsqldb and  < 32K in Firebird, the max. length of a table row is < 2Gb
> in Firebird and <64K in Firebird, the max. length of a column name is
> 128B in Hsqldb and 31B in Firebird.
> 

And therein lies the problem, we have substituted the default db engine
for one that is less, or depending on how you look at it, otherwise
capable, in many respects...without providing the means for users of the
existing one to have their data survive the transition, or rather, we
let them believe that it will survive, and then fail at the task.

I feel we would do well to remember that this is people's live and
valuable data we are potentially messing with here, and not all of these
users are DBAs, in fact rather the contrary. It matters not a jot that
db engine XYZ can outperform db engine ABC under circumstance PQR if the
data that the user originally had gets screwed up, or if the yearbook,
contacts with photos, or multilingual accounts DB they were running no
longer functions correctly, or at all, they won't forgive us for it.

And yes, I appreciate that at some stage, a decision on whether we have
reached a sufficiently advanced stage of conversion therapy will need to
be taken and acted upon. The question then is what level of
success/failure is deemed acceptable ?


Alex