Totally new seeking suggestions

[Hacksaw116]

Okay. I just got into this and im wondering what version of MySQL do you reccomend using? Im getting v.4 as of now, but im also curious if i can use a DB like firebird with NWNx. From what i understand as long as firebird supports SQL commands this should still work, right? Or is nwnx specific to MySQL? Some clarification here or links to info resources would be welcome!

Havent done a whole lot of reaearch on it as of yet because im doing a million other things too, but any advice would be appreciated. Oh yeah, Im runing it in gentoo linux 2.6.10. (Client and server)

-Hacksaw116

[JeroenB]

On Linux there is currently only support for the MySQL database system. You will have to wait until people make other plugins on that system (or maybe yourself ) till other database systems can be used.

[Hacksaw116]

Okay thanks a bunch. I have a friend who is quite saavy with firebird. Perhaps we can get something out there for the linux community, but its just s thought as of now. I am purely a novice here and dont know what entails making such plugins, but ill look into it.

thanks!

P.S. I can use MySQL 4.1 then? (Word on the gentoo communtiy is 5.0 is new and "not reliable yet")

-Hacksaw

[NoMercy]

Wow, gentoo people with common sense, that's rare *goes back to snickering and playing with debian* ;)

[dguntner]

[DarkstarsDad]

4.1 should be fina also there are rpm's and tarball for all the needed files (get the client and developer ones as well as some of the linux plugins require them). can get them from the MySql site free.
_________________
Just because you think you can't. Is the best reason to try it anyway.

[obsidian-studios]

I am the reason for the Firebird kick. No one will convince me other wise, unless Jim Starkey himself starts to favor MySQL. I am willing to do what it takes to get it working on Linux. Firebird does have a ODBC driver and there is ODBC support on Linux. But it sounds like the linux nwnx hooks are mysql specific.

If that is the case then I will have to do what it takes to get it to work with Firebird. I have already in the past worked with Firebird's C api, and wrote my own C++ wrapper. Sort of mood issue now that Firebird has been ported to C++, and code for platforms that no longer exist removed. Not that I am a C or C++ expert, but more than likely know enough to get it done and working.

Also for those on the MySQL kick, that is not a free DB. In fact if it is included as part of something not bound for the web, and something that will be resold. You very much have to pay for it, and quite a decent amount. Which being in the custom open source software business means allot.

In that case PostgreSQL is a better choice. Both PostgreSQL and Firebird are SQL-92 and SQL-99 compliant. Not to mention both are free to use for just about any intended purpose that does not go against their respective licenses.

Big deal right. Well I am sorry but stored procedures, triggers, and UDF are very much important aspects. Especially if you want a high performance db, since you can do stuff internally in the db instead of client side, or a combo. Furthermore a real RDBMS will not let you use keywords as column names without expections and etc being thrown.

But way OT at this point.

[dguntner]

Purely as a matter of curiosity, what exatly is it about this Firebird that makes you like it so much better than MySQL? No, I'm not trying to pick a fight. I've never even heard of Firebird before Hacksaw mentioned it to me one evening on my server, chatting about what he was building on his and that he had this guy (you, apparently ) who was really good with Firebird.

We all have our reasons for being religiously attached to those products that we're attached to. So, if it wouldn't be too much trouble, enlighten me about yours. What makes Firebird so much better than MySQL to you?

I don't see myself leaving the MySQL camp anytime soon, but I'm always interested in hearing about other things.

--Dave

[obsidian-studios]

Not the ideal place to discuss this and I do not want to engage in any back and forth things. There are many good applications for MySQL, nwn being one.

I will TRY to be brief and directly here it is. Back in 2k I was dev on win, deploy on linux. I was working with Flash, Generator, and ASP and needed a DB. I needed a good one, free, possibly open source, could be dev on win and deploy on linux, easily, and had all sorts of diff drivers ODBC/JDBC now .NET.

I ended up with InterBase because I was coloing a Cobalt and it had InterBase installed. Being a complete newbie I got answers from people. That I found out years later were either x employees of borland, and/or had worked with InterBase for years. If not help develop it.

Despite Borland releasing InterBase on sourceforge they did nothing with. Borland realized their mistake and Interbase was no longer open source or free. However the best people behind InterBase were now working on Firebird and basically fixing things Borland would not let them. Really good plans and such for the future of Firebird.

I have from day one been amazed by the community. Which has been one of the most important reasons for me. Not to mention now that most of what I do is in Java. Developed on Linux and deployed on win, my how time have changed. Of course server stuff is still Linux, thus Java, and Firebird. I can take my code, apps, and db and dev or put them on just about any os mac, win, linux, bsd, solaris, etc. On top of all that, it's small, fast, reliable, easy to install, use, etc.

Also I build applications that I sell to clients. The apps are all open source, but because I include the database, if I used MySQL I would have to pay them for licenses. Which I would have to pass the cost onto end clients. It's a big deal to know that no matter what your needs for data etc, that you will not have to pay for licenses, etc. Clients definitely like that.

With regard to performance which comes up all the time in the db world. There are so many different variables and things to take into consideration IMHO there is not fair way to compare them. Even if you compare a generic query on identical hardware that does not tell you much.

Why? Because each RDBMS has internal ways to speed things up. Triggers, stored procs, udf, views, indexes, joins, etc. Which are part of the design. The designers did not include optimzation and performance stuff in the engine so you would just use and run basic queries. Not to mention disk i/o aspects. You can tune engines differently to cache, write to disk, etc. Increase size of data written to disk at time. With regard to network data, changing buffer sizes for blob or data streams, etc.

I would say the only fair comparison would be with similar complex databases, on the same hardware. Optimized to each RDBMS max performance using anything special or unique to help with performance.

[dguntner]

Thanks for the information.

--Dave

[NoMercy]

MySQL note free... depends how you define free ;)

I can't see any good reason looking over the linux sources to say that it couln't work with firebird, it passes the SQL statements directly from the hook out to the database library. The part which likely won't work is the default aps_include.nss file, which is easy enough to change.

[obsidian-studios]

Yeah I am connected to firebird but the server is currently on windows. NWN server that is, the db server is already linux. Going to be some effort to get linux support for Firebird though. Looks like I will have to write code for that, since linux stuff is MySQL specific at the moment. In the past there was support for OBDC I guess, not sure why it is not still there. Guess everyone on linux was using MySQL.