The convenient database engine for a "Distributed" System

[dcrespo]

Hi all...
Here is my infrastructure design of a "distributed" system:
- Many (30-50) hosts connected via VPN to a server.
- Each host manages a system that receives local data (stored in a
local database), and has to be sent to the server, so the rest of the
hosts can "see" this data.

What I want? I want to have a
portable/changeable/easy-installation/cross-platform local database.

The problem is that the database structure may change, so I have to
change the database structure of each host. As you can see, it requires
the database structure to be very portable and changeable.

I think there is 2 database paradigms to consider: The Access-like one,
and the MySQL-like one. With the Access-like paradigm, it only needs
the file .mdb on the local host, and its respectively set of dlls to
manipulate it. But, I remember that I need a cross platform database...
On the other hand, the MySQL-like paradigm, needs the database engine
to be installed for running. The cons of it, is that is more difficult
(I don't know yet if a can do it) to install it silently, I mean
without user intervention, whereas a .mdb file being a member of the
system installation files is totally viable.

I heard about sqlite... Any comments?

 

[=?iso-8859-15?Q?Pierre-Fr=E9d=E9ric_Caillaud?=]

I've not used it personnally, but I heard good things about it :

"Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL-99 features that
runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird offers
excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for
stored procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems,
under a variety of names since 1981.

Firebird is a commercially independent project of C and C++ programmers,
technical advisors and supporters developing and enhancing a
multi-platform relational database management system based on the source
code released by Inprise Corp (now known as Borland Software Corp) on 25
July, 2000 under the InterBase Public License v.1.0.

Firebird is completely free of any registration, licensing or deployment
fees. It may be deployed freely for use with any third-party software,
whether commercial or not.."

These seems to be an embedded version so that you can embed the library
in your app and make everything nice and monolithic.

 

[Grig Gheorghiu]

I also recommend Firebird. I like the fact that the database is in its
own file that can be copied from one platform to another. I use it on
Linux, but it works just as well on Windows.

Grig

 

[Greg Ewing]

I also recommend Firebird. I like the fact that the database is in its
own file that can be copied from one platform to another.

Although you can only do that between platforms having
the same byte order. Backing up and restoring is a more
reliable way to do cross-platform database copying.