[SOLVED] Best Firebird Direct Access Component
lazarus / 16-Databases

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DeBritto · 2016-06-22 17:29

Hi Folks,

What is the best Free Pascal 3.0/Lazarus 1.6 open source Firebird 2.5
(3.0) Direct Access Component? Why is better?

My priority is Client/Server performance in a high latency network.
Best regards

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d.ioannidis · 2016-06-23 07:58

Quote from: DeBritto on June 22, 2016, 07:29:37 pmHi Folks,

What is the best Free Pascal 3.0/Lazarus 1.6 open source Firebird 2.5
(3.0) Direct Access Component? Why is better?

My priority is Client/Server performance in a high latency network.
Best regards

  If, by high latency network, you mean slow Internet connections,
between your clients and a FirebirdSQL server ( in a classic 2tier C/S
model ), I personally will advise you against doing that, with
FirebirdSQL up to 2.5 version.

  FirebirdSQL's on-wire protocol, is not optimized for that usage
scenario ( at least until version 2.5 ) and of course you have to
think the security of the packets which can not be encrypted on those
versions . If you can, use FirebirdSQL 3. Many of those problems have
been eliminated or addressed in this version .

  If you stuck with FirebirdSQL versions before 3, then you could use
ZeBeDee, to gain some speed as it compresses the packets and can
encrypt them but I personally would design the applications as an
N-tier . In N-tier you could use mormot for the application server to
leverage it's ability for speed and security hiding the FirebirdSQL
behind it . Or of course any other middleware framework like
RealThinClient, kbmMW.  etc .

regards,

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Graeme · 2016-06-23 10:02

Quote from: DeBritto on June 22, 2016, 07:29:37 pmMy priority is
Client/Server performance in a high latency network.
That is a bit vague. Please explain that a bit more. If you mean
"Client/Server over the Internet", then that is a terrible idea for
any database server. Instead consider a 3-tier model.

tiOPF (Object Persistence Framework) allows you to write Client/Server
and 3-tier applications, and there is no need to change any code while
switching between the two. Simply a change in a project wide compiler
define, and then a recompile of your project.

tiOPF manages a 3-tier model by using a generic application server
which hosts its own HTTP Server (thanks to Indy 10.6). The Application
Server talks to the database (like in a Client/Server environment). It
then serialises the data as XML, compresses and encrypts it, and then
sends it over the wire to the Client application. The same happens in
the reverse. Good news is, tiOPF take care of everything. You simply
need to write code as follows:

var
  obj: TPerson;
begin
  obj := TPerson.Create;
  obj.OID.AsString := 123;
  obj.Load;
  { now do whatever you want with the TPerson instance }
end;

For more details on tiOPF, take a look at http://www.tiopf.com. It's
source code is available on SourceForge. For an overview of what tiOPF
is, and what it aimed to accomplish, read chapters 1-3 of the Concepts
Document

tiOPF also allows you to choose your database access components and
which database server you want to store your data - again all without
changing a single line of code. I've used tiOPF in commercial and
personal projects for over 14 years.

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DeBritto · 2016-06-23 20:28

Hi Graeme and Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis,
Thank you so much for your very clear reply! It helps me a lot.

Ok  Dimitrios Chr. Ioannidis, I'm using Firebird 2.5 but I'll start to
use FB 3.0 now. Ok Graeme, You really convinced me, I'll take a
serious look at tiOPF. But I'm felling that it'll take a long, long,
learning curve. So, I'll finish this phase of the development with FB
3.0 in a Client/Server mode and try to adapt to 3-tier model in the
future. But now I have a clue of what to do and the costs.
Thank you so much