I would like to hear comments about how NexusDB 2 compares with ElevateDB.

I am about to upgrade an application from Delphi 5, FlashFiler 2.12, and
Report Builder 7 to Delphi 2007, NexusDB 2, and ReportBuilder 10.  I have
purchased a license for NexusDB 2 already, but recently seeing the NexusDB
techs drag their feet on releasing a D2007 package has made me a bit uneasy
about future support.  Furthermore, I see many past posts in the NexusDB
newsgroups about database corruption issues that have drug on for quite
awhile.  They also seem to have evolved into evading answering questions
directly in the newsgroups and instead get into personal spats.  Upon seeing
the announcement of D2007 support being available by elevate software, I am
wondering if maybe I should be switching to ElevateDB instead of moving
forward with NexusDB.  So I'm reading the newsgroups here and exploring this
option.  My questions are as follows:

1) Would anyone with experience care to opine about how ElevateDB compares
with NexusDB?

2) Is there an easy way to convert FlashFiler 2.12 tables (or NexusDB 1 or 2
tables) to ElevateDB?

3) Does anyone here use ElevateDB with ReportBuilder 10?  Do they work
together nicely?

Thank you for taking time to read this.  I look forward to reading some
responses.

David Miller

David,

I agree with several of your comments. Hopefully it will turn around soon.
I suspect you make get some flak about your summary, but who knows. Their
support has picked up some, then it drops.
The BETA downloads help a lot, but I do agree with your comments on indirect
answers at times and pointless spats.

I try not to get involved, but a few beers will sometimes override my common
sense

I myself have not suffered from any corruption problems, so perhaps I am
lucky. I see they mention there is a possible fix about to be released.

As to your questions.

>
> 1) Would anyone with experience care to opine about how ElevateDB compares
> with NexusDB?

I have no real experience with EDB, so I cannot give a real answer. I know
Tim has excellent support and always releases quality products. The main
reason I moved to Nexus from DBISAM was I needed more SQL support and EDB
was just taking too long to release. My only reservation is that EDB is
still a new product and has not been out very long. Several things like SQL
scripting is still not supported as a reference. Tim mentioned it will be
out soon. I know Ole has been jumping around in their NG's so reading his
posts may be of help ... and perhaps provide some entertainment

> 2) Is there an easy way to convert FlashFiler 2.12 tables (or NexusDB 1 or
> 2 tables) to ElevateDB?

Would it not be simple as create a SQL Script? Does Flash support this? If
not, convert to NDB, Export to SQL Script, then Import.

> 3) Does anyone here use ElevateDB with ReportBuilder 10?  Do they work
> together nicely?

I would suspect there would be no problems, but I do not have RB10, so again
....

> Thank you for taking time to read this.  I look forward to reading some
> responses.

As mentioned, the only thing to hold me back would be the age of EDB. Every
engine has to evolve.

I try not to jump ship too fast, as it make my customers concerned about my
choices.

I also thought of moving to a more powerful SQL engine such as
PostgreSQL/FB. Since there is now better support in the Delphi arena, I may
consider this in the future if Nexus cannot find the light at the end of the
tunnel. If you need table support more than SQL then this may not be the
direction you want. There are several recents thread in tamarack that my be
of interest.

http://www.microolap.com/products/connectivity/
(and Zeos from what I hear, but old code?)

So far I am happy with NexusDB, but their current fight with the V2 SQL has
taken it's toll and from what I hear, V3 has been put on hold until they
figure this out. I was hoping a release of V3 would cure the V2 problems.
But now that seems far away as well.

Regards,
Scott.

David,
    I have just done a cursory exam on ElevateDb and the one thing I
noticed last week was the simple Query and Table ranges are about twice
as fast as NexusDb, which surprised me. But repetitive queries/ranges on
NexusDb is faster because Tim doesn't have the caching working yet.
Should be out in the next release and I'll retest it then.

NexusDb does not use index filters on tables (and never will) so that's
something I don't like. FullText search with NexusDb also is not a true
full text index. They are building an ordinary index and you have to do
a Range to get the results. Not sure how easy it is to support
"and"/"or" with their full text search. Also I don't know how well it
will support millions of rows of data.

The guys are NDS are trying to solve the variable length corruption
problem that a few people have reported. If you stick to fixed length
records then you'll be ok. I think what irked a lot of NDS users is they
pretty much stopped development on NexusDb v2 and once they have the
bugs out of it, will devote their time to v3. V3 may have royalties on
it depending on which version you purchase. This is still up in the air
and we won't know until they actually ship it. V3 looks like an
interesting product but that is still a couple years away.

NDS also has table locking, and I believe (Tim correct me if I'm wrong),
ElevateDb has row locking. This needs to be benchmarked to see which is
better suited for a particular application.

You can't go wrong with either product. I'd recommend whatever product
you choose, to make your database engine pluggable, so you can easily
swap one out for another.

Dave

David,

<< 2) Is there an easy way to convert FlashFiler 2.12 tables (or NexusDB 1
or 2 tables) to ElevateDB? >>

We don't have an external migration facility done yet for EDB, but we will
have something within the next month.  I've got to convert the existing
migration facilities to package plug-ins so that they can be dynamically
loaded in the EDB manager.

<< 3) Does anyone here use ElevateDB with ReportBuilder 10?  Do they work
together nicely? >>

Digital Metaphors has a copy of EDB and the last I heard from Nard, he
indicated that they are close to getting the EDB support done.  I would
suggest checking in with them directly to see where things stand.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hello Tim,

> We don't have an external migration facility done yet for EDB, but we will
> have something within the next month.  I've got to convert the existing
> migration facilities to package plug-ins so that they can be dynamically
> loaded in the EDB manager.

How about making EDB able to load plugins/extensions or something ?

--
Charalabos Michael - [Creation Power] - http://www.creationpower.gr

Version 10.06
------------------------------

DADE
- added support for ElevateDB. The DADE plug-in for ElevateDB can be
downloaded from

    http://www.digital-metaphors.com/download/dade_plugins.html



"Tim Young [Elevate Software]" <timyoung@elevatesoft.com> wrote in message
news:784BC1A0-8B17-4ADA-991D-AA5E753F26C7@news.elevatesoft.com...
> David,
>
> << 2) Is there an easy way to convert FlashFiler 2.12 tables (or NexusDB 1
> or 2 tables) to ElevateDB? >>
>
> We don't have an external migration facility done yet for EDB, but we will
> have something within the next month.  I've got to convert the existing
> migration facilities to package plug-ins so that they can be dynamically
> loaded in the EDB manager.
>
> << 3) Does anyone here use ElevateDB with ReportBuilder 10?  Do they work
> together nicely? >>
>
> Digital Metaphors has a copy of EDB and the last I heard from Nard, he
> indicated that they are close to getting the EDB support done.  I would
> suggest checking in with them directly to see where things stand.
>
> --
> Tim Young
> Elevate Software
> www.elevatesoft.com
>

Michael,

<< How about making EDB able to load plugins/extensions or something ? >>

It can already - external modules, text filters, etc.  However, the EDB
Manager currently cannot.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hello Tim,

> It can already - external modules, text filters, etc.  However, the EDB
> Manager currently cannot.

I was referring about the Manager ... (add it into TODO ?

--
Charalabos Michael - [Creation Power] - http://www.creationpower.gr

Just one comment from me really. Look at the documentation too. I've only
used DBISAM, and have found pretty much all the answers I've needed there.
I once went to check how well Nexus did some facility and found the
documentation of it was completely lacking. Tim has also been superb on
support, and he worked hard to find a hard to repeat bug that my multi-
threaded app found. I'm sure ElavateDB will have similar great
documentation and support, and I'll be using it this summer for a project.

/Matthew Jones/

That said, I thought I'd go print out the ElevateDB documentation, and
found that it is not quite complete. So look at the DBISAM documentation
instead - I'm sure that's how it will end up as good as! At the moment the
ElevateDB doc is full of pages with not a lot on - I do hope that the
generator will put short topics on the same page when finished...

/Matthew Jones/