Hi Mario,

I think everyone's answered your questions... So just a summary of my
experience with ElevateDB and ElevateSoft in general.

I've been using their products for nearly 9 years (DBISAM first now
ElevateDB) and I've never experienced such an amazing support newsgroup.
I've always received speedy, useful replies which often question the way
I've gone about something, giving me much better ways to tackle a task.

I've just used ElevateDB on our latest client / server based product and
it's been a great experience, its so flexible. I don't even think I've
had to email support directly as the newsgroups have just carried me
along with so much useful help.

Just me 50 cents worth

Cheers,

Phil.

Mario Enríquez wrote:

>>1.How do you deal with the inherent risk associated with investing your development $$ and effort on a close source database product vs a well established open source database (MySql, FireBird, Postgres SQL, etc)? I guess everybody might have a different way to approach this issue, but would be helpful to hear some opinions.<<

I write my applications by planning to swap out one database engine for another. I had to do it a few times with another app, and once is enough. I will create my own wrapper for TEDBTable and TEDBQuery and all queries are executed through a central routine. All of the database operations are centralized into one or two units. This makes changing database products easier. Devart has a product called UniDac that helps in this regard, but unfortunately it doesn't (yet) support ElevateDb. If people want to see them support ElevateDb, then email them like I did. They are very accommodating to customer's requests (if there are enough of them).

>>2.And regarding marketability of your product, when a potential customer asks about what's your database backend, doesn't it make the sale a bit harder when you came up with a relative unknown database? What has been your experience on this subject?<<

It is impossible to satisfy everyone. If you attempt such a feat, you end up satisfying no one. Let's say you developed an application in SQL Server. Someone may object to it because of their draconian licensing policies ($/CPU Core). If you write it in database "X", someone may object to it because of their bad experience with data corruption or speed. Or if you choose an open source database like FB, someone who has physical access to the database can copy the database and break into tables. Or the user may end up meddling with the open source database tables because he thinks he knows what he's doing. There is no way to lock them out of the database without using table wide encryption which is what I demand from a database, especially if it is on a web server.

What it boils down to is this. Choose the database that is
 1) Reliable,
 2) Fast,
 3) Cost Effective
 4) Secure
 5) Easy to maintain (no db administrator needed)
 6) and well supported with updates and tech support.

Nothing else really matters. Does it?

Barry

P.S.
I don't think EDB scores anything less than an "A" in each of these categories. Of course your mileage may vary.

Mario,

<< 2.And regarding marketability of your product, when a potential customer
asks about what's your database backend, doesn't it make the sale a bit
harder when you came up with a relative unknown database? What has been your
experience on this subject? >>

The biggest concerns that we see with customers is in relation to
accessibility/administration of the database(s) that are deployed at their
customers.  Remember that you always can get ADO.NET/ODBC access to any EDB
database, and it works great for allowing others to access the database for
reporting, etc.  As for administration, there's very little to administer
normally, but I think the EDB Manager does pretty well and allows for decent
interactive access to EDB databases for administrators/end users.

The most difficult thing we've had to try and provide for a customer's
customer has been Active Directory support in the EDB Server login process,
and even that wasn't too difficult to implement given the flexibility that
EDB provides for hooking login events and doing external authorizations.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Just want to say thanks to everybody for your answers, it is really helpful to read about other people experiences.  

Might be nice to have a section for case studies or success histories on ElevateSoft website.

Regarding our decision, I'm happy to announce that we've choose to go with ElevateDB for this development and if all goes well, we might even port a older FireBird application to ElevateDB as well.

regards,
Mario

Mario,

<< Might be nice to have a section for case studies or success histories on
ElevateSoft website. >>

We try and try to get case studies, and get lots of promises, but either
customers are too busy or can't get the legal clearance to release any
information about their company's applications build with ElevateDB.  It's a
shame, too, because we've got some customers doing some pretty significant
work using both DBISAM and ElevateDB.  I'm talking "a major
revenue-generating application in a number 2 corporation in a major
industry" type of work.

If anyone lurking wants to prove me wrong, I'd be happy to be wrong on this
one.

<< Regarding our decision, I'm happy to announce that we've choose to go
with ElevateDB for this development and if all goes well, we might even port
a older FireBird application to ElevateDB as well. >>

Fantastic.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim,

I wish I could but you hit the nail on the head. My Intelligence and
Investigative Case Management application by it's very nature is
confidential so the only thing I can give out is the name of the
application, which I just did.

But I am happy to say that it is just humming along very nicely on
ElevateDB. No issues, no corruption, no connection problems....it just
works all the time. Time for me to thank you again for a great product!

<This has been an unsolicited commercial for Elevate Software and
ElevateDB>
--
Jan


Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

> can't get the legal clearance to
> release any information about their company's applications build with
> ElevateDB.

> If anyone lurking wants to prove me wrong, I'd be happy to be wrong
> on this one.

"Tim Young [Elevate Software]" wrote:

Mario,

<< Might be nice to have a section for case studies or success histories on
ElevateSoft website. >>

We try and try to get case studies, and get lots of promises, but either
customers are too busy or can't get the legal clearance to release any
information about their company's applications build with ElevateDB.  It's a
shame, too, because we've got some customers doing some pretty significant
work using both DBISAM and ElevateDB.  I'm talking "a major
revenue-generating application in a number 2 corporation in a major
industry" type of work.

If anyone lurking wants to prove me wrong, I'd be happy to be wrong on this
one.

<< Regarding our decision, I'm happy to announce that we've choose to go
with ElevateDB for this development and if all goes well, we might even port
a older FireBird application to ElevateDB as well. >>

Fantastic.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Hi Tim

I have spent 7 years developing a business critical application for a client in the building industry.

It handles every aspect of the clients business from the moment the phone rings until the invoice is issued. It is integrated with the client's accounts and is in constant use by 30 users.

It uses DBISAM, each user often having 40-50 datasets open at any time.

I have had one problem with corrupted buffers in 7 years which was right at the start and this was addressed in a maintenance release. DBISAM has 100% uptime for me running on Win 2003 Server which has a better than 99% uptime.

DBISAM has been brilliant for me, its paid my grocery bills for 7 years.  Sadly the recession has hit my client and the work has dropped off 6 months ago.

I have been running ElevateDB on a Cloud server recently running a multi diary application originally running on DBISAM (gotta run with the times....).

The quality of Elevate products is amazing - I wish I was half as clever as Tim!!!

Thanks Tim

Peter