How to configure a Firebird Database to run in mem

Question

I'm running a software called Fishbowl inventory and it is running on a firebird database (Windows server 2003) at this time the fishbowl software is running extremely slow when more then one user accesses the software. I'm thinking I maybe able to speed up the application by forcing the database to run "In Memory". However I can not find documentation on how to do this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance. Robert

Answer 1

I had read an article some time ago, from someone who did a memory drive (like in old DOS) and ran a Database there. The problem is if anything fails, you lose everything. You should do backups very often to ensure a minimum of security.

Not a good idea at all I think.

Answer 2

+1 to Holger. Find the bottleneck first.
Sinática Monitor may help you.

Answer 3

Firebird does not have memory tables - they may or may not be added in future versions (>3) but certainly not in the upcoming 2.5. There can be any other number of reasons why your software is slow with multiple users; however, Firebird itself has pretty good concurrency, so make sure you find the actual bottleneck first.

Answer 4

In-memory tables are nice either for OLAP (when data is not changing) or for temporary internal data storage. In both cases data loss is not danger.

Pity that FB has no in-memory mode. I think about using SQLite as result.

As for caching, i think simple parallel thread that reads all the blocks of database file would make it in-memory - in OS cache if OS has enough memory.

But i also think, that OS already cached as much of DB file as it could and agressive forcing to cache would make overall performance even worse.