Home Products Compare To... VistaDB vs. SQL Server Express, Cache, FairCom, Firebird, MySQL, Pervasive, PostgreSQL, Sybase

VistaDB vs. SQL Server Express, Cache, FairCom, Firebird, MySQL, Pervasive, PostgreSQL, Sybase

This midrange category of database products includes SQL Server Express, Cache, FairCom, Firebird, MySQL, Pervasive, PostgreSQL and Sybase. There are a few other lesser known databases in this category not listed here, but the points made below still apply. The key issues with these products are:

• Not managed solutions
• Not designed natively for .NET, Compact Framework and Mono
• Large footprint and multiple file distribution
• Complex setup
• Database requires some administration

VistaDB is not designed to compete directly with these midrange databases however it may be useful to share our experience in trying to use them in-house. After downloading 40MB to 80MB of files from each vendor and spending hours trying to configure the various database servers, we realized that this midrange category of database products was not a viable solution as a Jet alternative. The configuration requirements alone were tricky and confusing, let alone the massive download sizes of each product.

All of these products boast that they provide some level of multi-platform and multi-language support and many are excited to make that claim. The problem with this broad range of support is that .NET developers care about the database support for .NET, CF and Mono. VistaDB is focused on delivering a pure .NET solution. Our new VistaDB 3 runs natively everywhere .NET 2 or higher runs.

Each time these vendors introduce a new feature into their core database product, it must be propagated to several other editions of their products, then also to each platform they support, then finally they must test all of these implementations before their database product can actually be released to the public. All this effort and multi-platform testing is incredibly time consuming. This type of environment does not foster new technology and ultimately does not benefit developers that are focussed on building .NET applications.