Diadem Software

I knew from the beginning that this project would require some kind of database. I have created custom databases in Access (blech!), Filemaker and have some experience with Microsoft SQL for a few clients of mine. Of the two Filemaker was more enjoyable to use by far. I had thought about making my project with Filemaker but quickly realized that wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in. For doing custom work it is great and is powerful for most clients. But for selling as a product there is too much overhead for what I wanted. I could tell a Filemaker app pretty instantly just by using it. It does have it’s place of course. I pretty much knew it would have to be a SQL back-end. It’s faster, plenty of documentation and would give me the option for growth in the future. As I said I have had a little experience with SQL so I was pretty confident about learning that language. The part that I wasn’t sure about was the different flavors of SQL. I looked into Microsoft SQL, MySQL, Openbase, REAL SQL Server, Valentina and Firebird. Microsoft SQL was dropped because I went Mac only. Hey, that was easy! MySQL has too many licensing issues. I’m not an expert on the licensing problems but I saw enough grumbling about it that I knew I didn’t want to deal with it. About the time I was researching this REAL Software came out with their REAL SQL server. At that time I was planning on using REALbasic so I was pretty excited. It seemed simple enough to implement. After a few emails I discovered their pricing wasn’t going to be anywhere what I had in mind. I have pricing in mind already for my app and I didn’t really want to go much beyond that. It came down to three. Openbase, Valentina and Firebird. Some thoughts on those three:

1. Firebird Since I decided to program in Cocoa this pretty much knocked Firebird out of contention. I would have to go through too many hoops trying to program around lack of Cocoa support. Since it is more of an open source type project I was concerned about support.
2. Openbase I’ve used Openbase for a while since it comes with Marketcircle’s Daylite software. I have used Daylite for my business since switching to Mac’s a couple years ago. I have NEVER had a problem with Openbase and Daylite. Rock solid is how I would define Openbase. They have very good support also. They also have a REALbasic module which looked pretty cool. As I narrowed my requirements Openbase was looking pretty good.
3. Valentina I saw mention of this on REAL Software’s forums. I just kind of glanced over their web site since I was almost set on Openbase. When I decided to do my app in Cocoa I took another look. They have frameworks for Cocoa, their licensing fee is awesome and their support is VERY good. They advertise their SQL database as fast. I wasn’t really concerned too much with that since I know that my app would work fast enough with an SQLite database. Definitely a plus though.

Well as I look above it was easy to see which one I picked. Valentina. It really came down to three things. Cocoa support, tech support and licensing fee. For $599 for their developer network I can embed their server in my app, can have up to 5 simultaneous connections, NO ROYALTY fee. Everywhere I looked their support answered questions in a timely manner. Yes, I know Russian is probably their first language but that didn’t hinder their answers. Oh yeah and they are in Oregon. Home of the Bacon Mints! Working on: Defining a start date! Reading: Learning Cocoa with Objective-C