Due to the Coronavirus, we've been using SAM broadcaster almost exclusively to keep our station on the air. Lately, we've had problems with Windows Updates, which we need to reboot the computer for. Upon reboot, SAM Broadcaster will not fully load. Looking at Task Manager, it looks like Firebird SQL is taking up almost all the computer memory while SAM tries to boot up. Both times this has happened, I've had to reinstall SAM Broadcaster and rewrite scripts and refill folders for the database.

First, is this is a common problem with Firebird? Do I have to use Firebird to get SAM Broadcaster to load properly? Is this a problem with Windows 10 or with SAM Broadcaster?

Second, I suspect one of the reasons Firebird is struggling is due to the amount of material I've placed into the database. I have our music jukebox running overnight, and a 12 hour broadcast day running 8 AM to 8 PM during the day, four days a week, meaning 48 hours of material is in the database folders. Could this be causing the problem with Firebird? If so, how can I get around this? I do need to preload this material to run a script I've written to do the four days of broadcasting. Due to time restraints, I don't have much time in the office from the safety office, who want me to work only three hours a day.

Thanks!

Firebird is the Quick'n'Dirty solution.
It is designed as an embedded database to be included with products and does that job fairly well.
It can get overwhelmed by complex queries or too much data in the embedded version, though, as it uses a single file for data storage.

You might be better off with MySQL or if you have experience with either of these MS SQL or Postgres.
The benefit of MySQL is a) it's well-tested and even huge projects run off of MySQL on the web (Wikipedia for example uses MySQL) and b) it's got a huge community both in total and in the SAM world (mostly due to the fact that MySQL comes with 99% of all webhosting packages and it was shipped as the default in SAM for the first 4-5 years until MySQL changed their licensing)

MS SQL and Postgres are equally stable, but come from an enterprise background. There's pretty much noone using SAM with these DBMSs. Unless you have thorough experience with either of these or have someone at hand that is more experienced in these and can set them up/maintain them for you, I wouldn't recommend them.

The same problem applies to Firebird, since those who have tinkered with SAM and expanded on it have usually switched to MySQL. Noone really bothers to find out why Firebird has problems with SAM, people just switch to MySQL, which might not solve the root cause, but the effects will usually go away or will go below a noticeable threshold.

_________________
Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

Shop for readymade PAL scripts by countrywesterndj - Or get a custom script made by me (or others)

My Project:
Send "Now Playing" from SAM to Twitter and/or Facebook | Sourcecode

How do I switch my SAM Broadcaster over to MySQL?

You can probably get the gist of how to do that from this video I made 8 years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJU5f3nZYtI
The software looks a bit different now (the basic stuff like how things are named and what they do is still the same, but the style of the UI is a bit different in both SAM and MySQL now) and the download of MySQL and Workbench got a little easier as Oracle is now offering both in one package called MySQL Installer at this location: https://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/

_________________
Benedikt Bauer - SVS (Spacial Volunteer Support)

Shop for readymade PAL scripts by countrywesterndj - Or get a custom script made by me (or others)

My Project:
Send "Now Playing" from SAM to Twitter and/or Facebook | Sourcecode