What is Firebird?

Firebird is a management system relational database (or RDBMS) (Query Language: SQL) open source, based on InterBase version 6, whose code was released by Borland in 2000. Your code was rewritten to C + +. The project is actively developed and on 18 April 2008 was released version 2.1. 

  

FirebirdSQL Foundation 

(Foundation, which maintains and develops Firebird).
The objectives of the Foundation FirebirdSQL are: 
To support and achieve progress handler Firebird relational database 
Provide mechanisms for non-commercial and infrastructure to accept and administer funds raised, and invest such funds to promote the effort of developing this database 
Foster cooperation and affiliation of individuals, nonprofit organizations and commercial companies involved or are planning to be involved in the development, support and promotion of Firebird software projects and products and associated activities. 

  

History 


In the late 1990s, Borland decided to release the code of Interbase. Several members of the staff created a new company called IBPhoenix, and with other independent developers created the fork now known as Firebird. Later, Borland Interbase decide to re-privatize and commercialize their licenses. However, Firebird is still an open source project under a license similar to the MPL (Mozilla Public License). 

  

Features 


It is multiplatform, and currently runs on operating systems: Linux, HP-UX, FreeBSD, Mac OS, Solaris and Microsoft Windows. 
Executable small, low hardware requirements. 
Client / Server Architecture of TCP / IP and other (embedded). 
ACID transaction support and foreign keys. 
It is medium in size. 
Good security based on users / roles. 
Different architectures, including embedded Firebird (embedded server) that allows single-user computers to run applications without installing the software Firebird. 
Database read-only to applications that run from no writable devices such as CD-ROMs. 
Existence of ODBC, OLEDB, JDBC, PHP, Perl,.. Net, etc. 
Low management requirements, being considered as a database maintenance-free, regardless of the performance of backups. 
Full support of SQL-92 standard, both in syntax and data types. 
A complete language for writing triggers and stored procedures called PSQL. 
Ability to store items BLOB (Binary Large Objects). 
Support User-Defined Functions (UDFs). 
Self-playing version, no installation, excellent for creating catalogs on CD-Rom and create evaluation versions of some applications. 

Server Types 


There are two types of Firebird server to be installed: Classic and Super Server. Although they have several minor differences between them, the principal is that the super server manages individual threads for each connection. Therefore for a small number of connections that recommended would be the classic it will consume fewer resources. 

In case of SMP architectures, use the classic because Supersever server does not support this type of architecture. 

The Firebird developers themselves recommend the following when deciding on one of these servers: 
On Windows platforms select the SuperServer. 
Under Linux simply choose any one, as estimated connections. In most situations it will not show differences in performance. 

Could be considered a third type, Embedded. This is a single DLL dynamic link library (about 2 MB in size) containing the entire server. This way you can have a complete DBMS available and distributed with user applications without requiring that this be installed separately. 

  

References / Links: