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Firebird (sometimes erroneously called FirebirdSQL) is a relational database management system offering many ANSI SQL-2003 features.

It runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Started as a fork of Borland's open source release of InterBase, the Firebird codebase is maintained by the Firebird Project at SourceForge.

New code modules added to Firebird are licensed under the Initial Developer's Public License (IDPL). The original code released by Inprise (as Borland was then called) is licensed under the InterBase Public License 1.0. Both licenses are modified versions of the Mozilla Public License 1.1.

History

Firebird 1.0 was essentially a bug-fixed version of the InterBase 6.0 open source edition with some minor new features. Development on the Firebird 2 codebase began with the porting of the Firebird 1.0 C code to C++, together with a major code-cleaning undertaking. Firebird 1.5 was the first release of the Firebird 2 codebase and as such a significant milestone for the developers and the whole project.

* Firebird 2.0 was released in 2006. The latest stable version is 2.0.3 which was released in September 2007.

* Firebird 2.1 went into beta testing in mid-2007 and is likely to be released soon.

* Firebird 3.0 will merge code from several codebases, including Firebird 2.1, Vulcan, and Fyracle. The schedule at [1] indicates an Alpha version for release in Q4 2008.

Around the 20th birthday of the InterBase/Firebird product line, original creator Jim Starkey recollected:

"September 4, 2004 is the 20th anniversary of what is now Firebird. I quit my job at DEC in August, took a three day end-of-summer holiday, and began work on September 4, 1984 in my new career as a software entrepreneur. As best as I can reconstruct, the first two files were cpre.c and cpre.h (C preprocessor), later changed to gpre.c and gpre.h. The files were created on a loaner DEC Pro/350, a PDP-11 personal computer that went exactly nowhere, running XENIX. Gpre was my first C program, XENIX was my first experience with Unix, and the Pro/350 was my very last (but not lamented) experience with PDP-11s."

More information on Firebird's history can be found on the InterBase/Firebird History pages.

Features

* Full support of Stored Procedures and Triggers
* Full ACID compliant transactions
* Referential Integrity
* Multi Generational Architecture (sometimes called MVCC)
* Very small footprint
* Fully featured internal language for Stored Procedures and Triggers (PSQL)
* Support for External Functions (UDFs)
* Little or no need for specialized DBAs
* Almost no configuration needed - just install and start using
* Big community and lots of places where you can get free and good support
* Optional single file embedded version - great to create CDROM catalogs, single user or evaluation versions of applications
* Dozens of third party tools, including GUI administrative tools, replication tools, etc.
* Careful writes - fast recovery, no need for transaction logs
* Many ways to access your database: native/API, dbExpress drivers, ODBC, OLEDB, .Net provider, JDBC native type 4 driver, Python module, PHP, Perl, etc.
* Native support for all major operating systems, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, MacOS.
* Incremental Backups
* 64bits builds available
* Full cursor implementation in PSQL

The new Alpha version of ubuntu named Hardy Heron includes firebird 2.0.3 stable.

The current sub-release is v.2.0.3. More details about Firebird 2.0.x ...

Did you know that you can report bugs directly to the Project developers? There is a common-sense procedure to follow, so that your report is useful to us: we do ask that you read the article How to Report Bugs Effectively (available in several languages) before you proceed. Then, post your bug report to the firebird-support or the firebird-devel list and ask if you need to post it to Tracker.

Is there a feature you would like to request? Maybe it is already in Firebird's development programme. You can check up at the Tracker site using the Find Issues search tool. You can even vote on it! And if there is a feature YOU want that nobody else has registered yet, write up a good description and add it as a Feature Request. You will need to create an account in Tracker to report bugs, request features or vote. It is simple! just go there and follow the sign-up instructions. The complete Release Notes are available in PDF format.

Firebird Project Development News