Firebird

Firebird (also called FirebirdSQL) is a relational database management system that offers features found in the ANSI SQL-99 and SQL-2003 standards. This RDBMS runs on Linux, Windows, and on a number of Unix platforms. Firebird is directed and maintained by the FirebirdSQL Foundation. It is a derivative of Borland’s open source version of Interbase. New code modules added to Firebird are licensed under the Initial Developer’s Public License (IDPL), while the original modules released by Inprise are licensed under the InterBase Public License 1.0. Both licenses are modified versions of the Mozilla Public License 1.1. But in its development, Borland’s commercial Interbase is bundled into Phoenix, while Firebird is an interbase developed by the Open Source community, thus making it a FREE Database Server product. This open source DBMS is driven by the developers of the open-source Interbase 6.x.

But in its development, the commercial Interbase was bundled by Borland into Phoenix, while Firebird was an interbase developed by the Open Source community, thus making it a FREE Database Server product. If it is related to support, of course it is clearly different because the product is commercial and free. In the concept of programming techniques, there are many similarities, but Firebird adds more and makes it more flexible, especially in client-server connections (ports) and integrity. New code modules added to Firebird are licensed under the Initial Developer’s Public License (IDPL), while the original modules released by Inprise are licensed under the InterBase Public License 1.0. Both licenses are modified versions of the Mozilla Public License 1.1. As an open source database, Firebird is worth considering as an alternative database for our application. The author is interested in the capabilities and features offered by this database, so he wants to share his experience about this database.

Firebird history at a glance

Firebird is developed from the open source version 6.0 of the interbase codebase. Interbase is a database application that has been developed by several companies and under several different names. It was last developed by Borland and Borland who also made Interbase version 6.0 open source, although Borland later changed Interbase to closed source again in version 6.5 and so on until now version 7.1.

There are several communities that develop this open source interbase, including the Firebird Foundation, yaffil, vulcan and fyracle. However, all the root developments are planned to be combined into 1 root development with the name firebird on firebird version 3.0 and above.

Some of the reasons that made the author choose Firebird as the database of choice include:

Ease of installation
Has a fairly complete standard features (Stored Procedure, View, Trigger)
Database only 1 file or multispan file
Has the Embeded Server feature
Support on multiple platforms (windows, linux, unix)
Small footprints
Support on UDF
Big community
Extensive driver support

The ease of use of firebird gives enough choices, both to make Firebird an embedded database such as for applications on a CD Rom or as an enterprise database. Although it is recognized that up to firebird 1.5, there are not many features that support enterprise needs built in, but the future prospects of this database are very good.

Firebird’s Abilities and Strengths

Some of the capabilities of this open source DBMS include:

(1) Firebird supports transactions like any other commercial database. A transaction can be committed or rolled back easily. Even Firebird supports the savepoint on a transaction and we can rollback back to the savepoint we specified earlier (this is similar to the facilities in Oracle).

(2) Firebird uses standard syntax to create a foreign key.

(3) Firebird supports row level locks, by default Firebird uses what is called a multi-version concurrency system. This means that all sessions in the database will look at the old data until the new data is committed to the database.

(4) Firebird supports stored procedures and triggers with a standard language so it won’t be confusing for those of you who want to learn. Triggers in Firebird are similar to those found in Oracle, namely using before or after insert, update or delete. This is different from the trigger system on Sybase or MS SQL Server which uses virtual tables inserted and deleted.

(5) Firebird can do replication, most of the solutions for replication are made by third parties, but actually this replication technique is like a trigger concept that always monitors insert, update or delete operations into the database.

(6) Firebird supports multiple data files, yes, Firebird can use more than one file as a single logic database. This is very useful for DBAs (Database Administrator) to administer databases.

(7) Software for administering is easy to get because there are lots of software for administering Firebird databases, for example, EMS IB Manager, IBConsole, isql, FBManager, Marathon and many others. These applications are commercial or even open source.

(8) The number of support and maintenance facilities is due to the large number of Firebird communities. In Indonesia, the community that often uses Firebird is usually Delphi programmers.

For All Database Sizes

Some people think that Firebird is an SMDBR that is only suitable for small databases and only accessed by a few users. They are wrong! Firebird is used in many large companies with high user access. One good example is as shown in Softool’06 where Avarda (Russian ERP application) operates using Firebird 2.0 Classic type with an average of 100 continuous connections accessing a 120 GB database containing 700 million records! The server is a SMP machine (2 processors, Dell PowerEdge 2950) with 6 GB of RAM.

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