Firebird is an

open-source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

SQL

relational database management system A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relati ...

that supports

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which i ...

, Microsoft Windows,

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. Within the market of ...

and other

Unix Unix (; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multiuser computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

platforms. The database forked from Borland's open source edition of

InterBase InterBase is a relational database management system (RDBMS) currently developed and marketed by Embarcadero Technologies. InterBase is distinguished from other RDBMSs by its small footprint, close to zero administration requirements, and multi ...

in 2000 but the code has been largely rewritten since Firebird 1.5.

History

Within a week of the

6.0 source being released by Borland on 25 July 2000, the Firebird project was created on

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirrori ...

. Firebird 1.0 was released for Linux, Microsoft Windows and

Mac OS X macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

on 11 March 2002, with ports to Solaris, FreeBSD 4,

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrit ...

over the next two months. Work on porting the codebase from C to C++ began in 2000. On 23 February 2004, Firebird 1.5 was released, which was the first stable release of the new codebase. Version 1.5 featured an improved

query optimizer Query optimization is a feature of many relational database management systems and other databases such as NoSQL and graph databases. The query optimizer attempts to determine the most efficient way to execute a given query by considering the p ...

, SQL-92 conditional expressions, SQL:1999 savepoints and support for explicit locking. Firebird 2.0 was released on 12 November 2006, adding support for

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit integers, memory addresses, or other data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit CPUs and ALUs are those that are based on processor registers, address buses, or data buses of that size. A comp ...

architectures, tables nested in FROM clauses, and programmable lock timeouts in blocking transactions. The previous stable release was version 2.1.6, which added new features including procedural triggers, recursive queries, and support for SQL:2003 MERGE statements. Firebird 2.5 introduced new features like improved multithreading,

regular expression A regular expression (shortened as regex or regexp; sometimes referred to as rational expression) is a sequence of characters that specifies a search pattern in text. Usually such patterns are used by string-searching algorithms for "find" ...

syntax and the ability to query remote databases. The most recent stable version is Firebird 3.0, released 19 April 2016, with focus in performance and security. A major re-architecture of the code allowed total support to

SMP SMP may refer to: Organisations * Scale Model Products, 1950s, acquired by Aluminum Model Toys * School Mathematics Project, UK developer of mathematics textbooks * '' Sekolah Menengah Pertama'', "junior high school" in Indonesia * Shanghai Mun ...

machines when using the SuperServer version. Through the Google Summer of Code 2013 work has begun on integrating Firebird as a replacement for HSQLDB in LibreOffice Base.

Mozilla Firefox name conflict

In April 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced a rename of its

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

from ''Phoenix'' to ''Firebird'' after a trademark dispute with

Phoenix Technologies Phoenix Technologies Ltd is an American company that designs, develops and supports core system software for personal computers and other computing devices. The company's products commonly referred to as BIOS (Basic Input/Output System) or fir ...

. This decision caused concern within the Firebird database project due to the assumption that users and Internet search engines would be confused by a database and a web browser both using the name Firebird. The Mozilla developers issued a statement, making clear that their software package was called "Mozilla Firebird", not "Firebird". The statement also said that the Mozilla Firebird name was a project codename. The dispute was resolved on 9 February 2004, when Mozilla changed the name of its browser to

Mozilla Firefox Mozilla Firefox, or simply Firefox, is a free and open-source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary, the Mozilla Corporation. It uses the Gecko rendering engine to display web pages, which implements current a ...

, thus ending the conflict.

Main features

* Full support for

stored procedures A stored procedure (also termed proc, storp, sproc, StoPro, StoredProc, StoreProc, sp, or SP) is a subroutine available to applications that access a relational database management system (RDBMS). Such procedures are stored in the database data dic ...

and triggers * Full ACID compliant transactions * Referential integrity * Multi Generational Architecture (sometimes called MVCC) * Support for External Functions ( UDFs) * SQL activity can send asynchronous notification events to clients * Third-party tools, including GUI administrative tools and replication tools * Careful writes - fast recovery, no need for transaction logs * Many access methods: native/API, dbExpress/FireDAC drivers, ODBC, OLE DB, .NET provider, JDBC native type 4 driver, Python module, PHP, Perl * Incremental backups * Full cursor implementation in PSQL

Storage and index technology

The Multi-Generational Architecture (MGA)

Firebird inherited the storage architecture of Interbase. To ensure the ACID properties of transactions, the database engine keeps different versions of each record changed by the active users in the database. When the transactions are committed, the last version of every changed record is marked as the definitive. If transactions are rolled back, the database engine keeps the mark on the original record versions, leaving them untouched. As a result, Firebird disk writes are very reduced compared to databases that use the traditional transaction log architecture. Writing transactions does not prevent reading and vice versa, because each one sees its own version of the database. The tradeoff is that some maintenance ("sweeping") is required from time to time to clean up old record versions and free disk space. The multi-generational architecture ensures that OLTP and DSS/OLAP operations can be run simultaneously without the delays caused by locking mechanisms found in other products.

Indexes

Firebird makes all indices of the database behave like well-tuned "clustered indexes" used by other architectures. Firebird index buckets aren't subject to two-phase locking, and boolean "and" and "or" operations can be performed on intermediate bitmaps at a negligible cost, eliminating the need for the optimizer to choose between alternative indexes.

Variants

* Firebird SuperServer has a single daemon/server for all client connections, multithreaded with shared cache * Firebird SuperClassic also has a single daemon/server for all client connections, multithreaded with separate caches * Firebird Classic uses inetd to run one copy of the server per client connection, recommended for SMP systems but might have event-notification issues if access is via a firewall * Firebird Embedded for creating CD-ROM catalogs, single user or evaluation versions of applications

Licensing

The Firebird database engine and its modules are released under an

open-source license An open-source license is a type of license for computer software and other products that allows the source code, blueprint or design to be used, modified and/or shared under defined terms and conditions. This allows end users and commercial compan ...

, the Initial Developer's Public License (IDPL), a variant of the

Mozilla Public License The Mozilla Public License (MPL) is a free and open-source weak copyleft license for most Mozilla Foundation software such as Firefox and Thunderbird The MPL license is developed and maintained by Mozilla, which seeks to balance the conce ...

(MPL) version 1.1. It does not require the developer to open the products using Firebird or even custom-derivatives made from its source code, but if the developer chooses to do so, then some terms and conditions should be honored. The IDPL allows the developer to make proprietary, closed-source applications that use Firebird or are based on it.

Connectivity APIs

Low-level Firebird Native API, Services API and embedded SQL

The Firebird native API is used directly or indirectly by applications or middleware that connect to a Firebird database. It is implemented in the client library, fbclient.dll, on Windows systems, and in libfbclient.so on Unix ones. The Services API is a special function set for accessing and controlling service administration tasks such as user management, backup/restore and statistics gathering. Embedded SQL is a technique that simplifies the development of C/C++ and COBOL Firebird applications, by using a preprocessor called gpre, which allows the embedding of SQL statements directly into the source code of the host language.

Awards

* 2007. SourceForge Community Choice Award: Best Project for enterprise, Best user support. * 2009. SourceForge Community Choice Award: Best Project for enterprise. Finalist on Best Project and Best Project for Government.

References

External links

* {{Official website
Firebird - Developer portal

Firebird collations
charts.

FirebirdFAQ

FirebirdNews
- News about Firebird and related projects
Migration Guide to Firebird 3
- eBook
Firebird Ole Db Driver (alternative for ODBC)

Jaybird – JDBC driver for Firebird (on github.com)

Jaybird – JDBC driver for Firebird (on firebirdsql.org)
Free database management systems Cross-platform software Relational database management systems Client-server database management systems Relational database management software for Linux Formerly proprietary software