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Firebird 2.0 Final Released

Posted by Zonk on Sun Nov 12, 2006 11:14 PM
from the reborn dept.
Databases Programming Software IT
Samyem Tuladhar writes "After 2 years in development, the Firebird Project today officially releases the much-anticipated version 2.0 of its open source Firebird relational database software during the opening session of the fourth international Firebird Conference in Prague, Czech Republic."
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[+] Delphi For PHP Released 155 comments
Gramie2 writes "Codegear (now a subsidiary of Borland) has just released version 1.0 of Delphi for PHP, a RAD development environment (running on Windows) that produces standard PHP code. It features a large set of built-in components, including ones that use AJAX for database access; and Codegear is encouraging users to develop their own components. The framework, VCL for PHP, is open source, and documentation follows the PHP model. Initial database connectivity is for MySQL and Interbase (Codegear's commercial database that spawned the open-source Firebird), but more are promised."
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  • Finally... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Bourdain (683477) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:16PM (#16819542)
    Now I can finally convince my friends to upgrade their web browser from Firebird 0.6 :)

      • Re:Finally... (Score:4, Funny)

        by LittleBigLui (304739) on Monday November 13 2006, @04:11AM (#16820952) Homepage Journal
        That's because trademarks apply only to the business areas they are registered for. For example, the manufacturer of shiny computers can use the same name as the record label that released the Beatles' records, since they aren't in the same business. (Until ITMS, that is.)

        Firebird-the-database is a DBMS, which, as everyone knows, is a big piece of metal that doesn't move and holds important data. Firefox-the-browser is a vehicle for travelling through the intartubes. It's obvious that the former is almost (but not quite) entirely unlike a car, whereas you probably would need a drivers' licence to use the latter, if it weren't for the lawlessness of teh intartubewebs.

  • How does this compare? (Score:3)

    by IcEMaN252 (579647) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:17PM (#16819550) Homepage
    I must admit to be rather ignorant of Firebird, how does it compare to other RDBMSs out there?

    • Re:How does this compare? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Shados (741919) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:30PM (#16819644)
      While I have never used it myself, I have heard nothing but praises from it, including from the Microsoft programmer community side. It is supposed to be full featured, quite fast, and can be used as an embedded database by just shipping a single DLL (on Windows, dunno how it goes on Unix side of things) with your app, thus allowing for a lot of flexibility. It has a lot more feature than even most commercial embedded database, and is supposed to be very easy on the developer, and its drivers are quite complete for java, .net, etc.

        • Re:How does this compare? (Score:4, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 13 2006, @04:55AM (#16821148)
          Hi, to use the app via Terminal Services the solution is to prefix IpcName in firebird.conf with
          "Global\" (without quotes).

          regards,

    • Re:How does this compare? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jozeph78 (895503) on Monday November 13 2006, @12:53AM (#16820130)
      We used it at my last shop, maintaining a database file for each "project" and a master database to keep track them. Keeping it in it's realm, it's leagues beyond HSQL or Derby and other databases I've worked with of it's caliber.

      It was not without the quirks and kludgey features expected of a 1.0 database. Some of the unusual things (to me) were setting a Term character for scipts, lack of "if exists"/"create or replace", "suspend" in procedures, and identity ID's via triggers. That said, it had triggers as well as fully functional stored procedures, user defined functions, custom exceptions to deliver nice error messages to your JDBC layer and even a simple c API to write low level custom functions that were easily compiled into the db.

      The guys always made fun of FireBird for being slow until I replaced rebuilding a hierarchical structure via java (single JDBC call per record) with a recursive stored procedure (single JDBC call for collection in order). JDBC usually incurs a good deal of overhead but I've never seen it so costly as in this case. Removing this JDBC overhead brought the longer running cases of 30-40 seconds (consider this lag opening a word document), down to 1-2 seconds. So the query engine of FireBird is quite efficient considering you know how to sweet talk it. :D

      In the process of writing that procedure I discovered that the documentation for FireBird is actually quite good, albeit somewhat confusing with the Interbase/Firebird ambiguity. What I couldn't find in the documentation I found in a rather active FireBird Yahoo Group (may have been Google, whatever).

      Don't go comparing it to MySql, PostGRE, Oracle XE, or MSSQL Express. I'm not sure how the performance for databases larger than the amount of available memory will work meaning, I've never profied the IO performance. Still, it's a great alternative to storing complex data structures as binary files or stubbing a prototype db for rapid development.

      Ultimately, I'm excited about the new release of FireBird. Kudos to the team.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by flurdy (301431)
        > It was not without the quirks and kludgey features expected of a 1.0 database.

        Well it was not 1.0 database, more like a v 7 or 8 consider v1 was based on interbase 6 and as mentioned in post further down has been around for 20+ years.

        Ive been using it for 4 years now, and we offer it as our prefered database for our products, but the customers can use ms sql server or oracle if they prefer. Choosing other rdbms databases offer nothing more for us, except they cost loads of money.

        One thing firbird lacks
    • I have some experience with it on Linux,

      We used Firebird on a project called "Remédio em Casa" (Medicine at Home), for the Rio de Janeiro city Health Department. People suffering from a heart condition or diabetes would come to a public hospital, get their diagnoses, an then receive medicine for 3 months of treatment at their homes, by mail.

      The patient data is sent to a Java Servlet by a Delphi desktop Application, the medical subscript data is sent to the Post Office along with the patient address, and everything was stored on a Firebird database running on Debian Linux.

      Last time I was involved with the project, we had a 3GB database, with over 270 thousand people attended... Somebody from the brazilian Firebird user Group told us that this was the largest Firebird database in operation at Brasil :-)

      I can only tell good things about Firebird. It has a straight forward command line interface, its easy to manage, backup and restore, and has an excellent performance.

      Just my $0.02

  • Guess they were right to complain (Score:5, Funny)

    by ghazban (28784) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:18PM (#16819560) Homepage
    Who else thought this must be old news or a dupe after reading the title! I think they should change their version number to avoid confusion... Firebird v2.3-notawebrowser.

  • DUPE! (Score:5, Funny)

    by damiena (263598) <neimad915.gmail@com> on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:20PM (#16819570)
    Come on editors... They changed the name to Firefox how long ago? Not only that, but 2.0 was released like 3 weeks ago. I could of sworn I saw an article on slashdot even... Way to read your own site.

    Oh, with... this is a database? Hmmm... they should probably change their name so that people won't get confused all the time.

  • Huh? (Score:2, Informative)

    by Senjutsu (614542)
    Firefox, Thunderbird, Firebird...

    I'm confused.

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Funny)

      by GoogolPlexPlex (412555) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:22PM (#16819586)
      Thunderfox
    • Well, the firebird was one of the previous names of Firefox, and they changed it to avoid confusion with this very database. Guess it didn't work on you :)
    • To be used to confusion. Install this https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/31/ [mozilla.org]

    • Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

      by astrosmash (3561) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:55PM (#16819790) Journal
      Firefox's original name was "Phoenix", as the browser was meant to rise from the ruins of the old Netscape/Mozilla application suite. The Phoenix BIOS guys complained that people would confuse Phoenix the browser with Phoenix the BIOS, so they changed the name to Firebird, which is still quite a bit like a phoenix. Then the Firebird database guys complained for the same reason. Thus the name Firefox was born, a trademark now vigorously defended by the Mozilla organization.

      It didn't work, though. My first thought when I read this article was that it's some Mozilla project. The Firebird guys would have been better off renaming their project, since few people had heard of it anyway. And my new computer doesn't even have a BIOS.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by mdfst13 (664665)
        "The Firebird guys would have been better off renaming their project,"

        How so? I doubt that /. would have posted this story if it weren't for the name confusion. I certainly wouldn't have know what Firebird was if not for Mozilla.
        • He most likely means his PC has EFI Firmware, meaning his new PC is probably a MacBook.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by KarmaMB84 (743001)
          EFI is the newest incompatible BIOS replacement.
        • I think the poster is confused by not being able to see the BIOS since nowadays most BIOSes display a splash screen or a blank screen making it look like as if it's no there.

          Either that or he has a very different computer indeed.

    • Firefox, Thunderbird, Firebird... I'm confused

      I think it's a song by Lynyrd Skynyrd.

  • It is a database people (Score:4, Informative)

    by IntelliAdmin (941633) * on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:26PM (#16819606) Homepage
    FireBird is a database system that has been used in many projects. It has nothing to do with Firefox or any browser or email client. Just go to the website to check it out

    From the website: Firebird 2.0 is the happy culmination of more than two years' efforts from a broad-ranging, truly international community of dedicated developers and supporters. It brings with it a large collection of long-awaited enhancements that significantly improve performance, security and support for international languages and realise some desirable new SQL language features. Under the surface, it also provides a much more robust code platform from which the re-architecting planned for Firebird 3.0 is proceeding.

    http://www.windows-admin-tools.com [windows-admin-tools.com]
  • The problem is
    99% of all open source projects that use a database support MySQL.
    maybe 10% have some support for Postgres.
    and I don't know of any that support Firebird.
    We really need to see some more support for databases other than MySQl

    • Re:Really cool but... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by griffjon (14945) <GriffJon.Hotmail@com> on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:32PM (#16819652) Homepage Journal
      Or, and I know this may be a bit revolutionary, how about a database abstraction layer and support for anything that speaks SQL, brought forward to the user/administrator interface? I imagine most projects are using libraries that support this anyhow...
      • This works, to some extent. When you start doing anything relatively serious, you have to get out of the standard API. SQL is unfortunately not supported in a standard way, because the actual SQL standard is limited. So all serious RDBMS have to add custom features. Want to page your data server side? You either do 3 nested query using ANSI SQL, or you use one of the "proprietary" features and have it run in about 1/100th the time (number not out of my ass, it comes from benchmarks). Standard APIs are only

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by vadim_t (324782)
        Not really possible. Differences run a lot deeper than just syntax.

        For example, take mySQL and PostgreSQL. They've got vastly different locking methods: mySQL does row locking, while PostgreSQL does MVCC. Databases like mySQL like small, short running transactions because otherwise things start getting caught on locks and performance goes way down. PostgreSQL on the other hand LOVES big transactions to the point that you can BEGIN ; SELECT * FROM multi_gb_table ; COMMIT as a perfectly good backup strategy,

    • Re:Really cool but... (Score:5, Funny)

      by aligma (682744) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:41PM (#16819722)
      "and I don't know of any that support Firebird." Its the other -9%.
      • I believe he meant that some overlap, i.e., support both MySQL and PgSQL - supporting two competing products in the same function category is not illegal you know. Unless of course it's vi and emacs, but I didn't even have to say that.

    • Re:Really cool but... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by msobkow (48369) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:47PM (#16819766) Journal

      99% of commercial applications that can pay your rent and put bread-and-butter on the table use Oracle, Sybase, DB/2, or SQLServer/Sybase10.

      100% of applications that I'd trust with any personal data like credit cards run under the first three of those databases.

      For applications that don't have such stringent requirements, you might want to pull your head out of the smelly sphincter of non-standard MySQL syntax and try working with something that can handle joins of more than 5-7 tables without crumbling. Firebird happens to be one -- it's the open sourced version of Borland's database engine, which has kicked MSAccess around the block on performance and standards compliance long before it was open sourced.

      With a couple years of additional development, I expect the new version probably does an even better job of supporting ANSI92 SQL and common language drivers.

      What I can't understand is why everyone still goes ga-ga over MySQL. It doesn't follow standards for syntax, it doesn't scale for statement complexity, and it's reputation for reliability and recoverability is deservedly bad.

      Don't get me wrong. Use what works. But there are so many application profile variants that it's quite narrow minded to presume one database fits all, especially when you try to pick the weakest runt in the litter as your panacea.

      • The only reason people go ga-ga over MySQL is name recognition. Since the last version, I understand that it doesn't suck anymore, so thats great. But it sure as hell used to. PostgreSQL is great, but some of the legacy code in it probably can make Windows' code base look clean (they had to get someone from Summer of Code to try to clean up the DISTINCT code because it was beyond horrible, for one). Firebird's supposed to be pretty darn good, I need to try it (Frans Bouma, a fairly well known Microsoft MVP

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by ninjaz (1202)

        What I can't understand is why everyone still goes ga-ga over MySQL. It doesn't follow standards for syntax, it doesn't scale for statement complexity, and it's reputation for reliability and recoverability is deservedly bad.

        I think it is mostly due to historical reasons, and because MySQL hangs out in the sweet spot for many uses. I started using MySQL in 1997. In 1997, the only free SQL databases around for skunkworks projects were MySQL and miniSQL, version 1 of which had a single-threaded engine

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by killjoe (766577)
        "What I can't understand is why everyone still goes ga-ga over MySQL. It doesn't follow standards for syntax, it doesn't scale for statement complexity, and it's reputation for reliability and recoverability is deservedly bad."

        Let me try and explain it to you.

        Mysql was first to market (the market of open source database engines) with the features that people really want. Full text indexing, replication, clustering, ODBC drivers, etc.

        Now maybe their replication wasn't all that hot but it took five minutes to

  • Firebird is nice (Score:3, Informative)

    by mashmorgan (615200) on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:35PM (#16819686)
    I' use MSSQL, mySQL and Interbase/firebird. Each has their own strengths but for me I've been using Interbase so when Firebird came on the scene I starting porting apps. Unlike some of the others, it was x-platform a long time ago and was/am using it for Stored procedures etc. Nowadays I tend to use mySQL as the syntax is more friendly to dev's eg month(), day() functions whilst on Firefird is extract(dateCol, 'month'). Overall its pretty cool and has its niche. Certainly faster that m$sql 2006

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      MySQL syntax might be easier, but it's also proprietary almost-SQL crap, on a database that's not exactly great (works OK for simple queries only, doesn't value data integrity, just starting to get features we've been taking for granted for ages like sprocs and transactions, poor clustering/replication, etc). It's the single worst DB I've ever tried (and it's not "free" either - it's dual licensed, pay for non-GPL stuff). If you want a better database (works, normal SQL, has the features it should, etc) at

  • Slashdot editors trying to amuse us (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Salvance (1014001) * on Sunday November 12 2006, @11:39PM (#16819714) Homepage Journal
    I wonder if this was posted simply to see what fun folks might have comparing the name to Firefox. I've only used Firebird once, and I wasn't a big fan (who knows, maybe 2.0 is better). I'm having a great time reading the comments though, so nice job /. editors!
      • When it comes to Firebird, I certainly don't know what I'm talking about. This is why I stated I had only used it once a while ago, and now that I think about it, it was well over a year ago (since PostgreSQL 8.0 hadn't yet made it out of beta and we were evaluating Firebird vs. PostgreSQL vs. MySql for a web app).

        Since we have you here ... can you educate us on why Firebird may be better than MySql or PostgreSQL or BerkeleyDB or other open source databases? This is a serious request - I honestly don't
      • So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies. Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
        But trust me.... You don't. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about.
        This is how bad info gets passed around.

        Well you didn't help much by waltzing in, making some smells and riding away on a high horse. Care to mention specifics?

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Phil Resch (447588)

          He doesn't work for Firebird, it's an Internet cliche. It follows the standard form:

          "I work for (insert company name); So I am really getting a kick out of most of these replies. Some of you guys are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about. But trust me.... You don't. I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you don't know what you are talking about. This is how bad info gets passed around. If you dont know about the topic....Dont make yourself soun

  • For those of you who haven't heard of Firebird... (Score:5, Informative)

    by crazyvas (853396) on Monday November 13 2006, @12:05AM (#16819840)
    Firebird (sometimes called FirebirdSQL) is a relational database management system offering many ANSI SQL-99 and SQL-2003 features. It runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird was programmed and is maintained by Firebird Foundation (formerly known as FirebirdSQL Foundation). It was forked from the open sources of InterBase from Borland.
    More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebird_(database_se rver) [wikipedia.org]

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 (641858)
      Firebird (sometimes called FirebirdSQL) is a relational database management system offering many ANSI SQL-99 and SQL-2003 features

      So is PostgreSQL. Would anyone who has used both like to comment on relative levels of SQL support, ACID compliance, and speed on different workloads? All other things being equal, I'd take BSDL over MPL, but I'd be interested in hearing what Firebird does better than PostgreSQL (and vice versa).

      • Re:For those of you who haven't heard of Firebird. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Shados (741919) on Monday November 13 2006, @12:33AM (#16819986)
        Well, one thing: Firebird can be used in embedded scenarios
      • The big thing for me was ACID -- the damn thing has great transactional support. I still miss it now that I'm forced to work on Oracle ("serializable" mode in Oracle is nothing like real transactional support if you've been using Firebird for a while.) From everything I've read, Postgres caught up with Firebird mainly by, uh, borrowing their generational data architecture, but then somewhat surpassed it in terms of user-defined types/functions. It is still really stinkin' easy to install though, whereas my last experience installing Postgres was nothing but a nightmare. (I don't really mean that as a knock on Postgres -- I'm terrible at sysadmin-like tasks, so it's no surprise that I had trouble; rather it's amazing that Firebird was as easy as it was to install.) As far as I know, PHP always comes precompiled only with MySQL support, so both DB's require equal extra work. I used FB/C++ at my previous job (500 some-odd tables, mostly normalized), and I still use FB/PHP for personal projects (far smaller.) It's pleased me in both settings. Keywords: solid, predictable, tunable, extensible, expressive, safe, and not a freakin' fan-club hack job.

        I do hear someone's been working on an oracle-compatibiliy feature for Firebird (support some of oracle's more interesting expressions), so that's a possible bonus, but I'm not clued in on the current project status. If you're in the market for better OSS databases, you might also consider SAP-DB (rebranded as MySQL's MaxDB.) Just seems like another oft-forgotten contender in that same general weight class.
  • Can someone advise an inquisitive soul as to whether Firebird and its [database] engine, is a serious replacement to Microsoft's front-end (Access) and its Jet engine? I really miss the flexibility, the possibility of adding business logic, and level of configuration possible with Access. Is this possible with this latest Firebird?
    • They are biaised, of course, but...look at this:
      http://www.dotnetfirebird.org/blog/2005/01/firebi r d-and-microsoft-jet-feature.html [dotnetfirebird.org]

      Especialy if you are using .NET (which is possible since you're in a Microsoft environment), know that the ADO.NET driver for Firebird is feature complete. I never used it myself, but having seen several comparison between Vista DB, Access, SQLite and Firebird, which I -beleive- to be the dominant embeddable database engines in the WIndows world, Firebird seems to come at th
  • For those of you who don't know. Firebird is a fork of Borland Interbase. For a brief moment in time, Borland decided to open source Interbase, but quickly changed their minds about it. But, during the open source period, a group of developers siezed the moment, and created the fork.
    Interbase has 20-25 years of development behind it (and therefore Firebird). It is stable, and used by many major corporations, including NASA, throughout the world. In terms of open source products, it probably has the MOST mature code base of ALL open source projects.
    Interbase used to compete in the Oracle, Sybase marketspace, but lost considerable market share in the 1990's. What differentiates Firebird from most open source projects, is its history. Most open source databases have been built from the ground up, whereas, by the time Firbird came into existance, it already had 20-25 years of development in the source code base.

    So while, the core dev team of Firebird is fairly small, poorly funded, and badly marketed, the potential still exists to turn this into a project that will compete strongly in the OSI DB arena.

    • Re:firebird is a very poor database. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bourdain (683477) on Monday November 13 2006, @12:01AM (#16819822)
      if you've seen "hacking democracy" (the hbo documentary on Diebold), you'll notice that their database is MS Access -- I'm anything but a software developer, but in my use of Access (granted Access 2000), I've seen enough inconsistent operation to be very careful about just client data for quick small analyses, let alone vote data integrity

      • Re:firebird is a very poor database. (Score:5, Informative)

        by flimflammer (956759) on Monday November 13 2006, @12:09AM (#16819872)
        "if you've seen "hacking democracy" (the hbo documentary on Diebold), you'll notice that their database is MS Access -- I'm anything but a software developer, but in my use of Access (granted Access 2000), I've seen enough inconsistent operation to be very careful about just client data for quick small analyses, let alone vote data integrity"

        In that documentary, I also heard the main woman attacking Diebold exclaim that "Release Notes" are a legal document that must legally show all changes made to their source code. And on top of that, the researcher who was tasked with viewing the contents of the Diebold memory card's means of looking at it was "Buying a memory card reader on the internet", where the Diebold card slid in nice and easy, and he was able to see the contents of the card plain as day (even quoted saying there are "living things" on it, referring to so-called executable code. The thing he purchased online even had the fancy words "Memory Card Reader" on it!

        Obviously, don't take everything you see in an HBO Documentary to heart. Some of the topics they touched on in that documentary were true and accurate, others were ... we'll say "beefed up" to make their case look bigger/stronger.

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