Firebird Relational Database 1.5 Final Out

firebirdy writes "The Firebird Project is pleased to announce that the v1.5 release of the Firebird database engine is now available for immediate download. The v1.5 release represents a major upgrade to the engine, which has been developed by an independent team of voluntary developers from the InterBase(tm) source code that was released by Borland under the InterBase Public License v.1.0 on 25 July 2000. Development on the Firebird 2 codebase began early in Firebird 1 development, with the porting of the Firebird 1 C code to C++ and the first major code-cleaning. Firebird 1.5 is the first release of the Firebird 2 codebase. Install packages are currently only available for Windows and Linux but other platforms should follow shortly." This product is not to be confused with newly renamed Firefox web browser, which was also called Firebird for some time.

Bleh

[CeleronXL]

The only reason anyone even knows about them anyway is because of the former Mozilla Firebird. :O

mysql lets you put crap in your database

[Stone316]

The only people I know that would use mysql as the backend for anything aren't DBA's. Why? Because it allows you to put crap in your database.. This has been debated countless times on /. so there's no point going through all the points again. Lets just say any DBA worth a grain of salt wouldn't use mysql.

Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care

[leandrod]

>

yet another relational database.

Firebird is SQL, not relational.

>

I don't like the way they handled the Mozilla/Firebird naming issue.

Why not? They were there before. They were the ones to be trampled upon by the great big dino.

Re:Bleh

[CeleronXL]

Flamebait? Maybe. I don't think there's enough support of the FirebirdSQL system here to really be a successful bait of any flame. Though of course what I said is very true, regardless of whether or not it's negative towards the FirebirdSQL people. They gained incredible publicity through this. It's doubtful that this news post would be here today had it not been for the naming conflict, because no one would even care.

Oh, the stupidity...

[agoliveira]

Why are you people bashing so hard about the naming issue? You know what? I don't care!
I know Firebird DB since it's earlier days and I was a Interbase user before that. And I loved it. Why? Because the kind of job I did that time required a simple, efective, maintence-free database and Firebird is exactly that. You can just install it and forget it. The whole database is just one file (at least was) so a simple tar or zip will backup your stuff.
Yeah, yeah, I know there is MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc but as I said, I'm not on this kind of job anymore and even if I was, while firebird does what I want (and well) why should I care about other RDBMS?

Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care

[cubic6]

Firebird is SQL, not relational.

There might be a reason why you're a DBA looking for a job. SQL is a query language, relational is a database design paradigm. As it says all over their homepage, Firebird is a relational database that uses SQL.

don't jump to conclusions

[VegetariMan]

I don't know a thing about Firebird, but I'm not prepared to dismiss it simply because of a name conflict with Firefox. Maybe it's a great database. Maybe they didn't treat Firefox fairly when disputing the duplicate name. Maybe they had a legitimate right to their name and the Mozilla folks should have been more diligent about picking a name.

Either way, I doubt the people at Firebird deserve the occasional vitriol from others on this thread.

Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care

[SeanTobin]

Please explain, what exactly didn't you like about how they handled the naming conflict? You didn't like that they hadn't just given up their name?

No, I do not think they should have given up thier name. They are entitled to use it as much as Pontiac is. From my understanding of the situation, the Phoenix code name was changed to Firebird, and then to Firefox for thier final brand. They were code names for projects similar to Merced or Coppermine. The final name was always going to be changed to something once the release came.

Also, from what I remember from the incident I had a very bad impression of the Firebird project. I no longer have any links but what I remember now about it (granted it may be totaly different from what actually happened.. but this is how I view it right now) was the Firebird people attacking Mozilla and writing a very forcefull letter demanding the name change. I believe that a less agressive approach would have produced the same results, and a more positive image for the company.

As far as the relational database vs SQL, I don't know *anything* about the firebird project. All I know is the title here on /. about the 'Firebird relational database.' I always believed the database was relationaly designed and interfaced via SQL but what do I know..

I've already generated a ton of negative comments about my post, but remember this is just my opinion. It's the opinion of a linux sysadmin/perl monk/mysql user who is probably in thier target market. I'm just letting them know why I just don't care.

For those of you hung up on the whole name issue

[greenhide]

If you go to the Firebird Project website [sourceforge.net], you'll see they feature, quite respectfully, Mozilla's recent decision to change their name to Firefox. Remember that the Mozilla team has gone through a lot of name changes. Camino was changed to Chimera, and Phoenix was changed to the rather unfortunate "Firebird" which was already a project name. So it's not like the name "Firebird" was all that entrenched.

I think it's a symptom of Mozilla both try to brand, and being an Open Source project in which one monolithic product was split into various and sundry projects, each of which got bizarely named. I mean, there's nothing about any of the application titles that indicates its use or purpose.

I myself vote for MozillaMail and MozillaBrowser or something of that ilk instead of Thunderbird and Firefox. Then the package now called "Mozilla" could be renamed to MozillaComplete or something like that.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Under whelmed

[Anonymous Coward]

There appears to be two broad groups on this site - the useful ones (you know their posts when you see them) and the other group.
Most of the posts I'm seeing here so far belong in the other group. Today they can't seem to get past a naming issue (which the DB had first BTW), and appear to have no interest in what the product is.
When you are reading *and writing* to your database and there is money attached to the data integrity, this product will be fine. MySQL will not. Just imagine that you are penalised personally $1000 for every data munge that occurs in your database? I imagine that your affinity to the MySQL mindset will start to wane rather quickly.
This database is right up with PostgreSQL and as an added bonus Firebird can be deployed on Windows and Linux. (Plus StroredProcs and Triggers galore)

If all you can focus on however, is the project name, then be angry that Mozilla rudely co-opted the name that the DB first owned.

And to all the slashdotters that despair at the rising tide of inane useless postings - well, you are not alone. Slashdot used to be about geek topics for geeks. New product releases, gotchas, advice, interesting hardware hacks, solving problems with FOSS etc. Now I must content myself with the current posting selections.

And now the ultimate tirade: If you want to feed your geek/technical fetish, it's getting to the point where you'd do better watching McGyver or something.

AC

Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care

[bwt]

I don't like the way they handled the Mozilla/Firebird naming issue.

If Mozilla had called their browser "Linux" or "Apache" or "Python" would you have taken the same position? Or do you feel it is only an issue if they choose the same name as a project you've personally worked with.

Mozilla was clearly in the wrong there, but they did the responsible thing and renamed their project to Firefox and even came up with a cool logo to match their new name. That issue is resolved to everyone's satisfaction, so why would you keep bringing it up after it is fixed? It's time to move on.

Re:An extremly light weight SQL Engine?

[greenhide]

I don't think there's ever going to be a truly light and fast database server that pleases everybody.

Why?

Because to please everyone, you have to...please every one. Which means to offer the features they need. And even if you're an ace programmer, I don't think it's all that easy to de-couple the code to the point that you can just flip a few compiler flags and add or remove features at will.

For instance, all you need is replication. What if someone else doesn't give flying rip about replication, but needs 100% Ansi SQL 99 compliance (something that very few database servers seem to have, oddly). In the stable releases of MySQL, subqueries aren't available. Subqueries! Don't tell me that you can always do the query some other way; I want my subqueries. So I opted for the heavier Postgres engine. When MySQL's stable version offers subqueries, I may switch to it, but at this point I'm fairly familiar with Postgres and don't necessarily want to risk having to rewrite thousands of lines of query code ("Standard" Query Language?!? *What* standard?)

Because there's no one group to please, I don't think anyone's ever going to "fill this niche" because there are a hundred other niches that need filling -- after all, for some people, internationalization and ISO Latin capabilities are crucial; for others, it's roughage.

Database development takes a while -- or at least, it takes a while to do well. There are a ton of MP3 players out there that actually work, but very few database servers that do. It requires a lot of mathematical, computational, and algorithmic knowledge, as well as being kept up to date on the latest in sorting methodolgies, matrices calculations and who knows what else (I sure don't!). So it's only really "profitable" to have one database project that offers all of the features people ask for, rather then 5 that cater to different preferences. Even "bulky" database servers like Postgres seem to run fine on what are today considered "obsolete" computers, so "fast" and "small" are not really the number one criteria anymore.

Firebird Documentation

[esconsult1]

When oh when will they make the documentation browsable on the web. Instead you have to download crappy zip files which contain PDF's.

I think that this reduces uptake of the database, becuase of the barriers to just taking a casual peek of their features. The whole documentation is just locked away with the keys.

Perhaps this is becuase they want more people to have paid support? A PDF manual is all well and good, but at least give us a bone to chew on with a feature list, reasons why people should use the database and so forth.

Re:ok

[Waffle Iron]

ok, can you give firefox it's old name back? No one knows or cares about your project, but people actually give a fuck about firefox

Which old name?

It was once Netscape... until they screwed up in the market so bad that they gave up on it and released the source as:

Mozilla... until it became so bloated and overdesigned (and dangerously close to a movie company's trademark on a mutant lizard) that they had to start over as a project called:

Phoenix... which they forgot to check to see if that trademark had been used by a software company for about 20 years already, causing them to have to change it in a kneejerk reaction to:

Firebird... which they also forgot was already taken by a project that was already smart enough to not use "Phoenix". Thus causing them to switch once again to:

Firefox... which, (assuming they finally did their homework and checked on trademarks) is actually the best name since the original "Netscape".

Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care

[cetan]

How about the fact that their first response to the browser name was to mail bomb everyone at Mozilla?

Yeah, I guess that's how adults act....

Re:SQL not relational

[Anonymous Coward]

When I read rants like those contain in Database Debunkings or the hyper-attenuated formalism of C.J. Date's book, a little voice keeps saying "any yet...and yet". Somehow despite the fact that we use tables instead of relvars I can still book a flight or order a book from Amazon. If these guys are selling something other than arrant pendantry somehow it has escaped me and, it seems, the rest of the data processing world. Put up or shut up. If SQL is such a violation of proper set theory and that matters for something, you should be able to make a fortune selling the Tutorial-D's purity of essence

Re:Firebird for web sites

[joeykiller]

I've not tried Firebird since the pre-1.0 versions, but I have to say that it was nice to use. What was most interesting for me was the availability of subselects, referential integrity between tables and the stored procedures. All of the stuff that MySQL lacked (and still lacks in usable form).

Firebird was extremely easy to set up and configure (= almost no configuration). So that couldn't have been easier.

But then there was the speed issue: At the time Firebird was not a speed daemon. The one thing that bugged me most, though, was that when connecting to the database -- even if you did so from a remote host -- you had to know the physical location of the database file on the server!

It's strange what turns you off, and this peculiarity annoyed me enough to start investigating other options instead. I'm now using Postgresql when I need the more advanced SQL features.

Client caching

[msobkow]

While Postgres is the better database, installing Firebird/Interbase is a much easier task for the average user. That makes it a terrific little cross-platform client-caching database, such as letting the spreadsheet users slice at the data with an ODBC driver without killing the primary database server. For the same reasons, it's a handy tool for writing small standalone database apps without locking in to a Win32 codebase (e.g. MS Access.) I'd say it even has potential to serve the same kind of markets that the "light" servers like Sybase SQL Anywhere serve.

Re:An extremly light weight SQL Engine?

[Sxooter]

Ohhh. and I need a dump truck that's fast and small, but can carry 28 metric tonnes of stone at the same time. And it needs a built in hot tub. And a satellite dish.

Comon, every piece of software is a compromise. If you need a lot of features, then it isn't gonna be small. If you need it small and fast it's gonna be missing some features.

Fast, featureful, small. Pick two.

Why Firebird?

[Ian Bicking]

I've worked with Firebird a bit (some software I develop [sqlobject.org] supports it), but I'm not quite sure what it offers over PostgreSQL. It's difficult to work with from an administrative level, and not terribly well documented -- certainly PostgreSQL beats it on these terms. In terms of features they are mostly on par, with PostgreSQL supporting some fancy OO features that most people won't use, and Firebird perhaps having a few small features of its own (though few). PostgreSQL has much more momentum -- in large part because it's a historically open source codebase, and the code reflects that development methodology. It's accessible to outsiders and maintainable. Firebird doesn't have this, and I don't know if it will ever be very accessible. Look what happened to Mozilla... (though OpenOffice maybe is doing better?)

Then, just to mix things up, you have SAP DB, which is open source with a very proprietary background, much like Firebird. And probably with a lot of the same problems in terms of administration and code accessibility.

I certainly wish the developers no ill will, or to disparage their efforts -- but I've yet to see the argument for using Firebird outside of legacy projects. It's easy to argue MySQL vs. Firebird, but PostgreSQL is the real competitor.

Re:This project

[arf_barf]

Have you considered that what's good for you might not be good for everybody else? I for one, take the ease of administration and deployment of Firebird any day over something as horrendous as Postgre in that department.

Heck, in my small MS centric world there isn't even a way to distribute Postgre with my application. The only good thing about the Postgre from my point of view is the BSD license and that's about it....

Re:Assembling static data

[Earlybird]

What exactly does "taking a slice" of a result set mean?

I suspect the poster is talking about linear slicing at the row level; in PostgreSQL, for example, you can do select ... where ... limit 25 offset 50 to get rows 50-74 of a result set. MySQL has a similar syntax. Oracle supports a size limiting clause, but I don't remember if it has a way to specify the starting offset.

Re:Bleh

[marcovje]

Nobody are the amateurs, and the Slashdot wannabee ha4ors. They also don't get that this is the only commercial grade db system available for free. (and no, mysql doesn't live up to that).

Professionals would already know Interbase (Firebirds previous name). It's the main database technology behind Delphi, which is still the best selling bulk development tool after Microsoft's stuff. And the only major commercial development tool with a Linux version.

Re:Bleh

[Sxooter]

If Firebird is the only free commercial quality database, why isn't it running the .org and .info domains?

There is a free database running those domains, but it ain't MySQL or Firebird.