Firebird Relational Database 1.5 Final Out 445
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.
This project (Score:5, Interesting)
I mean, has anyone used this database? Is it really of any note that v1.5 is out?
Firebird for web sites (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Assembling static data (Score:5, Interesting)
Currently we use Oracle for this work, but in the past we tried switching to MySQL but found that it lacked some of the key features such as materialized views, nested sub-queries and a variety of Oracle SQL functions that we find useful. MySQL seemed to be geared towards maintaining a real-time database to support customer interaction, rather than as an environment for assembling static data sources.
Could Firebird be a viable open-source alternative, or are there others?
Can anyone actually run it? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Oh, the stupidity... (Score:5, Interesting)
That's all well and good, except that you're completely wrong. First, you can back up any database that uses OS-level files using tar and gzip - that's certainly nothing special for Interbase/Firebird. Second, we experienced table corruptions constantly that resulted in rows that were still present in the table, but couldn't be fetched. Relational integrity means jack squat when referenced rows suddenly cease to be accessible.
Interbase/Firebird obviously worked for at least some people, or else it would've been altogether dropped years ago, but it's bitten enough people that it's just not accurate to call it "maintence-free" (unless that has a backhand slam at the abyssmal state of the administrative tools, and you meant "-free" as in "-not-capable-of").
Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care (Score:2, Interesting)
Trademark law allows for things to have similar names if they're in different fields. Although both are in software, *nobody* who is looking for Firebird the database is going to confuse it with Firebird the browser, especially when both show up in the top 10 of google for 'firebird'. If anything, it goes the other way around.
In fact, out of this whole thing, the Firebird DB people probably benefited the most out of the whole charade. They got a bunch of free publicity, and as evidenced here, there's a crap load of people who now know what it is and would otherwise have no reason to.
And their conduct throughout the ordeal was less than sportsmanlike. True, MozillaFoundation probably should've done a little better checking on it, but most likely in their eyes they came to the same conclusion we did: confusion between the 2 projects wasn't likely. However, this didn't stop the FirebirdDB people from being near harrassing. Their first 'call to action' was to essentially mailbomb anyone and everyone Mozilla related (http://www.mozillazine.org/talkback.html?article
At the time, Mozilla.org was part of AOL. AOL's a big company. Big companies move slowly. The issue was going to be resolved (partially with the name Mozilla Firebird instead of just Firebird) anyway.
In the end, changing to Firefox was definitely the right thing to do. No confusion with anybody else, no wondering about what GM thinks about the name, brand spanking new logo, and clear skies until 1.0
Re:mysql lets you put crap in your database (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? It must have been debated when I was in my coma. The post was modded "Insightful", so it must be true. Can someone please clarify what it means to "put crap in your database", and what it is about MySQL that allows it? Which FM should I read to understand the issue better?
Re:This project (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Firebird(tm) and why I just don't care (Score:1, Interesting)
I for one was pleased when Firefox received it's latest name, although it's going to take a while before people stop being confused since most people now think that Firebird is a browser.
Re:An extremly light weight SQL Engine? (Score:3, Interesting)
The generally accepted value for SQL is: Structured Query Language
Why do Linux downloads have 686 in name? (Score:1, Interesting)
Firebird-linux-i386 [show only this package]
1.5.0-Release [show only this release]
FirebirdCS-1.5.0.4290-0.i686.rpm
28378
FirebirdCS-1.5.0.4290-0.i686.tar.gz
280218
etc...
Re:Why I know about Firebird (Score:4, Interesting)
Note that in my comments about FirebirdSQL, I only mentioned the company. I haven't used the database and so I will acknowledge that it may very well be a great database, whereas it would appear that you clearly have not used Fx if you honestly think it's not extensible. And if it is the case that you haven't used it, you can hardly call it a poor excuse for a software package.
This is obviously going to get modded down as flamebait or trolling, as is always the case on Slashdot when a good debateable topic comes up.
Shipping a product? Firebird is your friend (Score:3, Interesting)
Enter Firebird. Installation is a breeze under both operating systems and its all plug and play after that.
MySQL is nice but can be a maintenance headache and good luck included it in a shipping product, it violates the license or so the lawyers tell me.
I use mysql on my webservers, I embed firebird in my shipping products. Its been great so far!
Genuinely interested & thwarted.... (Score:2, Interesting)
"Last 10 Releases"
31-Dec-1969 firebird 1.5.0-Release (Source)
1969? That's a neat trick. Hopefully development is a little more dedicated than documentation.
Looking at the list of who's deploying the DB on which platforms, the organization list is impressive, but where's current information?
"This page was last updated on 2000-12-31 21:23:04 -0400" doesn't impart warm fuziness, nor do the few references to Linux kernel 2.2.x.
Who's managing the project, and why do they suck at advocating it?
Re:Why I know about Firebird (Score:3, Interesting)
Our databases would be less than a gig but any time it did a sweep it would take up one whole processor and go bye byes for an exteneded period of time. In fairness to Interbase, we were using the Borland Database Engine as well which was a cause for most of our database headaches but I would not recommend Interbase in a large production environment.
I thought the best thing about Interbase were the GUI admin tools (IBExpert in particular).
Re:Bleh (Score:2, Interesting)
Upon advise of a consultant, we trried switching from mysql to firebird for our 250GB, 1.2 billion rows database. We couldn't even import it. After some discussion with the designers of firebird it became evident that firebird has a problem with anything larger than 80GB.
We went back to mysql, and are very happy with it.
Re:Bleh (Score:2, Interesting)
i've been developing commercial software since 93 with borland delphi. delphi is a fine ide with awesome db powers. it came a long way with that crappy paradox/bde thing with a bunch of drawbacks, but interbase is a professional and very powerfull dbs with its sql dialect.
the firebird project forked [sourceforge.net] back in 2000 as interbase became opensource. as it is licensed [sourceforge.net] under a gpl incompatible [fsf.org] license there will always be flaimbaits. especially here on
sure, it got alot of attention due to the name conflict, but software developers that rely on a powerfull and stable db engine surely know about it for a long time.