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Firebird 2.0 Final Released
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."
Now I can finally convince my friends to upgrade their web browser from Firebird 0.6 :)
I must admit to be rather ignorant of Firebird, how does it compare to other RDBMSs out there?
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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.
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.
Firefox, Thunderbird, Firebird...
I'm confused.
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.
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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
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
They should really think about using another name. This one is very unoriginal and confusing.
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
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!
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
Honestly....who is going to use this?
What is the deal with that picture of the red bird? My god, it scared the crap out of me.
it's a wrap!
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
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.e rver)
More at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firebird_(database_s
"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"
... we'll say "beefed up" to make their case look bigger/stronger.
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
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).
... 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 know enough about Firebird, and the release bulletin seems more geared to existing Firebird users (it doesn't help someone uninformed dimwit like me make a better comparison for future projects).
Since we have you here
Thanks a ton!
Crack - Free with every butt and set of boobs
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).
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Well Firebird the database is why Firefox got its name. So to say it has nothing to do with Firefox is wrong.
Thats why all the firebird/firefox jokes.
Well, one thing: Firebird can be used in embedded scenarios
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?
There is no "-1, Heresy" mod despite what some moderators might think.
The parent post is in no way deserving of a -1 flamebait.
Happy Puppy User
talk about being a typical slashdotter and not RTFM.
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?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Don't be so bent on "this is an MS Access replacement". Firebird is a full-featured RDBMS.
Check some information in this white paper.
Some info from that document:
"The project, implemented by the original developer of InterBase (Jim Starkey) was commissioned for SAS Institute, the world's largest vendor of business and medical statistics application software. SAS had made the decision in 2003 to move many of its business applications over from Oracle to Firebird."
"The largest Firebird database we have heard of is about 11 Terabytes and growing."
Hmm, maybe I should try this thing...
He doesn't work for Firebird, it's an Internet cliche. It follows the standard form:
According to this Wikipedia article on Fark.com cliches, it originated in this Fark forum thread (search for "I work for the U.S. Mint" about halfway down the page), but I've seen in take different forms in different places.
Just thought you should know.
Or for that matter, when might we see FMPro on Linux.
I've got nothing against SQL DBs. Horses for courses and all.
What i'm after is something similar to FMPRo where I quickly create a database from Raw data, manipulate it in some fashion, create a layout to present it nicely and have some scripts do stuff.
This is the beauty of FMPro. It simple, quick and to boot you can even create run-time solutions.
Yes, Filemaker is quite limited compared to "proper" RDBMS, but hey, I don't want to run a webserver to view my data and create reports.
Anway, I know it's slightly off topic, but a good place to ask the question.
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.
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They should just rename it "Camaro". No Mozilla confusion with Firefox/Thunderbird, and we all know it's really a Camaro anyway except for the front-end. ;)
Isn't Firebird = Dragon :-/
i work for money, if u want loyalty, Go get a Dog.
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.
here is the mirrordot version of the page2 44f2f6aff54e05e/index.html
p _id=9028
http://www.mirrordot.com/stories/638353b3594393aa
and here is the download area on sourceforge (if you want to install it)
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?grou
developer http://flamerobin.org
I enjoyed using Firebird 1.5 for a small (24 table, 10,000 row) multiuser (8-12) database on Mac OS X (10.3, 10.4) and linux (RedHat 9, RedHat WS3, Debian) with the JayBird JCA/JDBC Drivers and Java. Everything worked cross-platform including declarative constraints, and the database export utility cleanly handled the endian change between PPC and x86. Firebird is an often overlooked FOSS alternative to Oracle.
I'm waiting for them to come out with a GUI interface called ThunderFox.
-David
A seemingly unbiased speed comparison (well at least not biased towards Firebird, anyway) can be found here: http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/wiki?p=SpeedComparis on
As for features: it has them all. ACID, triggers, stored procedures, will maintain identical copies of the one database on two drives for you, etc, etc. Possibly because of this when I went looking for a database to replace Oracle it seemed to be the one most recommended. At least one commercial vendor has an add on that provides the one thing missing in this role: a stored procedure language compatible with Oracle's PL/SQL.
And yes, I am a happy Firebird user. But not for any of the reasons mentioned so far. I use it because it is dammed easy to bolt onto your current project. No configuration. Small footprint. Ports to anything. Zero ongoing maintenance. That is its heritage you see - it always was a bolt on library for applications that don't even mention the word SQL in their description. So Firebird is doing its job well if the end users and sysadmins aren't aware of its existence. Think about that when you are next tearing your hair out trying to set up some MYSQL database when all you wanted to do is install some tiny web app someone else in the office asked for.
And that leads us to what turns most people off. There are no flashy front ends out of the box. Is comes with three utilities of note: backup, restore and isql: all very simple command line tools. Its an embedded database - you are meant to provide the front end yourself. And the doco, while present, is patchwork of old stuff and separate "changes since ..." files.
But if you are need a backend for a application that doesn't parade its "SQL" credentials Firebird is one possibility. The others are sleepycat (for speed) and SQLLite (for simplicity). You'd be nuts to use anything else, and I wish a lot of projects out there hadn't.
Firebird 2 Cheat sheet, listing useful information about Firebird 2 such as its data types, its internal and UDF functions, some useful queries and the php ibase functions.
The name was changed to IceWeasel and not Firebird. Editors please correct.
PS: Anyway this story is running late, IceWeasel 2.0 was released on Oct 24rd.
Installing postgresql 8.1 with windows was easy - it uses a nice standard windows installer.
PHP 5 (windows installation) includes the postgres dll (in fact it includes a dll for all supported databases). They stopped including mysql in favor of sqlite (due to changes in the mysql license and since most unix boxes already have the mysql client libraries installed).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
m$sql LOL teh funny!!!1!one!
Too bad there's no such thing as MS SQL 2006 eh?
I suppose you can point to all those TPC-C benches firebird has won against the big 3 (if it's faster than mssql, it's more or less faster than every single other DB out there). Somehow, all the claims about firebird being slow are just false somehow, and the nearly exponential adoption of SQL Sever is because it's slow? (many big and well known companies using it for multiple terabytes of data) Hint: firebird is _NOWHERE_FUCKING_NEAR_ the speed of Oracle/DB2/MSSQL, and will likely never be.
And yeah, MySQL is just the perfect, ultimate database, because you can't figure out a far better database's better syntax. Talk about stupidity!
You sir, are one fucking clueless idiot! You certainly can't tell your ass from your elbow.
It started out as a university research project. 2-3 users on a VAX 11/780 would bring it to it's knees, but PostgreSQL has been around much, much longer than you seem to think. Almost 20 years.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The "Oracle compatability" project I suspect you're thinking of is called Fyracle, and can be found at http://www.janus-software.com/fb_fyracle.html. It takes care of many (most?) Oracle syntax oddities, and handles PL/SQL code so you don't lose investments in huge stored procedures. It sits as a front-end between you and Firebird. I don't think Fyracle is open source/free, but I believe the runtime is free and the developers kit is cheap. [No product endorsement intended here, I just am vaguely aware of the project.]
We work with FB 1.x on 24x7 systems, based on Linux - FB preinstalled by supplier. We're not entirely pleased with what we saw; random corruption, database server committing all available memory when trying to sweep its tables. At inadvertent times sucking up all CPU cycles. I probably forgot a few things.
We managed to get the systems relatively stable by closing and committing transactions as soon as possible (this is actually funny, because we do reads only), by disabling the clean sweep and backing up often and restoring every once in a while.
And what's up with the FB 1.x gbak tool under Linux?
Hope that FB 2.0 is a *lot* better.
At my office we have only a single program that uses MS-SQL and that is our accounting system.
While important our mission critical application uses PostgreSQL. It tracks all the incoming support calls, RMAs, and support issues for our customers.
The other money making application we use is Drupal for our website. It does support MySQL and Postgres but not every modual supports them both. In that case I am sorry to say we went with the path of least resistance and used MySQL.
What you didn't understand is that was lamenting the fact that way too many FOSS projects seem to depend or give better support for MySQL then other FOSS databases.
I would love to see Postgres and Firebird get the same level of support.
However I do take offense with your comment about kick MSAccess around the block.
MSAccess isn't in MySQLs leauge much less Firebird or PostgresSql. It is nothing but a mutant DBase or if you want to get technical XBase engine.
I wouldn't trust it for anything more important that a single user simple database.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
A. Pretty sure you could get in trouble, in theory at least, for claiming you provided your client improved encryption/security in a new build/version when you didn't. Release notes, insofar as they confer the changes/fixes/additions/features to a client (ie, one who you have a contractual obligation toward) is in fact a "trusted communication medium" between the two parties. As such, yes, it could be used to verify a legal obligation to actually provide said changes/fixes/additions/features.
B. Obviously "living things" is meant to explain in lay terms the concept that these 'memory cards' do not simply store data, but instead contain information to manipulate data as well. A different (and plausibly equally bad) analogy for this would be DNA. The bottom line is that as an intelligent, knowledgable technophile you shouldn't feel hurt or surprised that they don't explain things the average person won't understand.
C. I'm claiming general ignorance of the particulars of the systems, but the 'memory cards' in question looked to be PCMCIA cards of some form? Whatever they were, they don't seem to be comparatively common media. The 'expert' that looked at the card wasn't from the USA, but visiting. Generally if one needs equipment that one lacks, you buy the damn thing. What would you have him do, solder up a to-USB adapter, then access it on linux? Start shaking the thing over a piece of paper hoping the data would fall out?
I can wholeheartedly agree that we should be skeptical of the media. Just not sure why you chose those particular examples. I also don't see the need for the damn documentary given that no one is claiming these machines have paper trails or that any recount could involve more than reprinting a receipt of the total tally. These things have no verifiability, which would seem to be very important. If the census bureau took the same approach then we'd be a lot more concerned I guess, since census figures help to guide decisions from everything from representation to federal tax money received, etc.
Well, wake me up when "the damn thing that has great transactional support" can handle transactional DDL. MySQL and IB/FB both suck equally badly when it comes to handling DDL's (CREATE TABLE, RENAME TABLE, DROP TABLE, ALTER TABLE, ...) in transactions. MySQL performs an "implicit commit", while IB/FB acts as if it can handle it but then behaves weirdly and the only thing to avoid weirdness is to perform a COMMIT after each DDL.