Firebird is a relational database which will offer you many ANSI SQL ordinary features that runs on Windows, Linux and a variety of Unix systems.

Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. Firebird has been used in production systems, under a variety of names since 1981.

FREE LIKE A BIRD. Anyone can build a custom version of Firebird, as long as the modifications are made available, under the same IDPL licensing, for others to use and build on.

First you need to choose a Firebird server architecture. There are two models: the classic and the super server architecture. The super server is the main architecture for Microsoft win32 platforms (classic architecture is available on Win32 only from v1.5 onward). Unix style environments often have a choice of both the classic or super architecture.

If you are unsure start with the classic architecture which is a little easier to experiment with and to learn the basics. Then once you know more you will be able to determine which architecture is best for your installation. From a functional point of view both are equivalent and they are interchangable.

Classic
The classic architecture allows for programs to directly open the database file. It is architected to allow the same database to be opened by several programs at once. The classic engine also allows remote connections to local databases by providing an inetd or xinetd service (This spawns a seperate task per user connection).

Super Server
The super server architecture provides a server process, and client process cannot directly open the database file and all SQL requests are done via the server using a socket. The super server makes use of lightweight theads to process the requests.

Here are some key features of "Firebird":

· On-Disk Structure
· Database Triggers
· SQL and Objects
· Procedural SQL
· Security
· International Language Support
· Platform Support
· Administrative
· Remote Interface
· Derived Tables
· PSQL Now Supports Named Cursors
· Reimplemented Protocols on Windows
· Reworking of Garbage Collection
· Porting of the Services API to Classic is Complete
· Lock Timeout for WAIT Transactions
· New Implementation of String Search Operators
· Reworking of Updatable Views
· Additional Database Shutdown Modes Introduced
· UDFs Improved re NULL Handling
· Run-time Checking for Concatenation Overflow
· Changes to Synchronisation Logic
· Support for 64-bit Platforms
· Record Enumeration Limits Increased
· Debugging Improvements
· Improved Connection Handling on POSIX Superserver
· PSQL Invariant Tracking Reworked
· ROLLBACK RETAIN Syntax Support
· No More Registry Search on Win32 Servers
· More Optimizer Improvements


Requirements:

· MS Visual C runtime libraries

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· Firebird 2.1.2 is a patch release addressing a large collection of bugs that have surfaced since the original v.2.1 a year ago and the v.2.1.1 sub-release of Summer 2008. This release contains no new functionality but particular attention should be paid to a change in the availability of several parameters in the database parameter buffer (DPB) to ordinary users. It will cause authority errors in applications where, in the past, ordinary users were wrongly given access to operations that must be restricted to SYSDBA and the database owner.

· For Windows users, another important change helps to reduce the hassles involved in making access to the Microsoft C and C++ runtimes available to servers and clients. Documentation of the Windows installation (in the Installation and Migration document) has been updated and reorganised in an attempt to make it better applicable to later versions of Vista, XP and Server2003 with SP3 installed, and Server2008.