(sometimes called FirebirdSQL) is a
Relational Database Management System offering many
ANSI SQL -2003 features. It runs on
Linux ,
Windows , and a variety of
Unix platforms. Firebird was programmed and is maintained by the Firebird Project at
SourceForge . It was forked from
Borland 's
Open Source release of
InterBase .
New code modules added to Firebird are licensed under the
Initial Developer's Public License (IDPL). The original modules released by 1.1.
Development on the
Firebird 2 codebase began with the porting of the
Firebird 1.0.x C code to C++ and the first major code-cleaning. Firebird 1.5 is the first release of the
Firebird 2 codebase . It is a significant milestone for the developers and the whole Firebird project, but it is not an end in itself. As Firebird 2.0 goes to release, major redevelopment continues toward the next
point release on the
journey to
Firebird 2.x and
Firebird 3.0 (code named Vulcan)
Other important information is found on
Interbase History page
Firebird at 20 years, Recollection from
Jim Starkey (how it all started):
:" personal computer that went exactly nowhere, running
XENIX . Gpre was my first C program,
XENIX was my first experience with
Unix , and the Pro/350 was my very last (but not lamented) experience with
PDP-11 s."
The current stable version is . This
release represents a commitment by the project to develop and deliver ongoing improvements to this popular open source database engine.
:
This
release contains a large number of new features, including derived tables, support for Execute Block, increased table sizes, new improved index code (the 252-byte index length limit is no longer applicable), expression indices, numerous optimiser improvements, enhanced security features, support for on-line incremental backups along with numerous other improvements and bug fixes.
Full
Release Notes are available in form of pdf document (right-click and choose Save As)
The current release represents a major upgrade to the engine, which has been developed by an independent
team of voluntary developers from the
2000 .
The
Firebird Documentation Subproject has published the Firebird 2.0 version of the Quick Start Guide. It is available on-line as a multi-page
HTML document as well as in
PDF format .
In
April 2003 ,
Mozilla Foundation decided to rename their
Web Browser from ''Phoenix'' to ''Firebird''. This decision caused concern within the Firebird database project due to the assumption that users would be confused by a database and web browser using the Firebird name. The dispute continued until the Mozilla developers issued a statement making clear that their software package was called "Mozilla Firebird", not "Firebird". The statement also said that the Mozilla Firebird name was a project codename. On
February 9 ,
2004 , Mozilla renamed its browser
Mozilla Firefox , thus clearing up
confusion .
