Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL-92 features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Many fixes were made for this release. Blobs containing more than 65535 segments were not being backed up by GBAK properly. ISQL problems that were fixed include statement terminators and “–” comments that are no longer recognized in multi-line literals, and tab characters that are no longer translated to spaces in literal strings.
Firebird Relational Database 1.5.2 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I like Firebird very much. When building some generic library I started with supporting Firebird and now I’m expanding for MySQL, SQLite and PostgreSQL. It’s wonderful that we can count with so many top-notch database options.
Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server may be necessary in the future, but they won’t be very hard to add with the basic driver support.
Go Firebird! 🙂
Firebird seems to be a decent database, I’ve played with it at home some. I haven’t found a good reason to switch from PostgreSQL for my projects – especially with the new PostgreSQL 8 having windows support.
I think if you wanted to embed a database into an application, it would be nicer, since it only has one working file, whereas PostgreSQL has an entire directory tree.
My biggest complaint about Firebird is iSQL: it’s too primitive. A good, easy to use, self documenting command line client is essential for most Unix/Linux software developers IMHO.
This is a rant, but I just want to say that I will never use Firebird because of the problems they caused for the Mozilla organization. Apparently they think that software developers are so stupid they might confuse a database with a web browser. And it not like end users are looking for a database.
Well hopefully there are others that feel the same. It’s MySQL or PostgreSQL for me.
I use Mozilla based browsers since the very beginning. Maybe since early 99 or even late 98.
And I used Delphi since its version 2.0, which I got around 95 or 96. Delphi supported Paradox and later InterBase, which was the base for the Firebird project.
I mean, some techs come and go, but others stick with us.
I even enjoy the Firefox name, mind you. Such an unique name is very good.
They really need to work on their release note write ups.
The piece that makes up this post sounds like
Phew, ok, well.. all the leaks in the boat seems to be fixed – not verified yet, but at least we’re not sinking anymore (although that could be due to all the extra pumps we installed). Also, the termite problem seems to be under control and the captain seems to be sobering up and will soon be able to help fight the on board fire. We’ll need to catch some sleep now, but we’ll be back to patch more stuff later..
Well, I know it’s not that bad (I use it, but prefer postgres) but come on… where’s the salutes and fanfares? That said – I do apreciate the bugfix information
After Firebird’s immoral and unethical harrassment of the Mozilla Foundation, I will never use their product. Ever.
Besides, PostgreSQL is such a damn good database, why would anyone want to use anything else?
I install firebird on any Linux like this:
1- download binary from the website at http://www.ibphoenix.com
2- tar zxvf firebird.tar.gz
3- sudo ./install.sh
it asks for the password.
That’s it. On Windows they have installers since ever.
The PostgreSQL features are nice-haves, but they may be overkill sometimes.
For example, the Firebird download is about 3MBs. 🙂 Beat that.
> After Firebird’s immoral and unethical harrassment of the
> Mozilla Foundation, I will never use their product. Ever.
So, if Mozilla folks would’ve named their stuff say… Posftix, and Postfix people would’ve been pissed you would’ve refused to use Postfix ever since? Right…
As for Firebird – organised documentation would be nice. And no, “read Interbase docs” won’t do. Many new users are just confused – wtf Interbase? What still applies and what doesn’t? But under Windows Firebird *is* nice. Rough around the edges under FreeBSD through
Well, if Firebird had renamed its project to Mozilla their response would probably not be any better.
Several months ago I had the occasion to speak to several of the Firebird management team and get the inside story on the history of the database. Firebird is a surprisingly mature database with very good reliability, good speed, and a pretty decent set of features. Firebird is not looking to replace MySQL or Postgres in the free, low end of the open source database market. They specialize is providing features and support for medium sized companies that want the features of Oracle with a support program as well.
It’s unfortunate about the name space clash, but Firebird did have the law on its side.
– Andrew
> As for Firebird – organised documentation would be nice.
> And no, “read Interbase docs” won’t do.
For me Interbase Docs with Release Notes 1.5 (which are translated in several languages) are good enough, but there is an excelent alternative:
The Helen Borrie’s Book: “The Firebird Book” from Apress (buy it on http://www.ibphoenix and you’ll be helping Firebird development) it’s not cheap but worth every cent you pay.
Firebird does have a set of professional documents. You might just not have found them yet. Or they are provided with paid support.
– Andrew
Here’s an link to an interview with Paul Beach, head of the Firebird project:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&s=1105500088:633590&p…
– Andrew
> This is a rant, but I just want to say that I will never
> use Firebird because of the problems they caused for the
> Mozilla organization. Apparently they think that software
> developers are so stupid they might confuse a database
> with a web browser. And it not like end users are looking
> for a database.
You and most of the Mozzila fans which didn’t liked of the FB folks rebellion, insists on ignoring what was the motive of such indignation:
The completely contempt for the initial contacts of the FB administrators and facing us with legal arguments for sustaining their position, instead of one word (it would be just enough) for admitting their mistake. (To be fair not all the Mozzila Admin Team had this kind of behavior)
Could it be the case and we would just wait for the correction actions without hearing any word from our mouths.
I must confess to a certain bias against IBPhoenix and Firebird Database. Not over the fact that they had concerns over the naming issue, but over they way they chose to exploit the situation. It was a publicity stunt. No more, no less. And it worked, too. How many had heard of Firebird Database before that fiasco? Now they get regular news coverage.
As to having the law on their side, trademark law, at least in the US, allows for products in different markets, like browsers and DBMSs to use the same names.
Anyway, for my part, I’m perfectly happy with PostgreSQL and see no reason to consider changing.
>> Not over the fact that they had concerns over the naming issue
The naming issue is no fait-diver it’s a real one, after the Mozzila-Firebird project was born, searching for Firebird info on search engines like Google, was simply a joke.
Naming it’s simply a way of organizing relations and unique context names helps a lot, and after all we are talking about software classes with near relations (I’ve made a Internet Browser which use and save all it’s information on a Firebird DB).
> but over they way they chose to exploit the situation. It was a publicity stunt.
> No more, no less. And it worked, too. How many had heard of Firebird Database
> before that fiasco? Now they get regular news coverage.
You must be kidding!! Firebird team doesn’t have and never had a marketing way of thinking and this is a big obstacle for his growthing over the world. But happily this is changing.
If not, how can you explain that a project with more than 300.000 page views a month, only recently started to be reported on the news.
This has turned into a bunch or rants against Firebird over the naming dispute with Mozilla. Pitty. It seems like people defend who they like. People defend Linux against Microsoft because they like Linux. People usually claim they are defending Linux against Microsoft because Microsoft is evil. That could be their motivation there. Here, Mozilla didn’t research their name and grabbed a name that was the trademark of someone else – another open-source project. Mozilla transgressed. Obviously, they didn’t do it on purpose, but nonetheless, someone else had the rights to the name Firebird.
Unfortunately, the people defending Mozilla here have taken the stance that they like Mozilla better and so they should get the name. I’m sure that a lot of people think that the name confusion probably hurt Firefox and since they care about that project, something that hurt it is evil. It’s a pretty common gut reaction, but you have to move beyond it.
Maybe Microsoft should come out with a nice Linux Pro server that has nothing to do with Linux. While Linus had the name first, Microsoft is bigger (as Mozilla is) and a lot more consumers use Microsoft’s stuff (as Mozilla’s stuff).
I’m can’t believe anyone is still nursing a grudge against the Firebird/SQL people. If anything, I held a grudge against the Mozilla project for a long time, and didn’t start using the new browser until they renamed it Firefox. I mean, really, who had the burden of due diligence here? Who had the name first? I understand that the Mozilla people were frustrated because their first attempt for the new browser was ‘Phoenix’, which was similarly doomed, although the conflict was much more obscure. But the minute I heard they had renamed the browser I knew there was going to be a problem. I mean of the available open-source database systems, Firebird came in #3, after MySQL and PostgreSQL. It certainly wasn’t obscure to anyone in serious open-source web application development. You can’t convince me for a minute that no one at Mozilla knew this name. And I wasn’t very impressed the the Mozilla Foundation’s reaction when the Firebird team complained. Whether legal or not, it is simple professional courtesy not to step on someone’s toes like that. Especially when they are both playing on the same team (open source).
And to those who say “how could anyone mistake a browser for a database (sic)”, the problem is not that. Think about a developer trying to sell open source to a company, explaining to the boss that they will run the web application with Firebird, but the database will be Firebird, but the two are NOT in any way related, etc… It would just come off sounding stupid to the boss. The name conflict alone is the kind of thing that will turn bosses off, among other things because they realize the potential problems, and they don’t want to depend on any software that might be legally entangled.
Isn’t this release a while ago? The Firebird project homepage at SF.net says 1.5.2 is available for download since 26-Dec-2004. Plus, this is a pretty minor release, mainly bugfixes.
I really hope FB could be developed faster. Maybe now that PG 8.0 is available natively on Windows, there is more pressure for the race? Also anyone knows where Nickolay Samofatov is? I glanced at recent months’ archive of fb-devel and he doesn’t seem to be active anymore.
I used Firebird from version 1.x until 1.5 on a major enterprise application for a large corp. It worked well, but required constant backups and restores because the database would grow with each transaction commit. This growth could only be controlled by doing a backup/restore.
This does not occur with PG because of the incuded vacuuming scripts and with the autovacuum daemon. With Postgres my databases stay nice and compacted all the time every day.
with FB by database would balloon to 600mb and it was all transaction info, upon a backup and restore it would drop to 110 mb on average. (this was after about 6 months without a backup restore)
Then I discovered PostgreSQL and after a couple of days of playing around with it I discovered how superior it really is.
One of the biggest things was that with PG there is no concept of dialects and there ie not seperate SQL engines for dynamic or procedure SQL. With FB you can’t run certain SQL in procs without using the execute statement, PG has no such limitation.
PG also has every function you could ever think of built right in and it has temp table support which users of MS SQL server and Oracle are used to.
There is even more to like about with PG version 8.0 including a native windows support, tablespaces, try except type error handling in functions, Point in time recovery, save points and much more.
For corp users who have used MS SQL or Oracle PG is a much more logical choice.
Firebird is more suited for a embedded or bundled type of situation while Postgres is clearly more suited for heavy duty enterprise use.
don’t get me wrong FB is a decent database, but not in the ranks of PostgreSQL
Anonymous said, “PG also has every function you could ever think of built right in and it has temp table support which users of MS SQL server and Oracle are used to.”
Great point. But I thought I read once that the fb team was going to add builtin functions at some point “soon.” Does anyone know offhand if this is the case?
This only happens if you do NOT commit! Because it uses MVCC (long before Postgres used it), every operation is within its own transaction. Those operations which are not committed or rolled-back will accumulate and the db will need to be restored.
It was leading to genuine confusion. Even though the db had been using this name for several years before Mozilla blundered, last summer if you did a Google search for Firebird, most of the results returned were for the browser NOT for the database.
A small project like Firebird needs exposure, and it was being eclipsed and obscured by Mozilla. They did not do it to seek publicity but to simply stop their project being obscured by Mozilla’s inept naming choice. Even now a Google search will bring up Mozilla Firefox as third (and lower items) on the first page of a Google search. During the naming conflict there was a real problem that people would even have trouble searching for Firebird.
I even think that ‘Firefox’ is a much better name than ‘Firebird’ anyway – that whole ‘Phoenix rising from the ashes’ image is sooo over-used.
FB people even recommend and publicise Firefox, so clearly they are not anti-Mozilla.
I started using Firebird over 2 years ago. Since then I’ve seen the project go from strength to strength. It is truly open-source and truly free – and I am hard-pressed to see why anyone would use MySQL. Various polls have shown it vying (and even beating) MySQL many times.
> with FB by database would balloon to 600mb and it was all
> transaction info, upon a backup and restore it would drop
> to 110 mb on average.
> (this was after about 6 months without a backup restore)
There are two methods for preventing DB growth by performing garbage collection: sweeping / backup and restore.
By default sweep only fires when the interval between OIT (Oldest Interesting Transaction) and the newest transaction is bigger than 20000. I normally disable this feature and do scheduled sweeps.
Although the garbage collection was enhanced in FB 2.0 one of the reasons for this bad behavior is to have transactions opened for large periods.
I for example don’t let the user to keep his forms open for more than a max period.
> PG also has every function you could ever think of built right in and
> it has temp table support which users of MS SQL server and Oracle are used to.
For Firebird there is no operational difference between built-in functions and UDF (User Define Functions). Although Firebird has built-in functions (Min(), Max(), Today) they are rather limited (but this is a work in progress for the next releases) but you have plenty of UDFs you can import to your DB, take a look:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_udf_libs
If you will pardon a break in the flamewar, I was wondering why we are hearing about this now? The release was on the 26th of December. The files are dated the 25th. I’ve been using it since then, already. Why the month delay on the article?
“After Firebird’s immoral and unethical harrassment of the Mozilla Foundation, I will never use their product. Ever.
Besides, PostgreSQL is such a damn good database, why would anyone want to use anything else?”
What an utterly stupid and childish thing to say. Does this individual represent the kind of person in the OS community or is he/she the exception?
“I must confess to a certain bias against IBPhoenix and Firebird Database. Not over the fact that they had concerns over the naming issue, but over they way they chose to exploit the situation. It was a publicity stunt. No more, no less.”
You could not be farther off! Here was a well established open source project not bothering anyone but being used by thousands of companies and people. Along comes a very large, well known, well funded open source project that decides to adopt the same name as the little guy. And you think protesting the name conflict was a publicity stunt? Yes, some of the initial reaction from Firebird supporters was impulsive and immature. But really now, NO open source project should willfully co-op the name of another project. That is just not right!
The problem is not considering developers as able
to confuse a database and a webbroser which use the
same name. BUT THEIR MANAGERS WILL DO!!!! Management
will create lot of problems since the question “Firebird?
Isn’t a browser?” will arise. If the manager give you enough time
to explain the mess, ok. But certainly they’ll say
“A browser taking care of my data? NO WAY!” e close the
door on your face.
I know of many managers which certainly will do such
a thing…
So FB team, to avoid this, talked to Mozilla team – but
the thing would stay on a simple mail exchange is Mozilla team doesn’t (at first) revealed a very arrogant attitude, corrected afterwards.
No company rely a webbrose, but all companies must trust the database product which their business rely on.
>Also anyone knows where Nickolay Samofatov is? I glanced >at recent months’ archive of fb-devel and he doesn’t seem >to be active anymore.
I have seen that he commited some source code few days ago… I bet he is too busy now
—
Best regards,
Fikret Hasovic http://fikret.fbtalk.net
FirebirdSQL Foundation member.
– Join today at http://www.firebirdsql.org/ff/foundation
JEDI VCS contributor
http://jedivcs.sourceforge.net/
Well developers are busy and there was winter vacation , and the lurkers were busy too
PS: I admit we need something to be done in the PR zone
We try to do something like spreadfirefox.com , is called firebird connect
http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=ffoundation&sub=connect
If anyone can help with this please contact us on firebird general mailing list
I think good education more than law dictates that one open source project -even if much bigger- should not stomp on another by using the same name. The end user is more likely to be aware of a browser than a database server, so the browser will have always more visibility. Even a developer may not realize initially that a product is using small db server but almost anybody can recognize a browser, even if embedded in another application.
Nobody forced Mozilla finally to change the name. Mr Brendan Eich was made aware that some Linux distro didn’t want to bundle Firebird the db because there was another package with the same name (the browser) already in the distro so he started to understand that the clash affected more than end users. The final decision came from inside Mozilla as their own press release said. They didn’t feel forced to change the name because they didn’t see a legal problem, hence they decide to rename to be nice. So, the pressure from FB the server against Mozilla is not that serious as you think. Mozilla people didn’t feel legally threatened.
I think the discussion is mostly irrelevant, anyway. For one side, FB people don’t have problem recommending Firefox and for another side, the decision to use a db server is not based on rants or bigotry, but in a combination of technical assessment and personal preference. Let anyone use their favorite db server and be happy.