Firebird

Firebird: Firebird - A relational database including lots of ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, Unix

Firebird - A relational database including lots of ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, Unix

Firebird is a relational database that includes a large array of ANSI SQL standard functions, compatible with Windows, Linux and Unix operating systems.

Used in production systems since 1981, the program provides increased performance and multilingual support for stored triggers and procedures.

Firebird is completely free. You are allowed to build a custom version of the program as long as you make the modifications available for others, using the same IDPL licensing.

You can choose between two different server architectures for Firebird: classic and super server architecture. The super server is the architecture used for Windows 32-bit platforms. For 32-bit Windows platforms the classic architecture is offered only from version 1.5 up. For Unix style platforms, usually both classic and super server architectures are provided.

For learning the basics the classic architecture is the best option since it lets applications to open the database file directly. Also, multiple programs can access the same database simultaneously. The classic engine offers an inetd or xinetd service to establish remote connections to local databases.

The super server architecture offers a server process, with all SQL requests performed by the server using a socket. The client process is not able to open the database file directly. This type of architecture processes requests using lightweight threads.

When you acquire a basic level of experience you can decide which of the two architectures suits best your installation.

Features:

- Support is enabled for a large number of hardware and software platforms such as Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX, AIX…etc. Supported hardware platforms include x386, x64 and PowerPC and others, with an easy migration mechanism between any of these platforms.
- Support and development of hybrid OTLP and OLAP applications are enabled by Firebird’s multi-generational architecture.
- Support is enabled for stored triggers and procedures.
- Built-in support for SQL92.
- Comprehensive set of monitoring tables and Trace API are provided.
- Standard security includes organization using users and roles the possibility of using GRANT/REVOKE on main operations and database owner concept.
- Windows Trusted Authentication enables single sign-on for end users and complete integration with Windows domain/Active directory security.
- Requires only one network port open (3050 by default, can be changed).
- Does not expose aliases.

Requirements:

- MS Visual C runtime libraries