Firebird
Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL-99
features. Firebird provides excellent concurrency, high performance,
and powerful language support
for stored procedures and triggers.
Firebird server comes in three flavors: SuperServer, Classic
and Embedded. You can start with SuperServer. Classic is recommended
for
use with SMP machines and some other specific situations. SuperServer
shares its cache among the database connections and uses threads to
handle each connection. Classic starts one independent server process
for each connection made.
The software comes with a full set of command line utilities
that allow users to create databases, retrieve database statistics, run
SQL commands and
scripts, perform backups and restores, and more. Alternatively, for
users who prefer to use a GUI
(Graphical User Interface) frontend, there are lots of options to
choose from, including free ones.
Firebird is being used with many big databases and lots of
connections. It has been used on production systems
under a variety of names since 1981, making it a very mature and stable
application.
Features include:
- Very small footprint
- SuperClassic Architecture to gain better leverage
from multi-core and multi-CPU hardware environments and improve
resource usage for systems with large numbers of users and huge
databases
- Full support for stored procedures and triggers
- Full ACID compliant transactions
- Referential integrity
- System audit tracing and user trace sessions via the
Services API enable nearly real-time monitoring and analysis of
everything going on in a database
- Multi Generational Architecture (sometimes called MVCC)
- Support for External Functions (UDFs)
- Fully featured internal language for Stored Procedures and
Triggers (PSQL)
- Support for External Functions (UDFs)
- SQL standards-compliant global termporary tables and common
table expressions
- Optional single file embedded version for creating CD-ROM
catalogs, single user or evaluation versions of applications
- Third party tools, including GUI administrative tools and
replication tools
- Careful writes - fast recovery, no need for transaction logs
- Many ways to access your database: native/API, dbExpress
drivers, ODBC, OLEDB, .Net provider, JDBC native type 4 driver, Python
module, PHP,
Perl
- Incremental backups
- Full cursor implementation in PSQL
- Autonomous transactions within PSQL modules (stored
procedures, triggers, SQL blocks)
- 64bit builds available
- Monitoring tables
- Connection and Transaction Triggers
- Asynchronous cancellation of connections
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Last Updated Monday, June 18 2012 @ 04:23 PM EDT
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