A project maintaining a lightweight, embeddable database is on the cusp of a major version release. Firebird 2.0 will feature a new MIPS architecture port, as well as new features such as derived tables, support for “execute block,” increased table sizes, and better index code.

The Firebird project shipped a “release candidate 3” version of Firebird 2.0 last week. Marius Popa, of the FlameRobin project, stated, “Unless there are any dramas, this build will become the gold final version.”

Firebird is an open source, embeddable (within other applications) SQL database that grew out of Borland Interbase. The project includes a database engine, ODBC driver, “Jaybird” native class 4 JCA-JDBC driver, .NET data provider, and extensive documentation and testing materials. A related “FlameRobin” project aims to provide a graphical interface assembled from open source components.

Firebird 2.0 is the first stable release of the “C++” fork of the Firebird project. The C++ fork achieved its initial 1.50 release in February of 2004, and released its first 2.0 release candidate in April.

Availability

Firebird 2.0rc3 is available now for testing in a “Classic” version, which spawns a new process for each connection, as well as a “SuperServer” version that uses a threaded architecture with a shared cache, for better performance with lots of simultaneous connections.

Classic builds are available for Linux i686 and x64, while SuperServer builds are available for i686 with the old threads library, i686 with NPTL, and x64. A source tarball is also available, and has been compiled natively and tested on MIPS. A MIPS Debian package will be added shortly, according to Popa. Classic, SuperServer, and “embedded server” builds are also available for Windows. The downloads page is here.

Additional details can be found on the Firebird News community site and Firebird homepage.

 
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