An open source project maintaining an embeddable (within other applications) relational database has achieved a major release. Firebird 2.0, which debuted at the fourth International Firebird Conference this week in Prague, features new SQL, internationalization, security, and performance features.

Firebird 2.0 is a C++ fork of Borland's Interbase, a mature relational database positioned as uniquely easy to install and maintain, among SQL RDBMSes (relational database management systems).

Firebird 2.0 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.

New features in Firebird 2.0 include support for the MIPS architecture, derived tables, support for “execute block,” increased table sizes, and better index code.

The Firebird project has worked toward its 2.0 release for nearly three years. An initial 1.50 release was made in February of 2004, followed by a 2.0 release candidate last April, and an rc3 release in August.

FlameRobin project participant Marius Popa stated, “Firebird 2.0 is the happy culmination of more than two years' efforts from a broad-ranging, truly international community of dedicated developers and supporters. It brings with it a large collection of long-awaited enhancements that significantly improve performance, security and support for international languages and realize some desirable new SQL language features. Under the surface, it also provides a much more robust code platform from which the re-architecting planned for Firebird 3.0 is proceeding.”

Availability

Firebird 2.0 is available now for download, under a Mozilla-like public license, here, procompiled for 32-bit Windows and Linux, in both Classic (spawns a new process for each connection) and “SuperServer” (threaded architecture with a shared cache) versions.

 
This article was originally published on LinuxDevices.com and has been donated to the open source community by QuinStreet Inc. Please visit LinuxToday.com for up-to-date news and articles about Linux and open source.