A project to create a lightweight, embeddable database is beta testing its second release. Firebird 2.0 features derived tables, support for “execute block,” increased table sizes, improved index code, and numerous other improvements. Beta kits are available for Linux on i686, i686-NPTL, and AMD64, as well as Windows.

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, followed by a version 1.5.1 release in July of last year.

Firebird 2.0 is available 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.

Additional details about the project, including beta kit downloads, can be found on the project homepage, here.

The FireFox browser in February 2004 changed its name from firefox, to avoid confusion with the older Firebird database project.

 
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