The Firebird RDBMS 2008 Roadmap is now publicly available. During this year, Firebird users can expect two final releases (2.1 and 2.5) and the first alpha of FB 3. Many new features are planned, as described in the roadmap. In addition, RC1 of 2.1 has been released.
Very promising, I use it daily and I can tell you, this is a really good relational database.
I’ve never used Firebird. What are the advantages of using it over MySQL or PostgreSQL?
It is in a point betwen the two.
Is light but not as light like mysql, it have lots of features but not as many as PostgreSQL.
It has triggers, stored procedures, external functions.
It is fast and can be used in an embedded way.
The installation is easy and fast, the footprint is about 9 mb.
Try to give it a try some time.
For the manager I recomend IBExpert. http://www.ibexpert.com-
It´s really easy to embed. All you need is a single DLL. That´s the main advantage.
Here, in Brazil, Firebird is very used, but it´s often used by Delphi Developers, and I don´t see it being used outside that environment very much.
About performance, well: it´s not so great. MySQL beat´s it hands down.
What is great about Firebird consist of it´s amount of features in a small footprint: stored procedures, external functions, triggers, etc.
But those features today are not an exclusivity anymore, so, those are not a real advantage today.
I have not used mysql 5, but firebird beat mysql 4 (transaction mode) in every performance test that we ran.
We didn’t bother comparing against mysql 5 because of the lack of an LGPL driver for mySQL 5. We are not willing to release our source code so mySQL 5 is not an option for us.
Comparing to mysql:
It’s much more scalable, suport more concurrent users, and support heavy queries. It mean you can have larger databases, suport from application with much strong data needs, and users competing for altering the same data.
While mysql is good for a website with many users most _reading_ data, firebird suport more demanding applicction. Start to increase it’s funcionality and permit the users manipulate data and run demanding reports and you will see everybody complaining about how fast the “system” is.
Comparing to Postgresql:
It’s more like comparing apples to apples.
It’s two middle size databases (compared com Oracle, DB2) in terms of features, scalability, robustness.
On the postgres side you have some features like full text search, SQL for user manangement.
On the firebird side you have point like easy manangent (no need for vaccum), embedable engine, a more mature windows port.
The features in roadmap will improve even more scalibity and concurrency like shared cache for queries, much better threading and utilization of multi-core processors besides features like external java procedures.
The link appears to be wrong. The roamap is http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=devel&sub=engine&id=roadmap…