Firebird

Firebird

Firebird is a fork of Interbase database, made in 2000 just a week after Interbase was open-sourced. First stable version of the new codebase was released in 2004, with migration from C to C++ being underway since 2000.

Firebird has steadily improved over the years, but remains mostly used for local databases, less for remote connections. Firebird uses MVCC (multi-version concurrency control) it inherited from Interbase, avoiding conflicts in simultaneous transactions. Downside of MVCC is required periodic sweeping of the database.

Good thing is, being an open-source database, there are no limits in database size, memory usage and like. Free versions of heavy-weight databases (such as DB2, Oracle or SQL Server) are limited in resource usage not to compete with their commercial editions. Its inadequacy for remote work is even reflected in the fact that you need to know exact location on the database in the server’s filesystem when connecting to a remote server. Firebird can’t compete with databases designed for client/server workloads.

There are many reports on lack of reliability of Firebird servers, but less so in recent versions. However, release cycle is pretty long. Firebird can work with Interbase database files, however, its support is lagging behind the latest releases.

Full Convert supports Firebird database directly.

Firebird data types we support

Integral

bigint (int64, quad), int (integer, long), smallint (short)

Decimal

decimal (numeric), double precision (double, real), float

Text

blob sub_type 1, char (character, text), cstring, nchar (national char, national character), nvarchar (national char varying, national character varying, nchar varying), varchar (char varying, character varying, varying)

Date/Time

date, time, timestamp

Large objects

blob sub_type 0 (blob), blob sub_type 1

Other

boolean

Export Firebird database

It may make sense to migrate your data away from Firebird. You may want to do it permanently or just need to share your tables with a collague in a different format.

We will copy all your tables with their data and apply indexing and relationships exactly as they are in your current Firebird database. In a nutshell, you get exactly the same database in another database engine. Each time you run the migration, we will copy all the tables again. Of course, we have a built-in scheduler, so you can run this overnight and have a fresh database copy in the morning.

Take a look at the quick tutorials below to see how it's done.

Import data into Firebird database

Additionally, if you want to import data on a regular basis and do not want to recreate the whole target database from scratch every time, but rather do tiny targeted sync of only changes since the last run, please use Full Convert Pro or Ultimate.

Take a look at the quick tutorials below to see how it's done.