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What is Firebird?

Firebird is relational database management software, similar in purpose to products such as DB2^® by IBM, Oracle^®, SQL Server by Microsoft^® and the open source PostGreSQL^®. The software has two main components: the database server, which lives on the same host machine as the databases, and the application interface, commonly referred to as the client library. The client library is a run-time component - a DLL on Windows or a shared object (.so) on other platforms - that two-tier deployments need on each client workstation. For multi-tier deployments, where users access databases through middleware from a web browser or other "thin" interface, the Firebird client library is not deployed to end-users at all but is incorporated into the middleware.

The Firebird server boasts a very small "footprint" on the file system when installed on a host server. The server's executable is less than 1.5 Mb and a full server installation, including all tools and documentation, takes up less than 10 Mb. The memory footprint will vary according to the scale of the deployment, which can range from a single user running an application over a single database to hundreds of concurrent connections to multiple databases servicing thousands of users on wide-area networks.

Firebird is maintained and developed by a community of developers from around the globe. It is a non-commercial, open source software project owned by the developers. Because the software is distributed completely free of any fees, licensing is not a revenue source to anyone.

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