Firebird 3.0.2.32703_0

A relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, Unix

Firebird is a relational database which will offer you many ANSI SQL ordinary features that runs on Windows, Linux and a variety of Unix systems.

Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. Firebird has been used in production systems, under a variety of names since 1981.

FREE LIKE A BIRD. Anyone can build a custom version of Firebird, as long as the modifications are made available, under the same IDPL licensing, for others to use and build on.

First you need to choose a Firebird server architecture. There are two models: the classic and the super server architecture. The super server is the main architecture for Microsoft win32 platforms (classic architecture is available on Win32 only from v1.5 onward). Unix style environments often have a choice of both the classic or super architecture.

If you are unsure start with the classic architecture which is a little easier to experiment with and to learn the basics. Then once you know more you will be able to determine which architecture is best for your installation. From a functional point of view both are equivalent and they are interchangable.

Classic
The classic architecture allows for programs to directly open the database file. It is architected to allow the same database to be opened by several programs at once. The classic engine also allows remote connections to local databases by providing an inetd or xinetd service (This spawns a seperate task per user connection).

Super Server
The super server architecture provides a server process, and client process cannot directly open the database file and all SQL requests are done via the server using a socket. The super server makes use of lightweight theads to process the requests.