Got curious about the Firebird database today. Heard of it for quite sometime but never tried it. One of my friends has been giving a lot of good comments on this product. Why? You guessed it right - It's FREE! It is an Interbase variant. Borland released the source code sometime back and later took it back to evolve it.
On first try, it is pretty easy to install. The package was only 4MB in size. But after the installation, you will have no idea on where to start. There are no help files, no books online and no administration tools. Typical OSS product! To me, what use is a RDBMS without a decent administration tool? It is very unproductive for the DBA to use the command line to administer databases.
After surfing around on their website, I found an administration tool that pretty much looks like some student's college assignment. But then, I can't complain because it is FREE. The more decent and professional ones cost money. So much for a free RDBMS with non-free administration tools. It is like you get the cooker for free but you need to pay for the cover.
There are people who tried to position this product against Microsoft SQL Server but I find most of the things can be done in less lines of codes in MSSQL. Example, you need triggers to create Autonumber (IDENTITY) columns in Firebird. I also forgot to mention that there is nothing about the SYSDBA password, leaving newbies no clue how to login to the server. I had to call up my friend for help.
To conclude, I think it is suitable for college assignments, MS Access replacements, companies with no budget for RDBMS software or small footprint applications. I heard tanks in the military use this database engine - not sure how true. For me, Microsoft SQL Server is still the best and like it or not - it can still create databases, tables, columns and Identity columns faster than this database. Maybe in future versions, Firebird will do better.
No comments:
Post a Comment