Question

Firebird: Professional database manager, free and scalable

Answer 1

Firebird is a database manager system, it is a database server and can also be used in embedded form in applications, has excellent performance and scales easily, from an integrated and single-user model, to business developments with multiple databases of more than 500 Gb. It is also cross-platform runs on Linux, Windows Mac and Solaris.

Firebird Advantages Server and Embedded Mode
Server: support for multi-users
Recessed: very good for creating catalogs on CDROM, single-user software, evaluation or databases independent of the applications.
Support for Stored Procedures and Triggers
Referential integrity
Low resource consumption occupies just 10 MB purchased with 1.4 GB SQL SERVER

Disadvantages of Firebird in embedded mode

• Does not allow remote connections.
• Only one user can access the database, use a blocked connection for security, guarantee that only one user can connect.
• Database permissions can not be changed, after being created.

The potential of this RDBM (relational database management system) is so interesting that LibreOffice has chosen Firebird to replace Hsqldb.

It can be used from Java, .Net or Python, by changing the connection driver.

To administer it you can use FlameRobin or Turbobird both are multiplatform.

We will now create a stored procedure to query the employees table, using FlameRobin in the Procedures option

Let's create a small application in which we will obtain a list of all the employees of the database.
In this case we will make an application written in C #, for that we download the connectivity driver from here according to the language to be used.
Clarification on ServerType parameter = 0 (remote connection) ServerType = 1 (recessed connection)

In the case of C #, the libraries are used for both Visual Studio Express or professional Windows or Mono under Linux. So to use Firebird in this case in Visual Studio, we will add the reference library.

The following describes a function that will be used to connect to the database, execute a stored procedure to consult the database used and take that DataAdapter result, which will then be used to fill a Dataset and thus display the data.


Public static Leerempleados () {

// All the parameters to connect to firebird in embedded form, in this case it is in the hard disk and a directory of the application. The ServerType parameter = 0 (remote connection) ServerType = 1 (recessed connection)
string conexionstr =

"User = SYSDBA;" +
"Password = masterkey;" +
"Database = employees.fdb;" +
"DataSource = localhost;" +
"Port = 3050;" +
"Dialect = 3;" +
"ServerType = 1";

// connect to the database
FbConnection miConexion = new FbConnection (conexionstr);

// I call the stored procedure
Fbcommand sql = new Fbcommand ("SELECT_EMPLOYED", miconexion);
sql.CommandType = System.Data.CommandType.StoredProcedure
FbDataAdapter data = FbDataAdapter (sql)
... .....
// We even have a data matrix with the query and we can send it to a datatable or an impression according to what is needed
fdt = new DataTable ("EMPLOYEES");
data.Fill (fdt);

}

}

Some details were left aside to focus on Firebird rather than .NET. In the same way it can be used in Java from code or from development suites like Netbeans.

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