Why Firebird? Facts for decision makers

Firebird the universal open source database Why Firebird? Facts for decision makers www.MindTheBird.com

Many reasons to think about Firebird… Java, Visual Studio, Delphi, C++ From 1 Mb to Terabyte Extremely developer-friendly Powerful Choice of tools PHP, Ruby, Python 4 architectures to choose Easy to embed economize No double licensing True open source free Migrate from InterBase Multi-versioning architecture Designed for universal (OLAP+OLTP) systems 32-bit and 64-bit Migrate from MySQL Multi-platform FreeBSD, Solaris, HP-UX Windows, Linux, Mac OS X Migrate from Microsoft SQL SQL standard compliancy Migrate from Oracle Express and Standard No hidden limits www.MindTheBird.com

..and so many companies use Firebird… • 1+ million developers • 2000+ of installations daily at Windows, and many at Linux • Millions of bundled Firebird copies are installed with ISV applications • Firebird is included into all main Linux repositories and distributions www.MindTheBird.com

..so this is time to ask: is Firebird good enough for your goal? www.MindTheBird.com

The most important features of Firebird FEATURES www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: multi-generation architecture Readers do not lock writers It’s X at 10-00 AM It’s Y at 10-30 AM OLTP OLAP (reports, BI) Hybrid (OLTP+OLAP) Automatic sweep Competitors MGA makes a Firebird with this feature Firebird can manage • MSSQL 2005+ database capable of serving versioning automatically (Standard and Ent, simultaneously as both an not Express) analytical and an operational and perform sweep • Oracle data store (OLTP/OLAP). (known as vacuum in • PostgreSQL other DBMS) as needed. • InterBase www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: active tables Table_1 Context variables NEW. and Trigger OLD. provides easy access ID to modified values. Name NEW. Wide range of triggers’ Age types allows flexible Scores modifications of records OLD. AS Developer-friendly database BEGIN Active tables concept, rich SQL language, IF (NEW.SCORES IS NULL) THEN wide range of embedded SQL functions, NEW.SCORES = 1; // nobody starts from Null with Firebird User Defined Functions (UDF) and stored END procedures make Firebird database development very easy and pleasant. www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Events AS BEGIN … POST_EVENT ‘MY_VIP_EVENT1’; … END Events received by all subscribers Events Logging and synchronizing • Notifications can be sent from • Instant notifications can be database triggers, stored raised (and written to some procedures and Execute Blocks table) right from database- • Flexible subscription level triggers mechanism – ON TRANSACTION START – ON CONNECT – ON TRANSACTON COMMIT – ON DISCONNECT – etc – etc www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: rich SQL Main features Cross-database queries Query another database using • High compatibility userpassword with ANSI SQL EXECUTE STATEMENT '...' EXTERNAL DATA SOURCE 'host:path' • Common Table USER 'VLAD' PASSWORD ‘passw’ Expressions (CTE) • Flexible transactions High compatibility with industry management standards on many fronts makes Firebird the obvious choice for • Full-blown stored developing interoperable procedures (selectable applications for homogeneous and SP enables joins hybrid environments. w/tables) www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Trace API Trace API • Real-time monitoring • SQL debugging • Audit • Events • Partial or full logging • Through remote connections www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Security Windows Trusted Users and Roles Authentication Rights to access Grants UDF, ext. tables Standard security Windows Trusted Network • Users and roles Authentication • The only network • Single-sign on for port should be • GRANT/REVOKE on open (3050 by main operations end-users default, • Integration with configurable) • Database owner Windows concept • Aliases (path to the domain/AD security database is not exposed) www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: 4 Architectures Up to 1000 Up to 500 users, Up to 100 users, Single-user, users, 1Tb size 300 Gb size 50Gb size DBMS in DLL SuperClassic Classic SuperServer Embedded New (in 2.5) Small footprint, Lightweight Heavy duty architecture! performance, single user full- architecture for Combination of easy embedding blown DBMS in multi-CPU best features of and silent DLL. Transparent servers with SuperServer and installation. upgrade to high large amount of Ideal for ISVs. architectures. Classic. Ideal for RAM and fast virtualized HDD. *# of database users and sizes are not limits of Firebird. They are given for information purposes only. environments. www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Scalability • 4 architectures to scale from 1Mb to 1Tb – Database limit is 32Tb – Real-world database 1Tb • From 1 user to 1000 users – Transparent scaling • From embedded DLL to multi-cores/CPUs www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Multi-platform database • Support Windows, Linux, HP-UX, Solaris, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, etc • 100% interoperability and 1-step migration between all platforms *Supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows and Linux www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Development tools • Firebird.NET • JayBird (Java) • UIB, FIBPlus*, Delphi/C++Builder IBObjects* (Delphi/C++ Builder) • FreePascal & Lazarus • PHP for Firebird • FireRuby • and more! *commercial software www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Steady roadmap, bright future Read more www.mindthebird.com Born in 2000! www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird is going where you’re going • Your development You decide. and reporting tools • You choose operation system and architecture • You choose hardware • No vendor lock-in Firebird works. www.MindTheBird.com

Where Firebird is used? USAGE www.MindTheBird.com

Real-world big Firebird databases Bas-X Watermark Technologies Profitmed 450+ Gb Firebird 300+Gb Firebird 60+Gb Firebird Bas-X (Australia) is a leading Watermark Technologies (UK) Profitmed (Russia) joint stock serves enterprises in Finance company is one the largest provider of enterprise Russian pharmaceutical information technologies to and Government sectors. distributors. independent retailers, Watermark Technologies particularly multi-site operators produces software which uses They have relatively small and management groups. Firebird for document database (only ~60Gb and it’s management which includes growing 2Gb/month), but we decided to mention them as Bas-X is a true leader in Firebird- indexed OCR for full text they have extremely high load based development: two of their search. It is used by financial in terms of simultaneous customers have Firebird advisers, insurance companies active connections, serving databases with size more than and so on. There are several hundreds of small resellers and drug store shops across 450Gb, and several others have 300+Gb Firebird databases Russia. databases more than 200Gb. deployed at present. www.basx.com.au www.watermarktech.co.uk www.profitmed.net www.MindTheBird.com

What is your database size? # of instances 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 <100Mb <1Gb <50Gb <200Gb <1Tb >1Tb Database sizes There are real-world Firebird databases up to 1Terabyte in size. Is it enough for your task? www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: all industries, all types of apps Finance Retail Pharmaceuticals Government These photos are real pictures of enterprises with Firebird (ERP, etc) www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird competitors COMPETITION www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird: Competition overview Capabilities Oracle MS SQL Oracle Ent and MSSQL Oracle Ent Oracle MS SQL Standard Postgre SQL Firebird MySQL MS SQL Standard Inter Base price MSSQL Express, Oracle Express 0 $5000/CPU $26000/CPU Free databases Proprietary *Figure represents price/capabilities graph for the general case of database application, usually required by ISV and in-house developers. www.MindTheBird.com

MySQL Points of Consideration License Undefined future Web <> Ent MySQL is not free for MySQL AB was sold to Sun, then MySQL still has no free independent software Sun was sold to Oracle. DB engine which would vendors (ISVs): Release MySQL 6.0 not happened. be their enterprise layer. “For OEMs, ISVs, VARs and Other One of MySQL originators said: “Help keep the Internet free Maria – not released. Distributors of Commercial Falcon – not released. A big part of the Internet is built on Applications: LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and OEMs, ISVs, VARs and other PHP/Perl/Python). Now Oracle is trying distributors that combine and to buy Sun, which owns MySQL. distribute commercially licensed software with MySQL software and Firebird is true It's not in the Internet users interest do not wish to distribute the source open source: that one key piece of the net would be code for the commercially licensed owned by an entity that has more to - Mozilla-based software under version 2 of the GNU General Public License (the "GPL") gain by severely limiting and in the long license, absolutely run even killing it as an open source no restrictions must enter into a commercial product than by keeping it alive.” - No double- license agreement with Sun.” http://monty- licensing or tricky says.blogspot.com/2009/12/help-keep- limits http://mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/oe internet-free.html m/ www.MindTheBird.com

InterBase Points of Consideration Price Easy migration to No 64-bit support InterBase is a proprietary Firebird Lack of 64-bit support does product. Modern InterBase 2009 not allow leveraging of You can consider prices here and Firebird 2.5 are modern hardware and http://www.embarcadero.co descendant of InterBase 6 software. m/buy-now.php (released in 2000). Less architectures Prices are calculated as They still have many similar InterBase has no 1) Server + #*Clients features. SuperClassic and Classic 2) Unlimited license If you have InterBase architectures. application, it will be easier Less operations systems Silent installation to migrate to Firebird, than InterBase does not support To be able to create to any other DBMS. FreeBSD and HP-UX. silent installation (without activation) ISV InterBase is not an Open Source anymore. needs to sign Value You need to seriously count the real advantages and Added Reseller (VAR) disadvantages of non-open-source product, which has contract with severe such successful open source competitor as Firebird. obligations. www.MindTheBird.com

PostgreSQL Points of Consideration PostgreSQL is similar No embedded version Misc Among other open source PostgreSQL has no embedded • PostgreSQL has no databases PostgreSQL is version, so you need to use pre-built binaries for really full-blown, and it’s as another database (Firebird?) HP-UX mature as Firebird. for lightweight version of your • Requires Cygwin to It also uses multi- application. be built from sources generational architecture, Installation & on Windows and has a lot of forks and plugins. Configuration Firebird is easy PostgreSQL is widely used in Installing of PostgreSQL • Simple many web-applications and requires more efforts than installation adopted by several large Firebird, so it will be more • Easy to embed enterprises. difficult to bundle PostgreSQL into custom with your application and installers (all Firebird and PostgreSQL are create 100% “silent” versions) true open source projects. installation. Also PostgreSQL is • Firebird starts much more complex to out-of-the-box configure than Firebird. www.MindTheBird.com

“Express” databases = No toys, please • There are several “express” databases – MS SQL Express, Oracle Express, etc • They have serious restrictions: – 4Gb size of database (size is very small in general, not acceptable for multimedia) – 1 CPU only • Cannot be transparently upgraded (re-installation of full version is required) • Clearly recognized by community as “free cheese” www.MindTheBird.com

Microsoft SQL Points of Consideration Price Windows-Only Heavy administration You can refer to the prices here This is Microsoft. MS SQL-based solutions http://store.microsoft.com/microsoft/SQL- This is Windows. usually require professional Server-2008-Standard- So you (or your support. Edition/product/14CF716A/?WT.mc_id=sqlserv ersite_enterpriselink customer) need to buy Price is calculated: Windows Server too. 1) Server License + # of Client Access Licenses Another cool feature (CALs) Database engine 2) Unlimited price per e-business Management tools More CPU Reporting SOA stuff Integration stuff with something Embedding into your BI web-servcies product Cloud Enterprise bus ISV need to sign ISV Royalty Starts from only Agreement to sell SQL Server as $xxxx per processor part of third-party solution. www.MindTheBird.com

Oracle Points of Consideration Oracle is expensive Firebird and Oracle Heavy administration Many enterprises uses Oracle-based solutions and cool usually require professional Firebird as tier-2 If you can afford Oracle support and dedicated database with Oracle – licensing and you can administrator headcount. while main data store is afford Oracle based on Oracle, administrator to keep High developer skills subsidiaries or remote To create professional database healthy – it is locations use Firebird. Oracle-based solutions good for you. developers are required to Embedding into your Many ISVs use Firebird have high skills. product for lightweight versions The main point about ISV need to sign special of their products, and Oracle is – may be you agreement to sell Oracle Oracle – for high-end don’t need the most as part of third-party versions. expensive software to do solution. the job that can be accomplished by free www.MindTheBird.com software?

So, how Firebird can compete with mature Enterprise databases? - Million transaction per minute is enough for the most database applications. Is it so? Check Forrester report: TPC Benchmarks Don't Matter Anymore www.forrester.com/rb/Research/tpc_benchmarks_dont_matter_anymore/q/id/53871/t/2 - Modern hardware (SSD, 64Gb RAM) allows to create very fast systems, which exceeds general business needs. Check IDC report #206058: Will Storage Virtualization Become the Peacemaker in the Database Wars? www.MindTheBird.com

Ask the right question is Firebird good enough for your goal? www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird Community: join us! The most active developers community are in: • Brazil • Germany • Russia • USA • Australia • Italia • France • Turkey • Spain • and more! www.MindTheBird.com

Firebird Launch: next steps Visit Firebird 2.5 Launch site www.MindTheBird.com 1. Download Firebird presentations and banners 2. Join MindTheBird! and help Firebird 2.5 to start – http://twitter.com/mindthefirebird – http://groups.google.ru/group/mindthebird – LinkedIn MindTheBird 3. Put Firebird banners and presentations on your site/blog Feel free to use any part of this presentation as a template for your own Firebird-related presentations. www.MindTheBird.com

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Why Firebird? Facts for decision makers

by Mind The Firebird on Feb 23, 2010

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Why Firebird? Facts for decision makers — Presentation Transcript