| Firebird Docset → Using Firebird → About Firebird |
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Table of Contents
Firebird is a powerful, compact client/server SQL relational database management system which can run on a variety of server and client operating systems. Its officially supported platforms are Windows and Linux, but Firebird is also known to run on several other OS's, such as FreeBSD and Apple Macintosh OS/X.
Firebird features a higher level of SQL standards compliance than most other industrial-strength client/server database management systems on the market today, while implementing some powerful language features in the vendor-specific sphere of procedure programming.
The product which today we call Firebird has been around, under a variety of names, for well over 20 years. An overview of its interesting and at times stormy history can be found at http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=history.
Developed as an ongoing open source project, Firebird is a descendant of Borland's InterBase 6.0 Open Edition code which was released for open source development in July 2000 under the InterBase Public License (IPL).
The Firebird source code tree is maintained on the international open source code foundry, Sourceforge, by a large team of professional developers who donate time and expertise voluntarily to fix, develop and enhance this popular and feature-rich database management software.
The Firebird software products are distributed completely free of registration or deployment fees.
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| Firebird Docset → Using Firebird → About Firebird |