I was looking at the Firebird database recently. Free Software, very feature complete, and one neat feature was that it could run either client/server (like PostgreSQL) or as a standalone .so (like Sqlite). I was starting to look into using it.
Then I discovered it only supports i386 on Linux, and no progress has been made in 3 years on that.
So I will not be trying Firebird.
I thought we had all learned by now that portable code is a good thing. Guess not.
I will be sticking with PostgreSQL as my preferred RDBMS for awhile.
and firebird3 (vulcan code name) will work on more arhitectures
Quoting From Vulcan Overview
Vulcan had four primary goals.
• Portability: Vulcan was developed simultaneously on four platforms: 32 bit
Windows using the Microsoft compiler from Visual Studio 7, 32 bit Linux and 64
bit Linux for AMD64/Opteron using various versions of gcc, and 64 bit Solaris
using the Sun Forte C++ compiler. Ports exist to 64-bit MVS UNIX, Itanium, and
AIX. See the Portability section.
Portability
Firebird
Firebird V1.5 and V2.0 are sensitive to minor variations in C++ compilers, which is a
serious liability given the somewhat cavalier attitude of compiler developers toward
version-to-version compatibility.
Vulcan
Vulcan was developed on four compilers simultaneously: gcc 2.96, gcc 3.3.4,
Solaris/Forte 5.5, and Microsoft VC7. To make that work, Vulcan eliminated the
dependency on std.lib, minimized all other dependencies outside the core clib (c library),
and reduced the complexity of template usage
But still nowhere near where it needs to be. That’s still a tiny fraction of the platforms Debian — let alone Linux — supports. What about Alpha, PowerPC, PPC64, Sparc (on Linux), Sparc64 (on Linux), arm, etc?
I’m glad it’s improving, but it’s still not very good.
Hope i will finish this year (this is for firebird 2.x)
Vulcan (firebird 3.0) should be easier to boot/port it on other processors: Alpha, Arm ,Sparc (So said Jim Starkey)
We need more hands for that ;)