Firebird News

FBSimCity is an interactive visualization of Firebird internals: an explorable isometric city where every building is a subsystem from the classic Conceptual Architecture for Firebird paper (Chan & Yashkir), and queries commute through the pipeline as glowing particles — REMOTE harbor -> Y-valve -> DSQL -> JRD, with the lock manager tower watching over it.

The simulation is Firebird-flavored throughout: MGA record versions stack floors on towers with every UPDATE, the Next/OAT/OIT counters run live on the Transaction Hall — flip on a long-running transaction and watch the OIT pin garbage collection — a sweep truck tours the tables, and the page cache flashes hits and misses above the careful-writes excavation (no WAL here).

Version 0.3.0 adds a live version-chain inspector with real transaction ids, an accessible text walk of the whole pipeline at https://mariuz.github.io/FBSimCity/lifecycle.html plus a guided tour, a step-by-step query trace, scenario presets and shareable deep links like https://mariuz.github.io/FBSimCity/?scenario=stuckoit&warp=50&panel=mvcc which drops you into a stuck-OIT city with the chain inspector open.

Try it: https://mariuz.github.io/FBSimCity/

Source (MIT, plain HTML/JS, no build step): https://github.com/mariuz/FBSimCity

It is a model for intuition, not an emulator — corrections from people who know the engine internals are very welcome.

Although Firebird 2.5 has reached End of Life, many production systems still depend on it. Following the disclosure of several security vulnerabilities that also affect Firebird 2.5, IBPhoenix has introduced a Firebird 2.5 Maintenance Subscription for commercial users. Subscribers receive security-patched Firebird 2.5 builds based on the final official release, together with future security updates released during the subscription period.

For full details, including supported platforms, pricing, available maintenance options, and subscription information, see the Firebird 2.5 Maintenance Subscription product page.

IBPhoenix is pleased to announce the release of a new free ebook:

Practical Firebird Performance Diagnostics: A Structured Approach

Unlike traditional performance tuning guides, this ebook focuses on the reasoning behind successful diagnostics. It introduces a structured framework that helps Firebird professionals move from observed symptoms to defensible explanations by classifying problems, selecting appropriate investigation strategies, interpreting evidence correctly, and using diagnostic tools with purpose.

The book covers the complete diagnostic process, from understanding why investigations fail to interpreting monitoring tables, trace sessions, profiler output, gstat reports, operating system metrics, and modern hardware behavior in the context of Firebird performance.

Whether you’re a database administrator, developer, consultant, or support engineer, this ebook provides a practical methodology for approaching complex performance problems with greater confidence and consistency.

The book is available for free from IBPhoenix store.

Happy reading!

We’re pleased to announce that the June 2026 issue of EmberWings (2026/2) is now available.

This issue explores a theme familiar to every experienced Firebird developer: the space between what we observe and what is actually happening inside the database engine. As systems become faster and workloads more demanding, successful diagnostics increasingly depend not on collecting more information, but on interpreting the available information more carefully.

Our two feature articles examine this challenge from different perspectives. We look at the limits of Firebird’s monitoring infrastructure—what it reveals, what it cannot reveal, and why understanding those blind spots is essential for effective troubleshooting. We also explore how modern hardware is changing performance characteristics in unexpected ways, showing that faster processors and storage do not always translate into simpler performance tuning.

This issue also includes a comprehensive summary of the Firebird Usage and Developer Experience Survey, providing an interesting snapshot of today’s Firebird community and the technologies, platforms, and deployment models it relies on. You’ll also find an exclusive interview, insights into ongoing project development, a candid evaluation of a noteworthy tool, a curated selection of questions and answers from the Firebird community, and the latest project news.

As always, EmberWings is presented in a clean, print-friendly format designed for comfortable reading, whether you prefer reading on screen or on paper.

The latest issue is available only to all Firebird Associates and Firebird Partners. It will be available to the general public in September 2026.

Also, the March 2026 issue is now available to all readers.

A new version 2.0.7.203 is available.

Visit our homepage and download the demo version.

https://fbm.gksoft.ch

For those who can’t wait for QNAP to release the new versions in the official QNAP App Store, here is the download link.

Firebird 3.0.14 / 4.0.7 / 5.0.4 for Intel QNAP NAS (intel only) can be downloaded via the follow link

https://fbm.gksoft.ch/Download.html