Comments on: Top 4 Free Embedded Databases

By: Marcus

Marcus — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 07:52:10 +0000

Nice article. I havn’t heard ScimoreDB before. After trying I can say, this is exactly what we were looking for. We started using ScimoreDB at job in an investment bank, it was just fast, safer.
Distributed version looks interesting too.

By: David Taylor

David Taylor — Fri, 23 Sep 2011 03:36:27 +0000

@Dmitri – Firebird supports Unicode very nicely using UTF8 (e.g. see here http://www.destructor.de/firebird/charsets.htm).

By: Dmitri

Dmitri — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 01:49:29 +0000

I have enjoyed working with embedded Firebird (even despite poor documentation), which is real relational database, easy to use, and is free … until I learned that it has no support of Unicode. Major disappointment! Now I am looking for alternative, Scimore Embedded looks promising.

By: Robb

Robb — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 08:55:04 +0000

I do enjoy your posts, thanks!

By: Tushar

Tushar — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 22:15:13 +0000

I have thoroughly used Sqlite in the past, it is complete, but lacks speed and has bugs, I discovered that Sqlite can’t be used by even 3 Users doing long database operations at the same time. It just locks up. Now only yesterday, I finally realized and was shocked that Sql Server Compact Edition is a hidden magic tool, does all the things i dreamt of. Sql Server Compact Edition 3.5 is the best Embedded Database that you will ever find in the entire world. It is free! No bugs came ever with my handling of Sql CE.

Tushar

By: Andrew

Andrew — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:56:53 +0000

Oh please.
1st – firebird is easy to work with and implement. I’ve worked with Oracle, PostGre, Interbase (essentially the same thing, but diferent) and firebird is the easiest to implement, by far.

2nd – The documentation may not be free, but there is a very complete book by Helen Borrie that covers all the need-to-know things and a ton of tips to use on a daily basis. And yes, it does have the embedded info also.

3rd – Yes, the site is a bit messy, but there are at least a dozen of good sites out there and a very good and supportive newsgroup. One of Interbase/Firebird creators, Ann Harrison, answers questions on a regular basis. Helen Borrie is there daily as are the programmers of the engine.

I really thought it was the embedded engine that was being tested, not the website. You wrote 6 items about it being 2 of them rants about the site. I expected some kind of test results, implementation experiences… something more about your pratical experiences. Will this news have a follow-up?

By: SS

SS — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 18:16:25 +0000

I’ve been Interbase/Firebird fan since I knew Interbase in late 96.

But is a shame that after about 8 years since Firebird was forked from IB open source and there is no official documentation on the product as MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Regards.

By: The Chief Priest

The Chief Priest — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:50:37 +0000

Heck, Firebird is so easy to use that you really dont need any serious documentation. Read the source code. Thats all the documentation you need. Beside that Firebird has a large community. Ask the question and it shall be answered.

By: White Shadow

White Shadow — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:41:18 +0000

That’s a good point, but somewhat irrelevant – MySQL and Postgres don’t have a free embedded version (AFAIK). Well, MySQL kind-of has something, but it appears to be commercial.

By: gemini

gemini — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 05:01:57 +0000

the problem with firebird, is you don’t have documentation like for e.g postgres and mysql. it has some old docs for “Interbase”. if you want say sql reference for firebird, you have to buy some book from them … some Borrie person.

that’s why I moved to mysql, they have the whole technical docs on their site. The same thing applies to postgres. they have good docs at their site.