Firebird ODBC driver

ODBC driver for Firebird 1.0–1.5, 2.1, 2.5, and 3.0

The Easysoft Firebird ODBC driver lets applications that support ODBC access Firebird 1.0–1.5, 2.1, 2.5, and 3.0 from Linux, Windows, macOS, and Solaris platforms.

The Firebird ODBC driver is compatible with the Microsoft ODBC Driver Manager and unixODBC, the open-source ODBC Driver Manager, which is included with the distribution on non-Windows platforms. The Firebird ODBC driver installation can automatically install the driver into unixODBC, making the Firebird ODBC driver immediately available to your ODBC applications. The unixODBC project is currently led by Easysoft developer Nick Gorham and we have many years of experience in supporting and testing our drivers with unixODBC.

In addition, the Firebird ODBC driver:

  • Conforms to the ODBC 3.5 specification and so provides the expected functionality for ODBC 3 applications such as ADO. The Firebird ODBC driver will also work with older ODBC applications.
  • Provides direct access to all the Firebird catalog tables. This information is also available with standard ODBC calls such as SQLTables and SQLColumns.
  • Supports Firebird roles. You can specify a role either as part of the DSN setup details or as an option to SQLDriverConnect.
  • Provides both ANSI and Unicode access to Firebird databases, converting from the internal UTF-8 storage format used by the Firebird server. Default character sets may be configured and all conversions are done transparently and automatically. ANSI-only applications such as Microsoft Query will only "see" 8-bit ANSI data, while Unicode applications such as Microsoft Access are provided with 16-bit Unicode data.
  • Maps ODBC transaction requirements to the provided Firebird model transparently and efficiently. There is also provision to choose between "wait" and "no wait" behaviour on detection of lock conflicts.
  • Supports Firebird stored procedures and provides mapping from the ODBC call methods to the native Firebird calls. Provision is made for both the SELECT and EXEC PROCEDURE calling methods and the driver will pick the correct translation. A manual override on this selection is provided for unusual procedures.

Diagram

Platforms

The Firebird ODBC driver is currently available on these platforms:

Version Platform Distribution
v1.9 (Firebird 1.5 - 3.0) Linux (x86) (32 - Bit) (kernel 2.2-5.0+, glibc 2.1+)
v1.9 (Firebird 1.5 - 3.0) Linux (x86) (64 - Bit) (kernel 2.6-6.0+, glibc 2.3.5+)
v1.9 (Firebird 1.5 - 3.0) Windows (x86) (32 - Bit, 64 - Bit) (7, 8, 2012 R2, 10, 2016, 2019,11,2022)
v1.3 (Firebird 1.5 - 2.1) Solaris (Sparc) (32 - Bit) (2.6-2.9)
v1.0 (Firebird 1.5) Mac OS X (PPC) (32 - Bit) (10.3.5-10.4)