Recommended FireBird database GUI client / manager

[dma]

So i searched for a good FREE database GUI client/manager, FireBird Maestro working fine but being trial software.
And i found a really good one, DBeaver, a JAVA program (so you should install JAVA JRE 6).

Here is a kind of installation procedure (Windows oriented) for it to work with the PVD database file.

- Download latest DBeaver version.
- Depack the DBeaver archive in a directory of your choice.

- Download latest JayBird JDBC connector (atm: "Jaybird-2.2.0JDK_1.6.zip") and FireBird embedded mode libraries (atm: "Firebird-2.5.1.26351-0_Win32_embed.zip").
- Depack each of those archives into a subdirectory of the DBeaver directory, namely "jaybird/" and "firebird/".

- Create a "launch.bat" commands file in the DBeaver directory with the following content :

Code: [Select]

@echo off
SET PATH=%PATH%;%~dp0\firebird\;%~dp0\jaybird\
START dbeaver.exe
- Launch this "launch.bat", you should have DBeaver running.

- Add a "New" > "Connection", select FireBird databse type, confirm. It should ask if you want to download the FireBird JDBC Connector, press no.

- On the connection setting page, press "Edit Driver Settings".

- Change Sample URL to "jdbc:firebirdsql:embedded:{file}".
- On the "Libraries" tab, press "Add File" and go select "jaybird-full-2.2.0.jar" in the "jaybird/" subdirectory.
- On the "Connection Properties" tab, add a new property "lc_ctype" with "UNICODE_FSS" value.
- Press "OK".

- Now click "Browse ..." to your PVD database on the "Path:" setting. You should then have something like "jdbc:firebirdsql:embedded:d:\PVD\MOVIES.PVD" displayed in the "JDBC URL:" field.
- Leave "User name:" and "Password:" fields empty.
- You can "Test Connection ..." which should display "Success / Connected (XX ms)".
- Press "Finish".

- Now click on the "unfold" icon on the left of the connection you just created in the "Database Navigator" tab (don't enter any credential information).

- You can now access the database.

Enjoy the fine Eclipse style interface, the great bitmap BLOB viewer of this client (even with zoom options), tables relation graph display, etc...
And all this is free!

[rick.ca]

I haven't tried this one, but the free version of FlySpeed SQL Query is good as well.

Would you care to comment on what you use this for?

[dma]

Would you care to comment on what you use this for?

Well nothing clearly defined for the moment, but i wanted to have the possibility of doing modifications directly in the database (once again in a "batch" kind of way).

An example i got in mind right now, could be replacing translated title with proper original title, only if the movie got an original title. I cannot switch to original title in the list view as there are some videos in my database which are not present in IMDB, so these only got a title i defined myself.
Or i could do it the other way, if i want to keep the translated title. I mean copying the title in original title for those entries where no original title is present (so i could then switch to original title display in the list view). And then doing it with a global SQL command would also be helpful.

[rick.ca]

And then doing it with a global SQL command would also be helpful.

BTW, in case you haven't noticed, you can run an SQL command from the Help menu (you may need to run the program with the -debug switch, I don't recall). I suppose the manager is needed to formulate most commands, but having done that, running them directly from PVD might be useful.

[dma]

BTW, in case you haven't noticed, you can run an SQL command from the Help menu (you may need to run the program with the -debug switch, I don't recall). I suppose the manager is needed to formulate most commands, but having done that, running them directly from PVD might be useful.

Indeed i could use it with my common SQL commands stored in a handy file.
It would even be great if SQL commands could be stored in PVD directly and possibly associated with hotkeys.

[GazonkFoo]

Thank you sooo much for this dma!!
DBeaver is an awesome tool - i was using Squirrel and Oracle SQL Developer before but this is much better.
Today at work i send out a mail to our entire development team and told them about it.

We are primarely working with eclipse so this is a pleasure to use.
Even our team leader installed it because i was telling him about the neat ER diagram option

[dma]

DBeaver is an awesome tool - i was using Squirrel and Oracle SQL Developer before but this is much better.

Indeed i also suggested DBeaver to SquirrelSQL users at my i.t. job, considering how slow SquirrelSQL can run on some configurations, due to its Swing GUI base.
A great "pro"/commercial one for Oracle is PL/SQL Developper imo, but then it can't beat DBeaver on price.