System Architecture

Shared-Everything Embedded

InterBase can be used as a server which adopts Shared-Everything architecture, or as an embedded library.

Query Interface

SQL Stored Procedures

Views

Virtual Views

InterBase supports virtual views. Views are not materialized.

Storage Model

N-ary Storage Model (Row/Record)

Foreign Keys

Supported

InterBase supports foreign keys and creates indices for foreign keys by default. Referential integrity is enforced for foreign keys.

Indexes

B+Tree

InterBase uses a variant of B-tree for index structure. Indices are automatically created for PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY and UNIQUE columns.

Stored Procedures

Supported

Data Model

Relational

InterBase is a relational database management system (RDBMS) and it complies with SQL-92 standard.

Concurrency Control

Multi-version Concurrency Control (MVCC)

InterBase is the first DBMS that implements Multi-Version Concurrency Control (MVCC). MVCC is referred to as Multi-Generational Architecture in InterBase.

Isolation Levels

Read Committed Snapshot Isolation

Three isolation levels are supported: SNAPSHOT, SNAPSHOT TABLE STABILITY, READ COMMITTED.

Joins

Nested Loop Join Sort-Merge Join

InterBase uses an optimizer to estimate costs of different joining orders and to generate data retrieval plan. Merge-Sort Join and Nested Loop Join are supported. InterBase also allows users to specify customized plan by using PLAN clause.

Storage Architecture

Disk-oriented

Compression

Run-Length Encoding Prefix Compression

In index, data values are compressed via pre and postfix compression.