History[02]

InterBase was originally developed by Jim Starkey in 1984 after leaving DEC. It was designed as a RDBMS utilizing multi-versioning architecture.

InterBase was initially acquired by Asthon-Tate in multiple stages in the late 1980s. It was then acquired by Borland in 1991. In 2000, an open-source DBMS called FireBird was forked from InterBase. In 2008, InterBase, along with other development tools, are purchased by Embarcadero Technologies, Inc.

Checkpoints[04]

Checkpoint (also called Journaling Checkpoint) is supported in InterBase.

Compression[05]

The DBMS only supports prefix and suffix compression for index keys.

Concurrency Control[06]

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

Data Model[07]

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

Foreign Keys[08]

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

Indexes[09][05]

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

Isolation Levels[10]

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

Joins[11][12]

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.

Logging[04]

Logging is called Journaling in InterBase.

Query Interface[13]

Storage Architecture[14]

Storage Model[14]

Stored Procedures[13]

System Architecture[15]

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

Views[16][17]

InterBase supports virtual views. Views are not materialized. InterBase also supports Change View which enables data change tracking.