Contents

• Firebird Foreign Data Wrapper for PostgreSQL
  • Supported platforms
  • Installation
    • From packages
    • From source
  • Usage
  • Example
  • Features
  • Limitations
  • Regression tests
  • Development roadmap
  • Useful links

Firebird Foreign Data Wrapper for PostgreSQL

This is a foreign data wrapper (FDW) to connect PostgreSQL to Firebird. It provides both read (SELECT) and write (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) support, as well as pushdown of some operations. However it is still very much work-in-progress; USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

firebird_fdw is designed to be compatible with PostgreSQL 9.2 ~ 10. Write support is only available in PostgreSQL 9.3 and later. Note that not all features of the PostgreSQL FDW API are supported.

It was written for Firebird 2.5 and will probably work with Firebird 2.0 or later. It should work with earlier versions if the disable_pushdowns option is set (see below). Currently (2018-04) it works with Firebird 3.0.x but has not yet been extensively tested with that version, and does not take advantage of any new Firebird 3 features. This will hopefully be addressed in future releases.

Supported platforms

firebird_fdw was developed on Linux and OS X, and should run on any reasonably POSIX-compliant system.

Installation

From packages

RPM packages for CentOS and derivatives are available via the Fedora "copr" build system; for details see here: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/ibarwick/firebird_fdw/

From source

Prerequisites:

• Firebird client library (libfbclient) and API header file (ibase.h)

• libfq, a slightly saner API wrapper for the Firebird C API; see:

  https://github.com/ibarwick/libfq

  NOTE the latest libfq version should be used with the current firebird_fdw version, as the two are usually developed in tandem.

The Firebird include/library files often end up in non-standard locations; PG_CPPFLAGS and SHLIB_LINK can be used to provide the appropriate flags. For OS X they would look something like this:

export PG_CPPFLAGS="-I /Library/Frameworks/Firebird.framework/Versions/A/Headers/"
export SHLIB_LINK="-L/Library/Frameworks/Firebird.framework/Versions/A/Libraries/"

firebird_fdw is installed as a PostgreSQL extension; it requires the pg_config binary for the target installation to be in the shell path.

The usual make && make install should take care of the actual compilation.

Usage

NOTE: these options are provisional and may change

firebird_fdw accepts the following options:

'address':
    The Firebird server's address (default: localhost)

'database':
    The name of the database to connect to

'username':
    The username to connect as (not case-sensitive)

'password':
    The user's password (note that Firebird only recognizes the first 8
    characters of a password)

'table_name':
    The Firebird table name (not case-sensitive). Cannot be used together
    with the 'query' option.

'query':
    A Firebird SQL statement producing a result set which can be treated
    like a table. Cannot be used together with the 'table_name' option.

'column_name':
    The Firebird column name (not case-sensitive).

'updatable':
    Boolean value indicating whether the foreign server as a whole,
    or an individual table, is updatable. Default is true. Note that
    table-level settings override server-level settings.

'disable_pushdowns':
    Turns off pushdowns of WHERE clause elements to Firebird. Useful
    mainly for debugging and benchmarking.

Note that while PostgreSQL allows a foreign table to be defined without any columns, firebird_fdw will raise an error as soon as any operations are carried out on it.

Example

Install the extension:

CREATE EXTENSION firebird_fdw;
CREATE FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER firebird
  HANDLER firebird_fdw_handler
  VALIDATOR firebird_fdw_validator;

Create a foreign server with appropriate configuration:

CREATE SERVER firebird_server
  FOREIGN DATA WRAPPER firebird
  OPTIONS (
    address 'localhost',
    database '/path/to/database'
 );

Create an appropriate user mapping:

CREATE USER MAPPING FOR CURRENT_USER SERVER firebird_server
  OPTIONS(username 'sysdba', password 'masterke');

Create a foreign table referencing the Firebird table fdw_test:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE fb_test(
  id SMALLINT,
  val VARCHAR(2048)
)
SERVER firebird_server
OPTIONS(
  table_name 'fdw_test'
);

As above, but with aliased column names:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE fb_test_table(
  id SMALLINT OPTIONS (column_name 'test_id'),
  val VARCHAR(2048) OPTIONS (column_name 'test_val')
)
SERVER firebird_server
OPTIONS(
  table_name 'fdw_test'
);

Create a foreign table as a Firebird query:

CREATE FOREIGN TABLE fb_test_query(
  id SMALLINT,
  val VARCHAR(2048)
)
SERVER firebird_server
OPTIONS(
  query 'SELECT id, val FROM fdw_test'
);

Features

• UPDATE and DELETE statements use Firebird's row identifier RDB$DB_KEY to operate on arbitrary rows
• ANALYZE support
• pushdown of some WHERE clause conditions to Firebird (including translation of built-in functions)
• Connection caching
• Supports IMPORT FOREIGN SCHEMA (PostgreSQL 9.5 and later)

Limitations

• Works with Firebird 3.x, but does not yet support any 3.x features
• No support for Firebird datatypes (BLOB, ARRAY)
• Display of messages returned by Firebird is not very pretty (this has been improved somewhat)

Regression tests

A simple set of regression tests is provided. To run this, following requirements must be met:

• a running PostgreSQL cluster with firebird_fdw available
• a running Firebird server

The Firebird server must be accessible via the default SYSDBA/MASTERKE user/password combination and a database /tmp/firebird_fdw.fdb must exist with following table defined:

CREATE TABLE test1(id int);

Run with:

gmake installcheck

Development roadmap

Haha, nice one. I should point out that firebird_fdw is an entirely personal project carried out by myself in my (limited) free time for my own personal gratification. While I'm happy to accept feedback, suggestions, feature requests, bug reports and (especially) patches, please understand that development is entirely at my own discretion depending on (but not limited to) available free time and motivation.

However if you are a commercial entity and wish to have any improvements etc. carried out within a plannable period of time, this can be arranged via my employer.

Having said that, things I would like to do at some point are:

• support Firebird 3.0
• add support for missing data types
• improve support for recent features to the PostgreSQL FDW API.

Useful links

• Source

  • https://github.com/ibarwick/firebird_fdw (public mirror)
  • http://pgxn.org/dist/firebird_fdw/

• General FDW Documentation

  • http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/ddl-foreign-data.html
  • http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/sql-createforeigndatawrapper.html
  • http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/sql-createforeigntable.html
  • http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/fdwhandler.html
  • http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/postgres-fdw.html
  • http://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/static/sql-importforeignschema.html

• Other FDWs

  • https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Fdw
  • http://pgxn.org/tag/fdw/

If you appreciate PostgreSQL's psql client, why not try fbsql, a psql-style client for Firebird? See: https://github.com/ibarwick/fbsql for details.