On my next project i am thinking about supporting firebird and MSSQL. Besides the not having an identity type column in firebird are there any other major things that would cause compatibility problems with supporting both? I found a workaround for the identity column issue in firebird using triggers.

Also, anyone know a good app like enterprise manager for firebird? I looked on there site but didnt see anything that i really liked. What do you guys use to create the firebird db?

No, don't use triggers for firebird!. Use 'generators'! that are sequences like oracle has You then can select one of them in the designer

For firebird stuff, just go to http://www.ibphoenix.com/ and you'll find what you'll need I think

I have just finished building a smart client app using firebird and LLBL....Up until now I have always used MSSQL but I needed a local database for my application and the firebird embedded edition seemed to offer what I wanted - far smaller install and neater than the utterly over the top MSDE...

I must say that I am a total convert - firebird is fantastic and works exceptionally well with LLBL. In fact although I havent done any tests, I am sure that firebird is faster than MSSQL for some of the things that I have actually done in both.

The only thing that I found a little annoying was not having a "bit" datatype in firebird so I had to represent boolean data as an integer.

I used IBExpert as my manager (As advised by Otis) and it works fine albeit a little slow and clumsy at times... There is a free version that is OK, but I purchased the upgrade that gave me few more features like the very useful (so I have now found) database and table comparer, plus the equally excellent test data generator- now I would have liked them in enterprise Manager!!.

You may also want to check out the MSSQL - Firebird converter that is available on the firebird site - I found that very usefule in getting started.

Firebird is indeed pretty fast It has some quircks but then again, which database doesn't ? The featureset is big enough that the vast majority of applications will work great on it. And as a bonus: you can take your db file and the embedded dll and you don't need a server install!

Thanks for the info guys! I'll have to check out that mssql->firebird converter