Introduction for New Firebird Users

	Fact Sheets and White Papers about Firebird
Firebird 2-Minute Guide	A quick look at Firebird's features and capabilities, assembled by Carlos Cantu. Non-English versions available: Czech | Português (BR) | Polish | German | Turkish | Português
Firebird Factsheet	An overview (somewhat outdated but still helpful) of the features of Firebird, with links to some community areas that it's good to know about.
	Start here! Download this essential document to get you through your first installation and some of the problems you might encounter when testing your installation and connecting to a Firebird database for the first time. READ IT FIRST!
	Click the button to sign up to the liveliest support list on the Web! What is in the kits? Firebird is a complete client/server relational database management system. The kits contain the binaries for the server, the client library and a number of command line utilities. Other pieces that both new and experienced users need include Release Notes Firebird's release notes contain a lot of information about the release, including the user documentation for Firebird-specific features. If these are not in the root directory of your installed Firebird, look in the /doc directory beneath the root. You will find the main release notes along with the latest point release notes. You need BOTH of these PDF files and a reader program, typically Adobe Acrobat Reader. The earlier Firebird v.1.0 and v.1.5 release notes contain reference material that is not documented anywhere else. The v.2.0 and 2.1 notes are cumulative on these predecessors. README notes These are generally fairly brief user notes for using some of the utilities. The titles are usually self-explanatory. After the release notes, these are your next line of inquiry if you are stuck on details like what scripts do or how to do custom client installs. SQL Reference Docs This collection builds on and updates the references for Firebird's implementation of the SQL language standards, taking up where the original beta Language Reference for the open-sourced InterBase 6 left off. Find these HERE in the Documentation Index.
	Which kit to download It would be hard to find a more confusing download page than the one automatically maintained for us by Sourceforge, http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/firebird/. It is comprehensive but the arrangement is difficult to follow unless you know exactly what you are looking for. The links HERE will take you directly to the download for the kit you want, without having to search for it.
	To begin with, you should avoid "release candidate" (RC) and special ("PDB") builds, which are released quite frequently for field testing and debugging. When upgrading to a new major release version, e.g. v.1.5.x to v.2.0.x or v.2.0.x to v.2.1.x, you need to do a complete uninstall of the older version first. More details here.
	Click the image to search an eclectic collection of novice questions that recur often in the support lists.