| InterBase | |
|---|---|
| Developer | Embarcadero Technologies |
| Stable release | InterBase 15 / October 2025; 4 months ago (2025-10) |
| Operating system | Cross-platform |
| Type | Database management system |
| License | Proprietary |
| Website | www |
InterBase is arelational database management system (RDBMS) currently developed and marketed byEmbarcadero Technologies. It runs on theoperating systemsMicrosoft Windows,macOS,Linux,Solaris,Android, andiOS.
InterBase is aSQL-92-compliantrelational database and supports standard interfaces such asJDBC,ODBC, andADO.NET.
Multiversion concurrency control is described in some detail in sections 4.3 and 5.5 of the 1981 paper "Concurrency Control in Distributed Database Systems"[1] byPhilip Bernstein and Nathan Goodman while employed by the Computer Corporation of America. Bernstein and Goodman's paper cites a 1978 dissertation[2] by D.P. Reed, which describesMVCC and claims it as an original work.
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Jim Starkey was working atDEC on theirDATATRIEVE 4th generation language4GL product when he came up with an idea for a system to manage concurrent changes by many users. The idea simplified the existing problems oflocking which were proving to be a serious problem for the newrelational database systems being developed at the time.
Although InterBase's implementation is much more similar to the system described byReed in his MIT dissertation than any other database that existed at the time and Starkey knew Bernstein from his previous position at the Computer Corporation of America and later at DEC, Starkey claims that he arrived at the idea of multiversion concurrency control independently.[3] According to his blog, Starkey says:
The inspiration for multi-generational concurrency control was a database system done byPrime that supported page level snapshots. The intention of the feature was to give a reader aconsistent view of the database without blocking writers. The idea intrigued me as a very useful characteristic of a database system.
In early 2000,Borland announced that InterBase would be released underopen-source, and began negotiations to spin off a separate company to manage the product. Thesource code for InterBase version 6 was released under a variant of theMozilla Public License in mid-2000.
With the InterBase division at Borland under new management, the company released aproprietary version of InterBase version 6 and then 6.5. Borland released several updates to the open source code before announcing that it would no longer actively develop the open source project.Firebird, an open sourcefork of the InterBase 6 code, however, remains in active development.
In 2001, abackdoor was discovered in the software that had been present in all versions since 1994 and then resolved.[4][5][6]
On May 7, 2008, Borland andEmbarcadero Technologies announced that Embarcadero had "signed a definitive asset purchase agreement to purchase CodeGear."[7] The acquisition, for approximately $24.5 million, closed on 30 June 2008.[8]
