At a glance
A step-by-step tutorial to install Firebird SQL on Windows and enabling its usage in PHP.
Latest articles
HowTo: Install Firebird/Interbase with PHP on Windows. A step-by-step tutorial.
This simple tutorial assumes you already have a working PHP installation.
There's plenty of guides on how to set up PHP, here I'm only showing how to make it interact with Firebird.
Requirements
Install Firebird SQL
- Download the zip archive: Firebird SQL 2.0.0
- Extract the archive to
C:\firebird(for instance) - Open a command prompt window (START, Run, "cmd")
- Run these commands, one by one:
C:\firebird\bin\instreg i
C:\firebird\bin\instsvc i -s -a
C:\firebird\bin\instsvc start
Configure PHP
- Copy
C:\firebird\bin\fbclient.dllto yourC:\windows\system32directory and rename the file togds32.dll - Copy
php_interbase.dllfrom yourphp\extdirectory to theC:\windows\system32directory. - Copy
libeay32.dllandssleay32.dllfrom yourphpdirectory to theC:\windows\system32directory. - Edit your
php.ini, un-comment the line
extension=php_interbase.dll
(you have to remove the semicolon from that line). - Restart your webserver (Apache).
Install some Firebird SQL Tools
You can manage your databases with some tools:
- EMS SQL Manager for InterBase/Firebird: the free version is more than enough for a start.
- FlameRobin: another GUI tool, open source.
- ibWebAdmin: web frontend for the Firebird and InterBase database servers, written in PHP.
NB: the default admin username:password pair for Firebird is SYSDBA:masterkey.
Follow @lorenzoalberton
Lorenzo Alberton
Lorenzo 
has been working with large enterprise UK companies for the past years and is now Chief Tech Architect at DataSift.
He's an international conference speaker and a long-time contributor to many open source projects.
Follow @lorenzoalberton
Tags
AJAX, Apache, Book Review, Charset, Cheat Sheet, Data structures, Database, Firebird SQL, Hadoop, Imagick, INFORMATION_SCHEMA, JavaScript, Kafka, Linux, Message Queues, mod_rewrite, Monitoring, MySQL, NoSQL, Oracle, PDO, PEAR, Performance, PHP, PostgreSQL, Profiling, Scalability, Security, SPL, SQL Server, SQLite, Testing, Tutorial, TYPO3, Windows, Zend Framework
9 responses to "HowTo: Install Firebird/Interbase with PHP on Windows. A step-by-step tutorial."
* web frontend for the Firebird and InterBase database servers, written in PHP.
NB: the default admin username:password pair for Firebird is SYSDBA:masterkey.
Thank you! Your article helped me to quickly set up php and firebird
Thanks, it was helpful!
Your article helped me to quickly set up php and firebird
Nice this helped me with my Windows System
Thanks a LOT............................
Thanks,
im trying to create a php application to connect to interbase but im using a 64bit system, iv followed your tutorial but i still cant get it to work i get the following error Fatal error: Call to undefined function ibase_connect() in C:\\xampp\\htdocs\\phase\\includes\\config.php on line 11 another thing is where do i get the php_interbase.dll because i cant find it in my php/ext folder !!
the tips here, saved me from a complete nightmare over a complete day!, trying to set up. thanks a lot.