> when should FB 2.0 be released?

Hopefully it should go to alpha/beta sometime soon (pre christmas). A 1.5.2 is also scheduled for release shortly.

> And what exactly is the Vulcan project?

More information at:

http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=vul_development
and
http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=devel&sub=engine

From the original announcment by Jim:
"I've been hired by IBPhoenix to product a 64bit, SMP-friendly reference port for Firebird. The formal deliverable will be for 64bit
Solaris Sparc, though I plan to produce AMD64/Opteron versions for WinXP and Linux on the way. I'm calling it Project Vulcan (I
wanted to call it IBAlbuquerque but Mozilla is already using the name).

The requirement is for a thread-safe, embeddable, 64bit versions capable of 3X performance on a four processor system (or run out of
disk bandwidth trying)"

> Will I be able to use Vulcan above my FB 1.5

Yes. Vulcan is completely backwards compatible with 1.5, the API is the same.

> database? Will Vulcan support IBX (6.08) objects? So does it mean that after FB 2.0 will be Vulcan relased?

Yes, no reason why not, if it works with 1.5, it should work with Vulcan. FB2.0 and Vulcan are likely to
be available in parallel. FB 2.0 will have new functionality thats not in Vulcan, but Vulcan will support
SMP. The choice is yours depending on what you need. FB2.0 and Vulcan will then be merged toi create FB3.0
sometime next year.

Paul