Below is a basic howto on using the Firebird Databae with OOo. I will
also be trying this in Linux in the near future.

I like Firebird over Postgresql or MySQL for the following reasons.
1. MySQL does not have stored views or queries and will not have for at
least a year or so.
2. Firebird (interbase) is the most mature of the three databases.
3. Firebird was the easiest install both Windows and Linux, but the most
difficult to interface to OOo.
4. A Firebird database is portable, that is, you can copy the database
to another computer and operate on it.
5. You also have client server capabilities as with Postgresql and MySQL
that far excedes client-file database of Access .mdb. Even with the
Access 2000 where you have a stripped down SQL databaase of 2 GHb max
size, Firebird still has greater capabilites.
6. There are a great many opensource and/or freeware tools, as well as
commercial) available for Firebird at www.ibphoenix.com >Downloads >
Contributed

Since there have been so many complaints and requests for better
database capabilites with OOo, I would like to see OOO.org and
Firebird.org work together and integrate the two together. The
installation and setup needs to be streamlined with gui etc. for people
who are not computer geeks, but at the same time, there is no need to
"re-invent the wheel" with another database since one is already
available (OpenSource GPL that is).

I hope that some of you will try it and give some feedback to both OOo
and Firebird. (I tried a couple of the ODBC drivers which worked in
Access but not in OOo. Would connect, but edit table or new query would
crash OOo and all of the table names has small boxes after them to the
end of the line)

Installation Prerequisets

Installation was on Win2k with OOo 643c.

If Java was not installed when OOo was installed, it must be installed
and you will need to re-install OOo.

Down load the following files from
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=9028
FirebirdSQL-1.0.0RC3.zip
Firebird-1.0.2.908-Win32.exe

Run Firebird-1.0.2.908-Win32.exe and install the database. It will also
start the services. Default install directory is /Program Files/Firebird.

Open the FirebirdSQL-1.0.0RC3.zip in winzip and extract all of the file
to /Program Files/Firebird/Java (you will have to create this new directory)

Open OOo writer, goto Tools, Options, Security. In the Java section,
Class Path, click on the browse button and browse to /Program
File/Firebird/Java. Select each of the jar files and open. Also the
File/Firebird/Java/lib jar files. Then click OK.

Goto Tools, Data Sources and select New Data Source. Enter the following
info into the General tab.

Name: what ever you want to call the database. I called mine Firebird.
Database Type: JDBC
Data Source URL jdbc: firebirdsql:localhost/3050:c:\\Program
Files\\Firebird\\examples\\employee.gdb
(Modify the path to where your database is, \\are important

Goto the JDBC tab and enter the following information (This assums you
are using the defualt password and employee database)

JDBC driver class org.firebirdsql.jdbc.FBDriver

URL This should already be filled in with the previously entered info on
the General TAB.

User name SYSDBA

Password required should be checked.

Select the Tables tab. A dialog box will ask for the password. enter
"masterkey" and click OK.

You should now see a list of all of the tables. Click the Edit Table
icon, you can see the fields, etc.

Select the Queries tab, and you can create a query similar to Access.

If you do not get a connection, you can download
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_contrib_download
IBSQL. It is in sip format, I unziped the IB_SQL.exe to the c:\Program
Files\Firebird and executed it.

On the Login tab, Database, browse to the database c:\/Program
Files/Firebird/examples\EMPLOYEE.gdb and select.

Username and password should already be filled in, if not, they are
sysdba and masterkey.

The select the Connect Database icon (second from the left)
Then select the Browse database idcon (third from the left)

You should see the tables.

If you do not see the tables, then the database did not properly install.

If you see the tables here but not in OOo, then there is a problem with
JAVA. You may have to re-install OOo which is what I had to do. I just
done an unitall, but did not delete files, the done an install and made
sure the java was found. After that, it worked.

Good Luck

Art

Resources

http://www.ibphoenix.com/
http://www.xtgsystems.com/
http://firebird.sourceforge.net/

From these websites you can find many other resources.