8. How to get help

The community of willing helpers around Firebird goes a long way back, to many years before the source code for its ancestor, InterBase® 6, was made open source. Collectively, the Firebird community does have all the answers! It even includes some people who have been involved with it since it was a design on a drawing board in a bathroom in Boston.

• Visit the official Firebird Project site at https://www.firebirdsql.org and join the user support lists, in particular firebird-support` . Look at https://www.firebirdsql.org/en/mailing-lists/ for instructions.

• Use the Firebird documentation index at https://www.firebirdsql.org/en/documentation/.

• Visit the Firebird knowledge site at https://www.ibphoenix.com to look up a vast collection of information about developing with and using Firebird. IBPhoenix also sells a Developer CD with the Firebird binaries and lots of documentation.

• Order the official three-volume Firebird Book, Second Edition at https://www.ibphoenix.com/products/books/firebird_book, for more than 1200 pages jam-packed with Firebird information. (Notice: at the time of this writing, the Firebird Book is not yet up-to-date with Firebird 3.)

• Read the Release Notes for your Firebird version!