Creating a new database

[SP Ooi]

We used gdl files followed by gdef before in Firebird 1.5 years ago to create new databases.

Can someone share what the equivalence is in Firebird 5.x please?

SP

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[Dimitry Sibiryakov]

SP Ooi wrote 12.06.2025 18:12:
> We used gdl files followed by gdef before in Firebird 1.5 years ago to create
> new databases.

I'm not aware of any utility with such name in Firebird starting from 1.0.

> Can someone share what the equivalence is in Firebird 5.x please?

isql is usually used for such tasks.

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WBR, SD.

[SP Ooi]

Thank you.

We tried with "isql -a" but no views showed up.

SP

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[Nikolaus Kern]

Hello,

I admire the patience of the maintainer of Firebird to respond to questions like this...

If there is no interesst in reading the Firebird book or the available documentation you might want to wait for "Firebird - the movie" or try a tool like ChatGP: ""How can I setup a new database with firebird 5 ?"

[SP Ooi]

Nikolaus,

I originally just asked if there was an equivalence for gdef & gdl.

But thanks for your comments.

SP

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[Nikolaus Kern]

Hi,

I didn´t want to add sarcasm to a very productive group like this.

Nevertheless I am using Firebird for about 20 years now an read about gdef the very first time... It seems that this is an old method to create DBs.

https://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/xenial/man1/gdef.1.html 

https://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/release_notes/html/en/2_5/rnfb25-compat-utils.html says "gdef will no longer be supported at all. Instead, isql should be used, with regular DDL commands."

Niko

[Frank Schlottmann-Gödde]

Am 12.06.25 um 18:16 schrieb 'Dimitry Sibiryakov' via firebird-support:

> SP Ooi wrote 12.06.2025 18:12:
>> We used gdl files followed by gdef before in Firebird 1.5 years ago to
>> create new databases.
>
>   I'm not aware of any utility with such name in Firebird starting from
> 1.0.
>

Dudley – Sounds like DDL (data definition language) and is the pre
(interbase) 4.0 data definition utility GDEF. It’s actually named after
Dudley Doright, a character from Rocky and Bullwinkle. GDEF accepts a
data definition language based on GDML.

gone in FB3.0

[SP Ooi]

Hi,

Company started using this tool in the 1980s, from Borland Interbase ... to Firebird 1.x on SunOS ... to Firebird 1.5.6 on Linux. We are working on converting more than 665 thousand database files to Firebird 5.x after our management finally approved to use Firebird longer term and with the development effort to migrate.

We sort of inherited this environment.

We had tried to use "isql -a <database>" to "extract metadata incl. legacy non-SQL tables" but the output did not produce any "CREATE VIEW" even though there were views defined in the database.

SP

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[SP Ooi]

Thank you.

SP

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[Frank Schlottmann-Gödde]

Am 12.06.25 um 19:44 schrieb SP Ooi:

> Hi,
>
> Company started using this tool in the 1980s, from Borland Interbase ...
> to Firebird 1.x on SunOS ... to Firebird 1.5.6 on Linux. We are working
> on converting more than 665 thousand database files to Firebird 5.x
> after our management finally approved to use Firebird longer term and
> with the development effort to migrate.
>
> We sort of inherited this environment.
>
> We had tried to use "isql -a <database>" to "extract metadata incl.
> legacy non-SQL tables" but the output did not produce any "CREATE VIEW"
> even though there were views defined in the database.

Could you try to use
SHOW VIEWS;
from isql.

Firebird 1.5 should still have qli installed, you may try to check if
qli is able to display the views.

good luck

hth
fsg

[SP Ooi]

Hi,

Yes, "show views" showed the views correctly. (Firebird 5.0.1 database)

SP

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[Frank Schlottmann-Gödde]

Am 12.06.25 um 20:06 schrieb SP Ooi:

> Hi,
>
> Yes, "show views" showed the views correctly. (Firebird 5.0.1 database)

Only the names or also the ddl?

fsg