Did you know that Firebird has a powerful feature that can speed up your data access in some scenarios? It's called parallel reading, and it has been around since version 4.0.4, but not many people know about it or use it. Let's explore what it is and how it works!

In Firebird 5.0, you can make a multi-threaded data backup using gbak, which reduces the backup time by several times (4+ times, depending on the hardware).

But, it turns out, you can also implement the same parallel consistent data reading, as in the gbak.exe utility, in your user applications!

Do you want to see how to use the same approach for your own Firebird application? Read the article "Parallel reading in Firebird", authored by Denis Simonov, a Firebird documentation writer, and Vlad Horsun, a core developer. It is very detailed and provides some insights on how gbak.exe works.

Also, Alexey Kovyazin, president of Firebird Foundation, has created a short introductory video to explain the idea of parallel reading:

After that, try the FBCSVExport tool (it is a free, open source sample tool that exports a table's contents to a CSV file) to evaluate the export speed - and implement parallel reading in your applications!

Please feel free to ask any questions: [email protected].

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