Open a Firebird .fdb file without Firebird installed

You have a database file from an old program — .fdb, sometimes .gdb — and no Firebird server, no password, maybe not even the program any more. You need to see what is in it, or get the data into something you use today.

fbrescue reads the file directly. Nothing to install: download the single binary for Windows, Linux or macOS from Releases. No server, no user name, no password, and it never writes to the file.

See what is in the file

fbrescue info old.fdb      # Firebird version, page size, dialect
fbrescue tables old.fdb    # CREATE TABLE statements: tables, columns, types
fbrescue scan old.fdb      # pages, tables and row counts; damage, if any

Get the data out

fbrescue export old.fdb --out data                        # every table to data/<TABLE>.csv
fbrescue export old.fdb --out data --table CUSTOMERS      # only some tables
fbrescue export old.fdb --out data --format sql           # INSERT statements for another Firebird
fbrescue export old.fdb --out data --format jsonl         # JSON Lines, for scripts

Every format comes with schema.sql, the table definitions. Text is written as UTF-8. Databases of Russian, Eastern European and other programs often store text in CHARACTER SET NONE; if the export warns that values are not valid UTF-8, name the real encoding: --charset WIN1251 (or WIN1250, WIN1252, KOI8R, DOS866 …).

Next steps for the CSV files: open them in Excel or load them elsewhere, or move the data to PostgreSQL.

Which files it reads

Databases of Firebird 2.5, 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 — whatever the extension. Files of InterBase and of Firebird 1.x (most .gdb files from the early 2000s) use an older on-disk format and are not supported; fbrescue info says so instead of guessing.

If the file is damaged — the program stopped opening it, or it was copied from a failing disk — see recovering a corrupted database.

Use fbrescue on databases you own or are allowed to access.