LibreOffice 5.1.4. cannot find firebird sdbc connection

xenon1 · July 30, 2016, 8:09am

Trying to connect LibreOffice Base natively to database Firebird through an sdbc connection. Although I installed the Rirebird SDBC driver for LibreOffice (libreoffice-sdbc-firebird), I could not find a way.

Configuration: OS: Linux Mint 18. / LibreOffice 5.1.4.2 (Build ID: 1:5.1.4-0ubuntu1). / Firebird 3.0. / Installed libreoffice-sdbc-firebird version (1:)5.1.4(-0ubuntu1).

Is there another way (workaround?) to connect to an external (meaning: not embedded in a Base file) Firebird database natively?

(I did connect via JDBC and it works, but it was tedious to set up and I would like to find a faster way.)

mariosv · July 31, 2016, 8:50pm

To activate Firebird drivers is needed to activate experimental features:

Menu/Tools/Options/LibreOffice/Advance - Optional (Unstable) Options - Enable experimental features.

but they are on development currently, Bug 51780 - default to Firebird not HSQLDB in Base.

On the firebird web page there are free drivers to connect Firebird connectivity

xenon1 · July 31, 2016, 9:10pm

Thank you, m.a.riosv.! But I do and did have experimental features checked when I tried the above sdbc connection. This alone does not change the inability to connect natively to firebird.

xenon1 · February 20, 2020, 10:04am

I found a native sdbc connection in LibreOffice 6:

a) To implement: On the page Database Wizard of LibreOffice Base go to “Connect to an existing database” and choose “Firebird File”. If you cannot find this option, please read the next paragraph.

b) Prerequite: In Linux you need the library “libreoffice-sdbc-firebird” (Firebird SDBC driver for LibreOffice). I do not remember if this came installed by default or I had to get it independently. I do not know what you need in Windows and if it is installed automatically.

Evaluation: Plus - Much handier than the previous Java-Connection! Minus (at least for a German) - As far as I could see, it cannot translate the German Umlauts, which are ASCII in the database, into the needed UTF-8 characters of my computer user interface. My guess: This problem may not occur if you configured the database character set to be UTF-8.