FireRuby is an open source extension to the Ruby programming language that provides access to the Firebird RDBMS. The project site for FireRuby is hosted on the Ruby Forge web site here.
Ruby is an open source programming language created by Yukihiro Matsumoto (generally referred to simply as Matz). More information on Ruby can be obtained here.
Firebird is an open source relational database management system (RDBMS) derived from the commercial Interbase code base. More details for Firebird can be found here.
FireRuby provides access to a broad swathe of the Firebird API, wrapped in an object oriented interface. The library provides classes that cover databases, connections, transactions, statements and query result sets. It even has a wrapper class for Firebird generators. Consult the API documentation that comes with the library for more information.
The FireRuby extension is written in C and therefore has to be built for each platform that it is available on. As I personally don't like the hassle involved in having to build things like this I distribute the extension in binary (pre-built) format for the Windows, Linux and Mac OS X operating systems. The sources are available from CVS on the Ruby Forge site if you want them.
The FireRuby extension is packaged using the gem format. RubyGems (more information here) provide a convenient means for packaging, installing and maintaining libraries for the Ruby language. Some versions of the Ruby installation come packaged with RubyGems and plans exist to ultimately incorporate it into the core Ruby release. In the meantime it is available for separate download here.
FireRuby is an open source project released under the Mozilla licence, version 1.1. Details for this license can be viewed here.
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