IBConsole makes using ISQL tempting
I have been using Firebird for small projects for sometime now and FlameRobin for my GUI admin tool. The combination has worked well for me, until I wanted to write a XPlatform appplication in Firemonkey and I had problems getting FlameRobin running on the Mac. After viewing Stephen Ball’s webinar, I tried getting Interbase running on both platforms, and did so with some minor difficulty.
Today I was making some modifications to the structure of the database, adding a FK column to a table in addition to the lookup table. The data showed in IBConsole as 0s for the ForeignKey, yet very time I tried updating a different column in the same table I received an error message that the Category_ID column had failed validation **null**. Eventually I figured out there was no row in the Category lookup table, but inserting a row with an ID of 0 didn’t fix the problem. I had to issue an update and set the Category_ID column to 0 even though the UI already showed it populated with 0s.
There are lots of such annoying issues in IBConsole v10.0.3.563. When adding columns the controls for different edits show grey borders, and the Not Null checkbox appears as if it’s greyed out, even though it’s still enabled.
I’ve never liked the multi-window UI, and it seems to have become more cumbersome as features have been added.
It must undergo thorough QA testing since in the Constraints tab the control name is still displayed 
Although tempted to start using the command line tools, I will continue with iBConsole for now, and hope it gets better with time…
July 15th, 2012 at 12:55 am
The tool of choice here is IBExpert.
July 15th, 2012 at 1:45 am
Database Workbench is excellent. There is also a freely available Lite Edition. And if you are using Firebird 2.5, the Trace API in combination with FB TraceManager is incredibly useful to see what’s executed against your database.
July 15th, 2012 at 3:02 am
Upscene’s Database Workbench for me
July 15th, 2012 at 9:34 am
For Firebird, IBExpert lite is my best tool.
July 16th, 2012 at 10:03 am
I haven’t tried IBExpert, but Firebird Maestro has always worked well for me.
August 2nd, 2012 at 12:07 pm
I’ve tried DBWorkbench and Maestro - but IBExpert is better than those. And better than SQL Server Management Studio (2005 and 2008, inclusive) as well.
Last time I used it (many moons ago), the only weak point compared to SSMS is diagramming.
September 26th, 2012 at 10:29 am
[...] Studio and Delphi might be amazed that EMBT has not done something about IBConsole.