Introduction

gstat is one of the database utilities supplied with Firebird. It is used to display statistical details about the contents of a database. gstat does not connect to the database as other utilities do, instead it opens the database file(s) directly and reads through the raw data. Because of this, gstat is not transactionally aware and some of the statistics it gathers may include data that have been deleted, for example, by normal database transactions.

In this manual, we will discuss:

• Command-line options for gstat.
• gstat commands and their parameters.
• Running gstat and interpreting the results.
• Some caveats, gotchas and foibles of gstat.