Monitoring Firebird Database Health with Spring Boot Actuator

January 10, 2026

#1

Monitoring database health is essential to maintain stability and prevent downtime. With Spring Boot Actuator, you can easily track the health of your Firebird database in real time.

1. What Is Spring Boot Actuator?

Spring Boot Actuator provides built-in endpoints for monitoring and managing applications. It exposes useful information like application status, metrics, and database health through HTTP endpoints or JMX.

2. Enable Actuator in Your Project

Add the Actuator dependency to your pom.xml:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Once added, Actuator automatically provides endpoints like /actuator/health and /actuator/metrics.

3. Configure Firebird Health Check

To include Firebird in the Actuator health report, make sure your JDBC connection is properly configured in application.properties:

spring.datasource.url=jdbc:firebirdsql://localhost:3050/app.fdb
spring.datasource.username=sysdba
spring.datasource.password=masterkey
management.endpoint.health.show-details=always

Actuator will automatically test the connection health.

4. Custom Health Indicator for Firebird

For deeper insights, create a custom health check using Spring’s HealthIndicator:

@Component
public class FirebirdHealthIndicator implements HealthIndicator {

    @Autowired
    private DataSource dataSource;

    @Override
    public Health health() {
        try (Connection conn = dataSource.getConnection()) {
            if (conn.isValid(2)) {
                return Health.up().withDetail("database", "Firebird running").build();
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            return Health.down().withDetail("error", e.getMessage()).build();
        }
        return Health.unknown().build();
    }
}

This verifies database connectivity and reports status in /actuator/health.

5. View Health Status

Start your application and access:

http://localhost:8080/actuator/health

Example output:

{
  "status": "UP",
  "components": {
    "firebirdHealthIndicator": {
      "status": "UP",
      "details": { "database": "Firebird running" }
    }
  }
}

6. Integrating Alerts and Monitoring Tools

You can connect Actuator with tools like Prometheus, Grafana, or Spring Boot Admin for visual dashboards and alert notifications when Firebird becomes unhealthy.