More on DevCo and Firebird

Marco Cantu talks in his blog about what he expects regarding the relationship between DevCo and Firebird. Check the full post here.

Oracle and Open Source

Open source is hot these days, and Oracle knows it. The company is facing challenges from open source competitors by embracing open source technology in its own right - acquiring and developing key companies and products in this area - as well as fighting to show its merits over other open source choices. How does Oracle stack up against PostgreSQL or Firebird? How do Oracle and Linux work together? What's next for Oracle on the open source front?

IB/FB Developer Magazine #4 is available

I guess some of our readers have become a bit tired of waiting and wondering when the new issue would be released. I am really sorry about the long delay, but there have been some serious financial and time issues holding up production.

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Lazarus 0.9.16 released

Vincent writes "The Lazarus team is glad to announce the 0.9.16 release. This release is
based on fpc 2.0.2.

This release can be downloaded from the sourceforge download page.
"

FlameRobin 0.7.2 released

FlameRobin 0.7.2 has been released. Windows (setup & zip), Linux (gtk1 &. gtk2), Mac OS X and source packages are available for download.
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New technology licenses from IBExpert

From Holger Klemt:

"A lot of customers asked us regarding a cheaper possibility to use our ibeblock technology for their own software. The IBExpert VAR License gives a distribution license for all modules including the IBExpert IDE. Some smaller software companies just asked for a way to integrate our technology for a cheaper price."
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Devrace aquires Metadataforge

Devrace have recently acquired Metadataforge company (SQLHammer project) and will immediately start selling the product. Read details in the press-release
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Download Sizes: Firebird vs Sqlserver

[ED:blog of the day is Ben Ward’s post about firebird vs sqlserver download sizes/requirements]

Originally, my Desktop Search application (‘Oak’) was to use a Microsoft SQL Server Express database backend. Full of glorious developer friendly features (like .NET integration) it is a powerhouse of a database.

[See remaining text…]

However, whilst building some initial test applications I made the horrifying discovery that rather than embed itself in my application, as I’d mistakenly thought it would, SQL Server Express insists on being run as Windows service. Since it’s not distributed as a key part of Windows that would have meant having to download about 40MB of SQL server, alongside the 20MB .NET 2.0 redistributable, alongside my application (lets say that’ll be somewhere around 6 meg).

This download size prompted me to switch from SQL Server to Firebird – which adds only 2MB to the application and runs embedded, not as a standalone service.

eWeek: "Save Me from Cleverness" - One more reason I love Delphi

Peter Coffee's "Save Me from Cleverness" (May 15, 2006) is another
great example of why I love Delphi.

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1959854,00.asp

Although the article does not specifically mention Delphi, it does
speak volumes regarding the tersness of the C family of languages
and the impact of cleverness in programming.

IDC confirms Firebird's leading position !!

Oracle has last year's report as well, with even more detail. It shows Borland as a quickly growing database company, riding the FB/IB success wave. It's database sales are closely tracking MySQL, with 2004 sales already at the $9 million mark. Read more link has the PDF with full details.

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Details of IDC's market estimates

Oracle is publishing a summary of IDC's market report, with sales estimates for the main proprietary players for the last 3 years. The Read More link has a PDF with that summary.

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Should Oracle fear open source?

Referring to Oracle's acquisition of Sleepycat Software, Graham said: "Open source in general starts small but then it ends up having a big impact. Oracle knows this. They happened to acquire an open source vendor themselves, because thy want to get on that train." She added: "We expect [open source database software sellers] to gain market share, and probably pretty quickly."
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PostgreSQL fix could break applications

PostgreSQL users have been put in a potentially sticky situation by a serious security flaw made public this week. The flaw allows for SQL injection attacks, and affects all versions of PostgreSQL, aside from fixed versions released this week. However, the fix, PostgreSQL developers admit, will break many users' applications.
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Suggesting DevCo Name

DevCo is looking for a name... and suggestions. Name debate is hot!

Michael Swindell has officially asked for suggestions for the new name (but not only that) in a blog post. Meanwhile, the non-tech group has a long thread (106 messages at this moment) spawned by Marco Cantu's blog post, with very few good suggestions and tons of nonsense ones. Cure ideas: "But we wrote Delphi Dev Co", "The Developers Company", "BIMB Is Not Borland", "Be Rad, Inc."... and many more.

Remember, the web site must be available, should not be a trademark, and should possibly start with "B".

Why we all sell code with bugs - firebird mentioned

[Quoting from this article where firebird is mentioned http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1781895,00.html ]

For instance, our product, Vault, stores all data using Microsoft SQL Server. Some people don’t like this. We’ve been asked to port the back end to Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL and Firebird. This issue is in our bug database as item 6740.

Read complete story

Temporary tables

From Dmitry Yemanov:
Implementation of the SQL-2003 compliant global temporary tables has been committed into the HEAD branch. This feature will be released in the next (post-v2.0) Firebird version. Design and implementation of the local temporary tables (both “defined” and “declared”, see the SQL specification for details) are being investigated, but there are no timeframes defined for that.

Another Opportunity to Pump Up Delphi on JoelOnSoftware

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz.5.345746.28

Once again, feel free to jump in and give your $0.02.

Previous discussions are here:
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.342621.17

How many ISV here use Delphi ?
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.342621.85
and
Delphi for easy cross platform development
http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?joel.3.342623.19

SAS’s Goodnight won’t say goodbye yet

“…I think, to some extent, that Oracle is getting to that perch in the database business. Yet there is a lot of movement in the database business with open source software. We use one called Firebird. They should do something about it.

We had an experience when we were thinking about going public and our consultants said that we needed to get off SAS for our internal ERP work because it is just not a recognised brand and they suggested Oracle. It was Ernst and Young and we spent three or four years and $10m and it was just outrageous. And in the release (of Oracle) that we were working on there were over 10,000 bugs. That’s horrible.“

Read complete article here.

SQLServer 2005 at 6 Months

"MS Sausage" has been out for six months. ENT News writes: "Six months after its launch, SQL Server 2005 remains free of showstopper bugs or known security issues. Still after five years between database releases, Microsoft hasn’t shown evidence yet that there’s huge pent-up demand for SQL Server." One poster complains that, yes, there are no showstopper bugs, but plenty of regular bugs. Time to switch?

Added: One of the comments on the article by Bobby Jasper from Baltimore, MD says: "You could have a look at the open source RDBMS Firebird (www.firebirdsql.org). These folks have built up a good reputation on releasing rock solid stuff. It is probably the most used open source databse on the windows platform."

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Firebird in China

From the Site of the day department here is the firebird dedicated site in china www.firebird.net.cn/
[Ed : you will need the babel fish maybe ]

Adarvo and Firebird

From IBPhoenix - Adarvo Ltd, Switzerland (www.adarvo.net) run a collaboration server that is based on a Firebird database. Current (May 2006) size of the database is about 49GB and there are more than 2000 customers currently using the service at this site.

First two chapters of "Using Firebird" available

Paul Vinkenoog writes: "I think I’ve done most of the necessary update/correction/extension work, but I may have overlooked some things, and possibly introduced some fresh errors too. But I’ve gone through so many cycles of reading, updating and re-reading by now that I can’t look at it with a fresh eye anymore. High time somebody else had a look."

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Who gives, who takes?

Information Week writes: "This spirit of volunteerism is alive and well in the world of open source software. Thousands of people donate their time and expertise to the benefit of all. But not everyone is giving as much as they're getting. Large companies, those with the greatest wherewithal to help, are surprisingly minor players in the roll-up-your-sleeves work of open source development."

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Free vs. gratis databases

Analyst firm Hydrasight research director John Brand says: "I think we'll also see a fairly aggressive push from vendors in trying to influence, if not control, the open source database development market. It's such a huge market that could potentially influence so many other market segments." That said, Brand believes the days of databases themselves being valuable is "somewhat over", because the needs of users have evolved and the race is now on to control the business process layers of software, not just data structure and storage.

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Google licensing Morfik's JST?

Morfik developed the breakthrough web app RAD tool, WebOS. WebOS generates AJAX web applications in an environment that resembles Delphi C/S development. It uses Firebird as its DB server. One important part of its technology is "JST", a javascript compiler. Google has released a similar technology, perhaps licensed from Morfik.

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Full-Text Search: Fast, Damn Fast and DotLucene

DotLucene is an open-source search engine library for .NET. There is now set up a demo site (damnfastdotlucene.org) that tests DotLucene performance on quite a big set of documents
[ED:Lucene.net index can be stored in firebird database]

FlameRobin 0.7.1 released

Windows (setup & zip), Linux (gtk1 &. gtk2), Mac OS X and source packages are available for download. Read more here, changelog included

Firebird snapshot builds

From Dmitry Yemanov:

For those who's not yet aware - Linux x86 snapshot builds are available at http://www.dqteam.com/fb2/. They include a few recent builds of the Firebird 2.0 release candidate as well as builds from the HEAD branch (where new development happens). Win32 snapshot builds (Firebird 2.0 only) are still here. Snapshots are intended for Firebird developers and experienced beta testers. These builds are untested and provided with no guarantees.

Firebird 2.0 Release Candidate 2 for Win32 is Released

The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the second release
candidate of Firebird 2.0, for final testing. The binary kits for Win32
have been uploaded and should be available soon.

FirebirdClient v2.0 Release Candidate 4

FirebirdClient v2.0 Release Candidate 4 is available for download.

Download information can be found here:

http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=netprovider

· Release Candidate 4 ( 2006-05-15 ) ·

( Please review the changelog for details )

Bug Fixes:

- Fixed bug in Domains schema.

Changes:

- Changed info calls reponse length handling to handle responses
with a small size than the requested one.

- Changed validations on FbCommand.CommandText property.

FlameRobin 0.7.0 Released!

0.7.0 (win32 setup) is out.
The other kits will be done soon.

Firebird 2.0 Release Candidate 2 is Released (Linux Builds Only Currently)

The Firebird Project is pleased to announce the second release
candidate of Firebird 2.0, for final testing. The Source tarball
and the binary kits for Linux have been uploaded and should be available
soon. There will be a delay with the Windows kits so please be patient.

http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=fb2_rc2

Regards.
Firebird Project

FIBPlus V6.4.1 with Delphi 2006 support

FIBPlus V6.4.1 is available for download. This new version includes Delphi 2006 support and several bug-fixes for V6.4. Please read the release notes for more details.

EMS software for Interbase or Firebird with a 15% discount

EMS announce a special May offer, this offer allows you to purchase any EMS software for Interbase or Firebird with a 15% discount. The offer is valid for only 15 days.

Why Microsoft will fail

Toorg's Tales mentions Firebird.

Firebird: Improved remote protocol

Dmitry Yemanov reports:

The remote protocol has been slightly improved to perform better in slow networks. In order to achieve this, more advanced packets batching is now performed, also there are some buffer transmission optimizations. In a real world test scenario, these changes showed about 50% less API roundtrips, thus causing about 40% less TCP roundtrips. Hopefully, this is an improvement some our users could benefit from (mostly it should affect over-the-internet database access).

This work has been committed into the HEAD branch to be included into the next Firebird version. Further protocol improvements are also planned.

Borland Unveils New Organizational Structure

More, "interesting" news from Borland today: "Borland Unveils New Organizational Structure"

And, Nick Hodges have few words to say:

" What I do know is that we Delphi people need to start realizing that this isn't something for us to be concerned about anymore. Borland and DevCo are de facto separate entities -- soon to be de jure separate. It's been a long time, and it will likely take some getting used to, but Borland's fate really isn't ours anymore. While I'm sure we all wish Borland well, DevCo is on a separate path, doing separate things, with a different market and a separate business model to follow. Borland laying off peole doesn't really seem to affect DevCo. It appears as though DevCo is pressing forward."