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Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Backup remote DB locally

By default, Firebird stores backup files on local disk, but using GBak you can use something like the following to backup a remote database, locally.

gbak -b -z 192.168.0.1:MyDBAlias "C:\DatabasesBackup\localbackup.fbk" -verbose -user SYSDBA -password masterkey

Friday, March 16, 2007

Approximate Record Count in Firebird

The following solution was originally posted to the Firebird Support Mail List by Ivan Prenosil.This solution only returns an approximate record count*, and will include records that have been deleted (and not yet garbage collected) as well as records that have been inserted but not yet committed.

Code:
/* first update the statistics */
UPDATE RDB$INDICES SET RDB$STATISTICS = -1;
COMMIT;

/* Display table names and record counts */
SELECT RDB$RELATIONS.RDB$RELATION_NAME,CASE WHEN RDB$INDICES.RDB$STATISTICS = 0 THEN 0 ELSE CAST(1 / RDB$INDICES.RDB$STATISTICS AS INTEGER) END FROM RDB$RELATIONS LEFT JOIN RDB$RELATION_CONSTRAINTS ON RDB$RELATIONS.RDB$RELATION_NAME = RDB$RELATION_CONSTRAINTS.RDB$RELATION_NAME AND RDB$CONSTRAINT_TYPE = 'PRIMARY KEY'LEFT JOIN RDB$INDICES ONRDB$RELATION_CONSTRAINTS.RDB$INDEX_NAME = RDB$INDICES.RDB$INDEX_NAME WHERE RDB$VIEW_BLR IS NULL ANDRDB$RELATION_ID >= 128 ORDER BY 1;


* This will only work on tables that have a primary key.

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

The Firebird 2.0 Book Supplement is available.

If you bought an original copy of The Firebird Book: A Reference for Database Developers directly from IBPhoenix you should have already received an email giving you instructions on how to download your free copy of the Firebird 2.0 Supplement to the book.

Otherwise you might want consider buying the supplement
directly from the IBPhoenix shop.

The Supplement follows the format and layout of the original book,
to make it easy to print out sections and insert them into your
hard copy of the main book. Where applicable, the Errata for the
main book are appended to the respective Supplement chapter.
They can be printed out as lone pages if you wish to tape the
Errata to the applicable pages.

Icons are used throughout to draw your attention to Firebird 2
changes and features that might affect your legacy databases
and applications when migrating. In appropriate places, page
references to the main book are given as a reference to
background information.

Appendix X (Error Codes) and Appendix XI (Reserved Words)
have both been completely updated so that you have an
complete on-hand reference to these sets. New character
sets and collations appear in Appendix VIII.

More details on the supplement can be found at:
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_firebird_book

Firebird support in Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design.
David Elias has updated his patch for Firebird support in Django. All tests are passed with the current version of this patch and author consider it in production-ready quality.

Firebird V2.01 Release Candidate 2 is available

Firebird V2.01 Release Candidate 2 is available for download.

This sub-release introduces a number of bug fixes done since the v.2.0 release in November. It does not add any new functionality to the database engine. A minor improvement is detection of Gentoo or FreeBSD during configuration.

An important reversion to 1.5 behaviour has occurred in this sub-release, as follows:

In Firebird 2.0, a deliberate restriction was imposed to prevent anyone from dropping, altering or recreating a PSQL module if it had been used since the database was opened. An attempt to prepare the DDL statement would result in an "Object in Use" exception.

Many people complained that the restriction was unacceptable because they depended on performing these metadata changes "on the fly". The restriction has therefore been removed. However, the reversion in no way implies that performing DDL on active PSQL modules is "safer" in Firebird 2.0.1 than it was in V.1.5.x.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Delphi for PHP's VCL for PHP supports Firebird!

According to David I , Delphi for PHP will officialy support Firebird:

"Components for database access include: Database, Table, Query, and Stored Procedure. CodeGear's InterBase (6, 6.5, 7.x and 2007) is directly supported using InterBase Express components that talk directly to the InterBase API for high performance database applications. Beyond InterBase, the following databases and database access mechanisms will also supported: ADO, ODBC and OLEDB providers, Access, FoxPro, FrontBase, FireBird, DB2, Informix (7.x), SQL Server (7 and 2000), MySQL, Oracle (8 and 9), PostGreSQL (6.x 7 and 8), SAPdb, SQLite, SQL Anywhere, and Sybase."

It will also be Open Source:

"VCL for PHP is built on several popular open source frameworks and libraries and will itself be open source."

Great news!

Thursday, February 15, 2007

Database Benchmark

DevLoop has just published a free paper (US mirror) [zipped .pdf] benchmarking some popular database systems such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Firebird, DB2, Informix, Sybase SQL Anywhere, on Linux using JDBC. The focus here is on non-real setups where we can analyze the individual aspects that might affect system performance. The code is available (GPL) so that anyone can reproduce the results.

Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Hotfix #10 Rollup install for Developer Studio

New hotfixes for Delphi, C++Builder, C#Builder, Turbo Delphi, Turbo Delphi for .NET, Turbo C++, and TurboC# are now available for download

DelphiSpeedUp Delphi/BCB/BDS IDE plugin Version 2.4

DelphiSpeedUp Version 2.4 is released:

  • Version 2.4 (2007-02-12)
    • Added: FastCode 0.6.4
    • Added: Lots of new faster functions.
    • Added: Option "Disable FastQuit" that removes the "Close all and terminate process" menu item from the file menu.
    • Fixed: _LStrLCmp/_WStrWCmp calls from the RTL itself weren't replaced by _LStrEqual/_WStrEqual where applicatable.
    • Fixed: Package unloading hadn't correctly cleared the unit name hash table.
    • Fixed: The splash progressbar was painted over the "Registered..." text in the splash screen.
    • Fixed: French users got German menu items, a missing dcc32.de caused the menu items to be English instead of German.
    • Improved: Overhead for inlining and function splitting (_LStrCmp=>_LStrEqual) is now faster.

Saturday, February 10, 2007

CodeRage 2007 Virtual Conference

CodeGear has announced a virtual online conference that will take place in the second week of March. The conference is called CodeRage. The CodeRage 2007 web site has only limited information for now, but includes the date, March 12-16. Here is the conference logo:

Delphi Astro, Delphi Spacely

Two names popping up in this delphi.non-technical thread for new Delphi versions. According to the thread:

Delphi Spacely - Delphi for Vista (Win32 and AJAX)
Delphi Astro - Delphi for PHP

The source of this information is a Swedish reseller. More info in Swedish through this link.

This sounds very interesting to me. (It's February not April so......)

Keep an eye on CodeGear for possible announcements the coming days.

Delphi IDE and RTL/VCL performance improvements

Steve Trefethen writes about Delphi improvements...
" Lately, there's been a lot of effort put into improving the Delphi IDE's UX and wanted to comment briefly that in the past week alone we've made some great progress. For example, there have been recent improvements in: IDE flicker (now nearly flicker free) Desktop .. "

Read more here

Thursday, February 08, 2007

Want to run Firebird on Windows Vista?

Check out this blog post from Dmitry Kouzmenko about how to run FB on Vista and not loose performance.

The Ideal Database for Your Business?

This paper from CodeGear tries to convince users that InterBase 2007 is the best database for them. It even mentions “alternatives” like MySQL, PostgreSQL and …FIREBIRD 1.5!

Of course, like any marketing paper, it tries to show that IB is the best option ;-) But it is curious that they decided to compare IB 2007 with FB 1.5 (instead of 2.0). Also, it seems that most of their “complaints” about FB, like the lack of SMP support, etc. are features that are currently being merged from Vulcan into Firebird 3. The matter of Firebird not having an official support “entity” is shown as a “problem”, but I totally disagree with this, since there is a huge and very active community offering (very good) support for free in discussion lists, and some comercial companies too. I believe that currently Firebird support is even better than IB support from CodeGear.

Anyway, the simple fact that FB is mentioned probably will attract some attention to the project ;-)

Firebird 1.5.4 is released

The Firebird team is pleased to announce that v.1.5.4 of Firebird for
Windows and Linux is now released and awaiting your pleasure. Kits
should be available from many sites today and more over the weekend.

A number of additional retrospective fixes have been introduced for
bugs that became apparent and were fixed in the Firebird 2 tree
during the Firebird 2.0 beta cycle.

This is probably the final sub-release of Firebird 1.5.x. It adds no
new functionality, although building the software for both Classic
and SuperServer for HP-UX11 is now supported.

The Firebird Team

Friday, February 02, 2007

Evans Data Survey mentions Firebird

Today we have a survey on Open source software. If you use Open Spurce in your development, please take our survey and help influence the course of Open Source Software. Your opinions will be read by the largest platform and tools companies and you will be automatically entered into a drawing to win $500.

To take the survey, please go to:

http://www.evansdata.com/EDC_LX_2007_1.html

Ed. Note: Firebird is mentioned in 3 questions.

Choosing the right database management system

Choosing the right database management system by Arif Mohamed on ComputerWeekly.com mentions Firebird.

New nbackup (or online dump) myth

New nbackup (or online dump) myth by by Dimitri Kuzmenko

The Examiner Newspaper & Firebird

The Examiner Newspaper (Tasmania, Australia) was approached to be a supporting partner in Ken Gourlay's solo sailing endeavour around the world as a fund raising effort for research into eyesight disorders. His website was designed and built around Firebird. Thanks to Nigel Weeks for the information.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Firebird Embedded and .NET

Jiri Cincura have created a small how-to for Firebird Embedded and .NET.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Getting Started With Delphi -- A list of tutorials

An intrepid new Delphi user posted this in the newsgroups:

Hi everyone,
I'm trying to learn about Delphi.Please give me some advice to learn
Delphi for beginners.Thanks all.

Nick Hodges posted few links:

Marco Cantu's Essential Delphi Tutorial
Neil Moffat's Marvelous Delphi Basics
Liz's Delphi Tutorial
3DBuzz's Delphi Tutorials
Creating Your First Application on The Delphi Wiki
delphi.about.com's A Beginner's Guide to Delphi

BlazeTop (SQLHammer) 1.7.0.99 is available now

BlazeTop (former SQLHammer) version 1.7.0.99 is available for download

What’s new in version 1.7.0.99?

New features and enhancements:

1.Borland InterBase 2007 support has been added:
  • the instance_name property has been added to the server registration options;
  • now scripts for InterBase 2007 can have a clause BATCH START; ... BATCH EXECUTE;

  • 2.Improved mechanism of checking Open Office data export; it enabled us to increase the performance.

    Bugs fixed:

    1.ALTER PROCEDURE did not operate correctly if the procedure used declared variables. Fixed.
    2.The SQLEditor worked incorrectly when you commented/uncommented the selected text in the pop-up menu.

    Friday, January 26, 2007

    Firebird 2.0.1 RC

    Release Candidate kits of Firebird 2.0.1 are now available for download at the Firebird main site.

    This sub-release introduces a number of bug fixes done since the v.2.0 release in November. It does not add any new functionality to the database engine. A minor improvement is detection of Gentoo or FreeBSD during configuration.

    An important reversion to 1.5 behaviour has occurred in this sub-release, as follows:

    In Firebird 2.0, a deliberate restriction was imposed to prevent anyone from dropping, altering or recreating a PSQL module if it had been used since the database was opened. An attempt to prepare the DDL statement would result in an "Object in Use" exception.

    Many people complained that the restriction was unacceptable because they depended on performing these metadata changes "on the fly". The restriction has therefore been removed. However, the reversion in no way implies that performing DDL on active PSQL modules is "safer" in Firebird 2.0.1 than it was in V.1.5.x.

    Thursday, January 25, 2007

    Tooling Up With CodeGear

    Zeichick's Take: Tooling Up With CodeGear by Alan Zeichick on SD Times.

    Open source is good for the economy

    Open source is good for the economy, according to a report published by the European Commission. More details on The Register.

    IBOjects V4.7

    IBOjects V4.7 with support for Firebird V2.0 can be downloaded for evaluation.

    New DBManager available

    DBTools Software announces the availability of the DBManager Professional Enterprise Edition V3.4.2 and DBManager Standard Edition V3.2.2.

    Steve Trefethen started Open Source Delphi Page

    If you have some Open Source delphi project, please tell Steve about it.


    Steve Trefethen's
    Delphi Open Source Projects page.

    Firebird Null Guide 1.0 online

    The new Null Guide is finally online, at its usual locations:
    http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/nullguide.html
    http://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/Firebird-Null-Guide.pdf

    The Firebird 2 Quick Start Guide has been updated

    The Firebird 2 Quick Start Guide has been updated:

    http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/qsg2.html

    PDF version will be built in a couple of days.

    ANN: The InterBase and Firebird Developer Magazine #4

    The owners of the InterBase and Firebird Developer Magazine iBase.ru and IBPhoenix today agreed to collaborate in producing future issues of the magazine. Under the agreement, free copies of the magazine will be distributed to IBPhoenix Support and Subscription customers automatically in advance of publication.

    New sessions in IBExpertLive! Free Firebird training and Conference videos online!

    What is IBExpertLive?

    HK-Software has implemented a streaming system based on the Firebird database
    server, which publishes pictures and audio, as needed to view the presentations from
    the 2004, 2005 and 2006 Firebird Conferences. There are also IBExpert
    tutorial videos enabling you to learn more about working with Firebird and
    InterBase with IBExpert. There is currently about 55GB of video data available,
    with around 200 hours of firebird-related presentations from last two Firebird
    Conferences and other events.


    To use IBExpertLive, you need a firebird connection via Internet using port 13050 to our
    server on IP 80.237.154.78. If it does not work, please check your firewall settings.

    The IBExpertLive Player is freeware and included in IBExpert Setup or can be downloaded
    seperatly here
    www.ibexpert.com/IBExpertLive/setup_IBExpertLive.exe

    The sessions are also free, but the player requires a free email registration

    An overview of all sessions can be found below (partly in german language).

    110 FBCON2006 B01-Paul Ruizendaal - Solution Stacks Built on Firebird and PHP - Another Flame in the Lamp?
    111 FBCON2006 C01-Milan Babuskov - Developing Cross Platform Aplications with Firebird and wxWidgets
    112 FBCON2006 B02-Martijn Tonies - The Firebird System Tables
    113 FBCON2006 C02-Mauritio Longo - Supporting Complex On Line Systems with Satellite Databases
    114 FBCON2006 B03-Thomas Steinmaurer - Owner Migration the Easy Way
    115 FBCON2006 C03-Andrew Morgan - Towards a Universal UDF Testing Framework
    116 FBCON2006 B04-Björn Reimer/Dirk Baumeister - Firebird Clients and System Tables
    117 FBCON2006 C04-Fikret Hasovic - Cross - Platform Development Using Lazarus
    118 FBCON2006 A05-FirebirdFoundation - Opening and Welcome(only just audio)
    119 FBCON2006 A06-PaulReeves - Building Firebird on Windows and Linux
    120 FBCON2006 B06-DmitrySibiryakov - Replication with IBReplicator
    121 FBCON2006 C06-CarlosCantu - New Shutdown Modes and Backups in Firebird 2.0
    122 FBCON2006 A07-DmitryYemanov - Cost-based Optimization and Statistics
    123 FBCON2006 B07-ErickSasse - N-Tier applications with Firebird and RemObjects DataAbstract
    124 FBCON2006 C07-HolgerKlemt - Creating modern database webaplications using Firebird, php and AJAX
    125 FBCON2006 A08-IvanPrenosil - Data Types in Practice/Optimizing Counts(Dual Topics)
    126 FBCON2006 B08-GaryFranklin/BillOliver - Real World Applications Using Firebird
    127 FBCON2006 C08-AlexSkvirski - Firebird Connectivity Tools or is there any Performance loss out there?
    128 FBCON2006 A09-RomanRokytskyy - External routines:interface, usage and possibilities
    129 FBCON2006 B09-MauricioLongo - Applications with Morfik WebOS and Firebird
    130 FBCON2006 C09-DmitriKouzmenko - Optimizing Server Performance
    131 FBCON2006 A10-HolgerKlemt - Creating Transaction Logs in Interbase
    132 FBCON2006 B10-MilanBabuskov - Managing Metadata Chaanges
    133 FBCON2006 C10-GaryFranklin/BillOliver - Delivering and using the Vulcan embeddet Server as Part of SAS
    134 FBCON2006 D11-VladislavHorsun - New SQL Features in coming Versions of Firebird
    135 FBCON2006 B12-RomanRokytskyy - Jaybird new release new features
    136 FBCON2006 C12-DmitriKouzmenko - Database Health and Corruption
    150 FBCON2005 Andrew Morgan - Embedding and using sophisticated mathematics in Firebird (FBC2005)
    151 FBCON2005 Ann Harrison - Detecting correcting and preventing database corruption (FBC2005)
    152 FBCON2005 Evgeney Putilin - Firebird and Java Stored Procedures (FBC2005)
    153 FBCON2005 Nando Dessena - Deploying Firebird transparently on Windows (FBC2005)
    154 FBCON2005 Paul Reeves - From Basic to Advanced ISQL scripting (FBC2005)
    155 FBCON2005 Fikret Hasovic - Open source Delphi (FBC2005)
    156 FBCON2005 Luiz Paulo de Oliveira Santos - Firebird API in Delphi Lazarus and Free Pascal (FBC2005)
    157 FBCON2005 Jason Wharton - IB Objects for Newbies (FBC2005)
    158 FBCON2005 Luiz Paulo de Oliveira Santos - Techniques for migrating from MySQL to Firebird (FBC2005)
    159 FBCON2005 Stefan Heymann - What Developers Should Know about Character Sets and Unicode etc (FBC2005)
    160 FBCON2005 Lucas Franzen - STORED PROCEDURES (FBC2005)
    161 FBCON2005 Claus Heeg - Migration and integration of other databases into Firebird using Cold Fusion
    162 FBCON2005 Holger Klemt - Setting Up a bidirectional Replication based on EXECUTE STATEMENT Commands
    163 FBCON2005 Paul Ruizendaal - Solution Stacks Built on Firebird and PHP - Another Flame in the LAMP
    164 FBCON2005 Pavel Cisar - Firebird Quality Assurance (FBC2005)
    165 FBCON2005 Dmitri Kouzmenko - Firebird Performance Optimization for Different Applications (FBC2005)
    166 FBCON2005 Thomas Steinmaurer - Audit Trails Transaction Log Redo with the IB LogManager product family
    167 FBCON2005 Milan Babuskov - The power of Firebird events (FBC2005)
    168 FBCON2005 Martijn Tonies - The Firebird system tables (FBC2005)
    169 FBCON2005 Kim Madsen - SOA using kbmMW (FBC2005)
    170 FBCON2005 Daniel Magin - Developing DataBase ASP.net Application with Delphi 2006 (FBC2005)
    171 FBCON2005 Mauricio Longo - Dynamic Databases - A Conceptual Overview (FBC2005)
    172 FBCON2005 Carlos Cantu - PSQL in Action (FBC2005)
    173 FBCON2005 Jim Starkey - Configuring Firebird and Vulcan (FBC2005)
    174 FBCON2005 Jim Starkey - Vulcan status features and goals (FBC2005)
    175 FBCON2005 Arno Brinkman - Understanding the Optimizer I (FBC2005)
    176 FBCON2005 Paul Beach Dmitry Yemanov - Firebird future development (FBC2005)
    177 FBCON2005 Mauricio Longo - FireQ - Firebird Based Messaging Infrastructure (FBC2005)
    178 FBCON2005 Roman Rokytskyy - JayBird - JCA/JDBC driver for Firebird (FBC2005)
    179 FBCON2005 Roman Rokytskyy - JayBird - JCA/JDBC driver for Firebird (FBC2005)
    180 FBCON2005 Lester Caine - Firebird on PHP Integrate or Abstract (FBC2005)
    181 FBCON2005 Jeanot Bijpost - An introduction to Cathedron (FBC2005)
    182 FBCON2005 Andrew Morgan - Creating and managing recursive structures (FBC2005)
    183 FBCON2005 Holger Klemt - Server Performance - How to make your application run faster (FBC2005)
    184 FBCON2005 Ann Harrison - First steps in performance tuning (FBC2005)
    185 FBCON2005 Milan Babuskov - FlameRobin - administration tool for Firebird DBMS (FBC2005)
    186 FBCON2005 Claus Heeg - Building ERP web applications based on Firebird and cold Fusion (FBC2005)
    187 FBCON2005 Serg Vostrikov - Getting Started with FIBPlus (FBC2005)
    188 FBCON2005 Arno Brinkman Dmitry Yemanov - Under the hood Data access paths (FBC2005)
    189 FBCON2005 Pavel Cisar - Making your own Firebird PowerTools with Python (FBC2005)
    190 FBCON2005 Stefan Heymann - Using Firebird for Quality Management Software (FBC2005)
    191 FBCON2005 Serg Vostrikov - Special FIBPlus features network traffic optimization and FIBPlus
    Repository
    192 FBCON2005 Fikret Hasovic - Firebird in n-tier setup with Delphi and kbmMW (FBC2005)
    193 FBCON2005 Jeanot Bijpost - From Model Driven Development to Model Driven Architectures (FBC2005)
    194 FBCON2005 Alex Peshkov - New security features in Firebird 2.0 (FBC2005)
    196 FBCON2005 Arno Brinkman - Understanding the Optimizer II (FBC2005)
    200 FBCON2004 Frank Ingermann - The Sparkey of the year Event (FBC2004)
    201 FBCON2004 Ann Harrison - QLI (FBC2004)
    202 FBCON2004 Helen Borrie - Creating a shop (the new Firebird Example Database) (FBC2004)
    203 FBCON2004 Helen Borrie - Stocking the Shelves and Browsing the store (FBC2004)
    204 FBCON2004 Arno Brinkmann - Understanding the Optimizer in Firebird (FBC2004)
    205 FBCON2004 Arno Brinkmann - The Optimizer in SQL Examples (FBC2004)
    206 FBCON2004 Pavel Cisar - Wrestling Firebird (FBC2004)
    207 FBCON2004 Pavel Cisar - Firebird QA (FBC2004)
    208 FBCON2004 Lucas Franzen - STORED PROCEDURES I (FBC2004)
    209 FBCON2004 Lucas Franzen - STORED PROCEDURES II (FBC2004)
    210 FBCON2004 Ann Harrison - Lock print (FBC2004)
    211 FBCON2004 Frank Ingermann - Client Performance (FBC2004)
    212 FBCON2004 Frank Ingermann - FBFreeDB (FBC2004)
    213 FBCON2004 Holger Klemt - The Power of “Execute Statement” (FBC2004)
    214 FBCON2004 Holger Klemt - corrupt Databases, examples and Solutions (FBC2004)
    215 FBCON2004 Holger Klemt - Firebird performance Workshop (FBC2004)
    216 FBCON2004 Manuel Morbitzer - PHP and Firebird (FBC2004)
    217 FBCON2004 Manuel Morbitzer - Firebird and Visual Studio .NET (FBC2004)
    218 FBCON2004 Paul Reeves - Building Firebird Installation Kits for Win32 (FBC2004)
    219 FBCON2004 Paul Reeves - Firebird System Tables (FBC2004)
    220 FBCON2004 Nicolay Samofatov - External tables (FBC2004)
    221 FBCON2004 Nicolay Samofatov - new backup technology (FBC2004)
    222 FBCON2004 Jim Starkey - Vulcan Architecture (FBC2004)
    223 FBCON2004 Jim Starkey - Vulcan Design Goals (FBC2004)
    224 FBCON2004 Thomas Steinmaurer - Serverseitige Programmier-Techniken (FBC2004)
    225 FBCON2004 Thomas Steinmaurer - Neuerungen in Firebird 1.5 (FBC2004)
    226 FBCON2004 Martijn Tonies - An Introduction to Firebird for database developers (FBC2004)
    227 FBCON2004 Martijn Tonies - The Firebird PSQL language (FBC2004)
    228 FBCON2004 Jason Wharton - IBO and Firebird / IBO Advanced (FBC2004)
    229 FBCON2004 Hilmar Brodner - AvERP I Grundlagen und Administration (FBC2004)
    230 FBCON2004 Hilmar Brodner - AvERP II Programmierung (FBC2004)
    231 FBCON2004 Paul Ruizendaal - Moving applications from Oracle to Firebird (FBC2004)
    232 FBCON2004 Artur Anjos - Using Firebird over the Internet (FBC2004)
    233 FBCON2004 Bastian Morbitzer - PHPtree - Firebird basierende PHP Anwendung für Dokumentation und
    Hilfssystem (FBC2004)
    234 FBCON2004 Bastian Morbitzer - The Future of a global Firebird Online Documentation System (FBC2004)
    235 FBCON2004 Lester Caine - PHP - Life after Builder6 (FBC2004)
    236 FBCON2004 Marc o Dunehue - Firebird and Java I (FBC2004)
    237 FBCON2004 Marc o Donehue - Firebird and Java II (FBC2004)
    238 FBCON2004 Bernd UA - Delphi 8 and Firebird .NET Provider (FBC2004)
    101 HK Presentation: Improving performance with IBExpert (Budapest 02/2005)
    102 HK Presentation: A review of IBExpert’s range of functions (Budapest 02/2005)

    German only:

    001. HK German Tutorial: Grundlagen SQL und Einrichtung IBExpert Demodatenbank
    002. HK German Tutorial: Einfache Firebird SQL Befehle
    003. HK German Tutorial: Tabellen mit SQL verknüpfen
    004. HK German Tutorial: Where Bedingungen
    005. HK German Tutorial: Erstellen einer eigenen Datenbank
    006. HK German Tutorial: Tabellen erstellen
    007. HK German Tutorial: Tabellen mit Fremdschlüssel erstellen
    008. HK German Tutorial: Benutzer erstellen und Rechte vergeben
    009. HK German Tutorial: Datenbank Parameter und Hintergrundwissen
    010. HK German Tutorial: Tabellen abfragen, Indizes erstellen und SQL Performance vergleichen
    011. HK German Tutorial: Auswirkungen langer Char Felder
    012. HK German Tutorial: UDF benutzerdefinierte Funktionen einbinden
    013. HK German Tutorial: IBExpert Demo Database Collection
    014. HK German Tutorial: Datenbankdesigner Entity Relationship Modeling
    016. HK German Tutorial: Erstellen eines triggerbasierenden Transaktionslogs
    017. HK German Tutorial: Logging in IBExpert und Trigger in der Employee Datenbank
    018. HK German Tutorial: Sprachelemente für Stored Procedures
    019. HK German Tutorial: Rekursionen in Prozeduren und erste eigene Prozeduren
    020. HK German Tutorial: Prozeduren entwickeln und optimieren
    021. HK German Tutorial: Trigger entwickeln für Transaktionsprotokolle
    022. HK German Tutorial: Views und Updatable Views
    023. HK German Tutorial: Views für mehrere Tabellen
    024. HK German Tutorial: Wie funktioniert Firebird intern? I
    025. HK German Tutorial: Wie funktioniert Firebird intern? II
    026. HK German Tutorial: Wie funktioniert Firebird intern? III
    027. HK German Tutorial: Wie funktioniert Firebird intern? IV
    028. HK German Tutorial: FBConnections, gfix, Cache und sonstige Parameter festlegen
    029. HK German Tutorial: IBETransactionMonitor, Server Properties, Backup Restore, Logging,
    Quellcodemanagement
    030. HK German Tutorial: IBExpertSQLMonitor, Firebird ODBC und MS Access, Export, IBEBlock ODBC
    031. HK German Tutorial: IBExpert Spezialfunktionen, Plananalyzer, Selektivität,Kommandozeilenprogramme,
    External Files
    032. HK German Tutorial: Installation und Vergleich FB15-FB20, Performanceanalyse, IBExpert Doku, Extract
    Metadaten, Datenbanken reparieren
    033. HK German Tutorial: Alias.conf, firebird.conf, Temp Pfad und Dateien
    034. HK German Tutorial: firebird.log, Freeadhocudf
    035. HK German Tutorial: Demodatabase Transaktionslog, rfunc UDF, Replikation
    036. HK German Tutorial: Internet Firebirdverbindung mit Zebedee
    037. HK German Tutorial: Testdaten generieren, Performancemessung, Indizes, Plan, Selektivität,
    038. HK German Tutorial: Set Statistics, Indexoptimierung, order by, Fremschlüsselindizes
    039. HK German Tutorial: Datenbankstatistik, Backup Restore Optimierung,
    040. HK German Tutorial: Trigger statt FK, MGA, Versionierung
    041. HK German Tutorial: SQL,in,exists,updateable views,Performance, firebird.conf Konfiguration, lange
    Varchar,Cache
    042. HK German Tutorial: external files,csv export,
    043. HK German Tutorial: IBExpert Export
    044. HK German Tutorial: CSV Import Insertex, Tabelle in andere Datenbank kopieren,
    045. HK German Tutorial: IBExpert.usr Menüs einschränken, Sprachanpassung
    046. HK German Tutorial: mit ibeblock Metadatenextract per Kommandozeile automatisieren und mit DLL in
    eigene Programme integrieren
    047. HK German Tutorial: Metadatenextract mit Daten, Blobunterstützung in Scripts
    048. HK German Tutorial: ibeblock ODBC Zugriff, MS Access Datenbanken einbinden,Daten von ODBC nach
    Firebird kopieren
    049. HK German Tutorial: ibeblock Datenbanken verknüpfen
    050. HK German Tutorial: Dateien importieren, Bilder importieren per Script
    051. HK German Tutorial: Dateien per Script updaten
    052. HK German Tutorial: Verbindungen über das Internet mit Zebedee verschlüsseln und komprimieren, Dyndns
    mit no-ip.com nutzen
    053. HK German Tutorial: Performance Internetbetrieb von Datenbankservern, Pingzeit,Route
    054. HK German Tutorial: HK Services, Transaction Monitor
    055. HK German Tutorial: Delphi BDE Applikationen auf IBObjects umstellen mit GReplace
    056. HK German Tutorial: Datenbanken nachträglich Character Set und Dialekt konvertieren
    057. HK German Tutorial: Extrahieren von Daten und ausführen per DLL
    058. HK German Tutorial: Applikation Optimieren durch Einsatz spezieller IBO Komponenten, IB_DSQL,
    IB_CURSOR
    059. HK German Tutorial: Performancevergleich IBO Query, IBO Cursor, BDE Query etc.
    060. HK German Tutorial: Performanceprobleme durch Autobackground Commit Close Open vermeiden, Master
    Detail
    061. HK German Tutorial: Lazarus: Open Source Delphi für Windows und Linux, Zeos, AvERP Open Source
    Warenwirtschaft, Datenmodellierung, Laufzeitformular

    Thursday, January 18, 2007

    Oracle Plugs 51 Security Flaws

    Oracle on Tuesday released fixes for 51 vulnerabilities that affect its software products. The update is part of the company's quarterly patch cycle. Oracle preannounced its patch release Thursday, when, for the first time, it published an advance notification so customers could plan ahead to apply the fixes.

    MSBuild in Next Delphi

    Nick Hodges has some interesting news about the next version of Delphi.

    In a non-tech thread in the forums, Nick Hodges (Delphi Product Manager) has stated that "the next release of Delphi will use MSBuild as the build engine". This is very good news, as the Project Manager in recent versions of Delphi got some extra features and a change to install build tools, but with limited capabilities. MSBuild, instead, is the Microsoft build tool used in Visual Studio and allows developers to customize the build (and deployment) process with many different tasks.

    At the moment you can achieve something similar using third-party build tools, like FinalBuilder. I think this is a very good addition, also because the same build process will be available within the IDE and fromt he command line. Moreover, you'll be able to use MSBuild also for C++ Builder (while in Visual Studio C++ compilations are not managed by MSBuild). More about this in David Dean blog.

    Wednesday, January 17, 2007

    JEDI VCS 2.41 server release

    The JVCS team is happy to announce the JEDI VCS 2.41 server release,
    which is intended as a maintenance release for 2.40 but also includes some
    new features.

    What's changed:
    -----------------

    - support of MySQL5 directly out of the installer (ZEOS 6.6)
    - Multiple logins with the same user is now possible which allows the simultaneous use of the standalone JVCS Client and the JVCS IDE client
    - faster file transfer (get, checkout, checkin...) especially on large files and in LAN environment
    - minor bug fixes

    Complete change history is available through the JVCS tracker on
    http://homepages.codegear.com/jedi/issuetracker

    Downloads are available from here:
    http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=75615&package_id=76144

    Updating is quite easy, stop the JVCS server application or the JVCS
    service, run the installer, restart server application or service. There is no
    database change.

    JVCS 2.41 client release will follow soon.
    We also will release a unstable JVCS 2.5 with branching support soon.

    Friday, January 12, 2007

    Vulcan and Firebird merging plan

    Dmitry Yemanov posted to the Firebird-devel list his proposals for merging the Firebird 2 code with the Vulcan code.

    Here it comes, with comments from others:


    Key Points
    ----------

    1) The result of the merge is a new CVS tree
    2) Modules refactored by Jim are taken from the Vulcan tree
    3) The rest is taken from the FB tree
    4) All the pieces are adjusted to fit each other
    5) Vulcan's code is fixed to use the project coding rules


    Details
    -------

    1) The common library will mostly based on the FB
    class library with some classes taken from Vulcan (QSort, SyncObject,
    StatusVector, etc). The common string class is Firebird::String. The
    exception handling is based on the FB classes with some changes. Based
    on Alex's research, I conclude that the memory manager should be taken
    from Vulcan and adapted to the FB pool infrastructure. The configuration
    stuff is also taken from Vulcan.

    Responsible:
    - Dmitry (syncs and other platform specifics)
    - Alex (memory management, classes library, exceptions)
    - Adriano (config stuff) -- ???

    2) The Y-valve is taken from Vulcan and fixed to fit the new common
    library and the project coding conventions. An exception handling and
    MT-safety review is required, as well as some cleanup.

    Responsible: Dmitry

    3) The lock manager is taken from Vulcan, cleaned up and reviewed. I
    don't agree with the way how the two cache modes are implemented there,
    it looks ugly. Also, we need to carefully examine all the Windows and
    Solaris specific changes made there.

    Responsible: Dmitry

    4) The JRD files are merged from the both trees. The page cache code and
    the metadata classes (as well as some other refactored code like blob
    classes, the mover, etc) are taken from Vulcan with a careful review.
    Other files (cmp/exe/dfw/etc) are taken from FB and adjusted to the
    Vulcan synchronization and metadata cache classes.

    Arno Brinkman commented: opt, btr, idx, Rsbxxx modules should be inherited from Vulcan IMO.
    Only missing pieces are the INTL stuff, which is not that big.
    //end of comment

    Dmitry Yemanov commented: As for Rsb modules, I agree. The same for opt.cpp and Optimizer.cpp, as
    they're already in sync with HEAD. I just want them to be ported at the end.

    But why do you want to preserve Vulcan's btr.cpp and idx.cpp? AFAIK,
    HEAD is more up-to-date in those parts (and more patches are in the way).
    //end of comment



    Responsible:
    - Dmitry (synchronization, metadata, other)
    - Vlad (page cache, metadata)
    - Alex (execute statement, authentication)
    - Adriano (INTL stuff, other)

    5) The DSQL files are taken from Vulcan, with a total review of the
    metadata cache integration. This is the hardest part of the merge, IMO.
    I'm not satisfied with the half-way DSQL integration done in Vulcan, but
    I'm not sure we can offer something better in the short term. Changes in
    pass1/gen/make are ported from the FB codebase. The parser generator is
    most likely to be migrated from FB, it just lacks the MT-safe skeleton
    implementation. A replacement with a hand-made RDP can be considered in
    the long term.

    Arno Brinkman commented: Although it's for the long term, i send you something for review a long time ago?
    //end of comment

    Dmitry Yemanov commented: Yep, and I didn't have time to comment on it properly. Mea culpa.
    //end of comment

    Responsible: Vlad, Dmitry, Adriano, Alex

    6) The remote subsystem is taken from Vulcan, unless Alex objects. The
    multi-client mode related fixes by Alex, protocol extensions by
    Alex/Vlad/myself and various bugfixes should be backported from FB.
    Amount of our changes there is not very big, so it looks doable.

    Responsible: Alex, Vlad, Dmitry

    7) The entire INTL aware code is taken from the FB codebase, a proper
    MT-related review is to be performed.

    Responsible: Adriano

    8) Utilities code is to be taken from FB, the only merge-related thing
    is an interface with the Vulcan services provider. The UDF libraries are
    taken from FB. Guardian is to be considered for dying.

    Responsible: ?


    Special Notes
    -------------

    1) The non-shared-cache mode is preserved, but it should be
    implemented using the config switch rather than #ifdefs. In particular,
    it means that synchronization primitives should unconditionally exist in
    all engine favors.

    2) The internal DSQL implementation (FbDbc) is not ported from Vulcan.
    We should either make it much more light-weight (to not carry the
    redundant semantics like metadata representation), or consider some
    other connectivity code, or keep GDML in the sources for the time being.
    Any volunteer for this task?

    3) I don't expect any serious INTL issues, as most of the INTL aware
    code will be taken from FB, but I expect Adriano to track all the
    related changes.

    4) The RSB refactoring is ported after all else is done. Being not
    critical part of Vulcan/FB3, it was one of the most buggiest parts of
    Vulcan and I'm not sure we solved all the issues. Also, Arno intends to
    make some improvements based on that code in the meantime.

    Arno Brinkman commented: Almost done, only more testing and some refactoring left.
    //end of comment

    Dmitry Yemanov commented: That's great :-)
    //end of comment


    5) If anybody not explicitly counted as an assignee above would like to
    assist in some parts, it would be appreciated.

    6) New code is committed into CVS on a per subsystem basis.


    Merge Steps
    -----------

    1) HEAD is cleaned up to follow the new threading rules. It mostly means
    getting rid of the non-MT code branches (including signal-based ASTs).
    We could also perform whatever global cleanup we consider useful. It
    could be done in a separate CVS branch, if we'd like to keep the cleaned
    version reserved for production.

    Status: 80% done (in my private tree).

    2) Lock manager is replaced with the Vulcan's one, we perform some dbb
    adjustments and global synchronizations. Scheduler is removed. At this
    point we have a skeleton of the non-shared-cache implementation (based
    on the CS code) that could be tested.

    Status: 50% done (LM only).

    3) Y-valve is ported from Vulcan, DSQL is trivially moved into the
    engine. At this point we have a proper architecture in place.

    Status: 50% done (Y-valve only).

    4) JRD is merged. We get rid of the SUPERSERVER/SUPERCLIENT/REQUESTER
    conditionals. NBACKUP is carefully reviewed for compatibility with the
    Vulcan's page cache.

    5) DSQL is merged. Compiled statement cache is implemented.

    6) INTL is adjusted to the new code.

    At this point, we can start testing the embedded mode.

    7) Remote subsystem is replaced with Vulcan's one.

    Here we have the server mode working.

    8) Utilities and services are adjusted to the new code.

    Of course, some items could be moved in time, e.g. the remote subsystem
    merge could be started earlier.


    Your Major Question
    -------------------

    Why is FB used as the background for the whole tree if many of its
    subsystems will be replaced with Vulcan's ones? My answer consists of
    three parts:

    1) Using the FB codebase, we may have the initial steps performed
    without losing the stability much (and hence test the beast
    incrementally), because we replace subsystems one per one. With Vulcan
    being the base point, we start with bugs everywhere.

    2) Number of post-Vulcan-diverge changes in FB is really large. Tracking
    them one by one is not going to work and using a visual diff tool will
    be much complicated for the refactored modules. In this situation,
    porting the design ideas into a working code looks easier to me.

    3) Unfortunately, Vulcan's code is far from looking as a production one.
    Currently, it's a mixture of FB-style and Vulcan-style code that behave
    differently, with some parts being commented out or totally broken. It
    requires a total cleanup, reformatting, functional review and fixing. I
    doubt we can afford that now.


    Comments, additions, critique?


    Dmitry

    Papers of Firebird Conference 2006

    The papers (where available) for the Firebird Conference 2006 talks are available for download here (you need to right click and use “Save As”).

    Sunday, January 07, 2007

    LinuxQuestions 2006 Members' Choice Awards

    LinuxQuestions.org has just launched the voting for its 2006 Members' Choice Awards. The awards enable Linux community members to select their favorite products of the year in 21 categories, including distribution, browser, office suite, desktop environment, and database.

    The polls will close on Feb. 18, with winners being announced shortly afterward. Last year's winners include Ubuntu, Firefox, OpenOffice.org and MySQL. Two years ago Firebird WON!

    Voting in all categories can be done here. Free registration is required at LinuxQuestions.org in order to vote.

    Thursday, January 04, 2007

    Devrace BlazeTop (former SQLHammer) version 1.7

    Devrace BlazeTop (former SQLHammer) version 1.7 is available for immediate download. Besides many fixes and enhancements it includes Firebird 2.0 support, SQL Editor optimization (text syntax highlighting) and full UNICODE support. Now you also ave an option to purchase BlazeTop for the price of 129 Euro only!

    DelphiSpeedUp Delphi/BCB/BDS IDE plugin Version 2.3

    A plugin for Delphi/C++Builder 5/6/7/2005, BDS 2006 and Turbo Delphi/C++/C# Professional. It speeds up the time to load the IDE and it also improves the whole speed of the IDE. This is achieved by replacing some often used RTL functions by FastCode function that are optimized for the used CPU. It also adds some caches for function that work on filenames like ExpandFileName().

    Important information: All these optimizations do not affect the compiled projects in any way. They are made in memory so all the files on disk are not modified. Uninstalling DelphiSpeedUp makes every change undone because the optimizations are not persistent. They only exist in memory and are limited to the Delphi/BCB/BDS process.

    WARNING: Not every access violation in DelphiSpeedUp.dll is a bug in DelphiSpeedUp. Actually many of the exceptions in the RTL package are now thrown in the DelphiSpeedUp.dll because the RTL functions are replaced by the DelphiSpeedUp functions and wrong parameters like nil-pointers, invalid pointers, ... now lead to access violations in the replacement code.

    Features:
    • Improves Delphi/BCB/BDS's load times
    • Optimizes often used RTL functions by functions form the FastCode project
    • All optimizations are done in memory and do not change any file on disk
    • Adds a "Close all and kill" menu item to the "File" menu that terminates the IDE very fast
    • The fast termination is used when you close the IDE while pressing the CTRL key.
    Changelog
    • Version 2.3 (2007-01-01)
      • Added: Package Import Resolver for many System.pas functions and TList/TObjectList/TInterfaceList
      • Added: Some FastSys tweaks to improve speed in runtime packages
      • Added: .NET's SetThreadPriority(HIGHEST) during IDE loading is now ignored (Delphi 2005, BDS 2006)
      • Added: The IDE is terminated faster by pressing CTRL when closing the main form.
      • Added: DelphiSpeedUp calls BeginUpdate/EndUpdate for BDS's Tool Palette during startup.
    The new DelphiSpeedUp not only improves the speed of the RTL, it also removes the import table calls for some often called compiler magic functions. Another new function of DelphiSpeedUp is that the SetThreadPriority(HIGHEST) call from the .NET framework is ignored. It is now possible to start other applications while the IDE starts without the feeling that something blocks the whole computer. (Why on earth must the .NET framework "steal" CPU time?)

    MySQL Falcon Storage Engine Open Sourced - on /.

    From the Sweet Mother of Databases dept.:The code for the Falcon Storage Engine for MySQL has been released as open source. Jim Starkey, known as the father of Interbase, is behind its creation; previously he was involved with the Firebird SQL database project.

    article on slashdot via osdir.com

    Firebird 1.5.4 Release Candidate 1

    Pre-release builds of a release candidate for Firebird 1.5.4 are ready for testing.

    Friday, December 29, 2006

    Happy New Year!

    I would like to wish a very happy new year to all Firebird and Delphi users and developers!
    It seems that 2007 will be a very exciting year for Firebird, with two scheduled releases (2.1 and 3.0) and for Delphi as well, with two scheduled releases (Delphi Highlander and Delphi for Vista) .

    Thursday, September 07, 2006

    Review: Borland Turbo Explorer

    With the free Turbo Explorer line, Borland brings programming to the masses. Each of the four Turbo Explorer 'personalities' targets a different combination of programming language and platform: Turbo Delphi and Turbo C++ for Windows, and Turbo Delphi and Turbo C# for .NET. There are over 200 components for building programs, but the abundance of features may be overwhelming to new users.

    Turbo Delphi - The Return!

    Turbo Delphi - The Return! - In the good old days, Turbo Pascal was small, fast and inexpensive. Now Turbo Delphi is (we hope) small and fast. And it's free!

    ZeosDBO Latest Download

    Here is the link for the last ZeosDBO component (but it's not the stable version) http://users.telenet.be/mdaems/ at least you can know that the development of this component is still exist

    FDD on TV

    HardSoft TV presented in program #275 an interview with Carlos H. Cantu recorded during the 3º Firebird Developers Day. You can watch it online now (audio is in portuguese). In the next programs (released every 2 weeks), there will be other interviews with other FDD speakers.

    Firebird Maestro

    SQL Maetro - A new administration tool for Firebird Databases is available for download (windows only).

    Meiji talks about FDD

    Meiji Kimura posted an on-line article in IT-Media about Firebird Developers Day. Non-japanese speakers can try some online translation tools to be able to read the article.

    FlameRobin 0.7.5 released

    Source and binary packages for Windows (setup.exe and .zip) and Linux (gtk1 and gtk2 variants) are available for download. MacOSX and Debian/Ubuntu ones should follow soon (and probably FreeBSD one too). We are also looking for someone to try if things work on Solaris too.


    New features
    - System tables now are available in main tree view
    - Compatibility with Firebird 2.0
    - SQL editor: Autocompletion of column/parameter names and old/new aliases in triggers

    Enhancements and Bug fixes
    - SQL Editor: Use row:col instead of col:row in statusbar
    - SQL Editor: Autocompletion now works for case
    - sensitive object names
    - SQL Editor: Autocompletion now works for names containing $ character
    - Data grid: "Fetch all records" and "Cancel fetching all records" commands
    - Data grid: "Copy records as Update" command
    - SQL script execution now always stops on error
    - Confirm dropping of items from main tree
    - Fixed bugs related to character set conversions
    - Fixed DDL extraction for various object types

    Download at : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=124340
    For known issues please see our bug tracker at: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?group_id=124340&atid=699234

    1st Russian Firebird Conference

    Dear Friends,

    IBase, Inc is glad to announce The 1st Russian Firebird Conference. It will take place in Moscow, Russia, October 14, 2006.
    Firebird Core developers, vendors of many related products and well-known enthusiasts will be there to present the most recent news and plans regarding Firebird 2, new versions of developers products and so on.

    Check-in to conference (in Russian):
    http://www.ibase.ru/conf2006_reg.htm

    If you have any questions regarding participation or sponsorship please feel free to email conf@ibase.ru.

    With best regards,
    Alexey Kovyazin
    IBase.ru
    IBSurgeon.com

    Where are the Mysql, Firebird books in your shop?

    Did you seen the Firebird book in local shops ?
    One mysql user is complaining that mysql books aren’t in the “database” area [ED: seems that he spoted one firebird book]

    Using the ActiveRecord-JDBC Adapter

    There has been one official release of the ActiveRecord-JDBC adapter, a 0.1 that has basic SQL support for MySQL.[Ed: Firebird support will be added soon , see bellow] …

    We are planning a second release of the JDBC adapter very shortly. It should have reasonably solid migrations/DDL support for MySQL, Oracle, and Firebird, as well as some level of support for HSQLDB, Derby, and others. It’s moving along quickly now that it’s been spun off into its own jruby-extras project. You can go there or to the jruby-extras SVN repository to grab the bleeding-edge source from SVN.

    GCafeSoft Update - blog

    GCafeSoft is a program, written absolutely for Gaming Cafe owners.

    The Server is a robust-.NET based application, based on the v1.1 .NET Framework. The database is also as robust an element in the Server — architecture being based on the Firebird Embedded Architecture.

    dnfBB final beta available for download

    dnfBB is a powerful and fast 3 Tier, C# / .Net discussion board or forum. With native support for multiple forums within the same database structure which fully utilises Firebird’s features (Stored procs, triggers etc)

    The final beta version of dnfBB is now available for download, this version includes all the features that were allocated to Version 1. Without a doubt there will be a few imperfections to iron out before the final release, however as far as functionality goes this is now complete (Firebird version only at the moment).

    URL’s
    Home: http://sourceforge.net/projects/dnfbb/
    Forum: http://dnfbb.fbtalk.net/

    Monday, September 04, 2006

    Firebird 2.0 on-line manual

    I’ve placed the first book of a Firebird 2.0 manual on-line:
    http://www.janus-software.com/fbmanual/

    This book is about the stored procedure and trigger language “PSQL” and
    consists of about 100 web pages. I would expect that all 8 planned
    books will be online before the end of the year.

    The on-line manual is user editable, in the sense that users can post
    extra information, examples and corrections — in the style of the on-
    line PHP manual.

    All feedback is welcome.

    Enjoy!

    Paul

    Friday, September 01, 2006

    MySQL drops BerkeleyDB engine - what next?

    Joe Brockmeyer writes: "With the 5.1.12 release, MySQL will be dropping the Berkeley DB (BDB) storage engine from its list of supported database engines. Some observers have suggested that this move is connected to Oracle's purchase of Sleepycat, and that InnoDB may be next. However, Brian Aker, MySQL's director of architecture, says that they're unlikely to drop InnoDB, and the Berkeley engine is being dropped for technical reasons."

    Read more

    Thursday, August 31, 2006

    DevCo Developer Conference Moved to Q1 2007

    The DevCo group within Borland had previously announced a Developer Conference for the fall of 2006. Now the conference has been officially delayed to "a date (to be determined) during the first quarter of 2007", to quote Christine Ellis. She continues saying that "No further information regarding specific dates or location is available at this time. The decision to postpone the Conference was based on many factors including conference location availability."

    Wednesday, August 30, 2006

    IBReplicator V2.1.10

    IBReplicator V2.1.10 is now available for download. Updated information is available in the release notes.

    How to connect InterBase database to MS SQL server

    1. Install IBProvider on a server where MSSQL works.
    2. Launch "SQL Server Enterprise Manager".
    3. Connect to MSSQL server that will work with InterBase database.
    4. Go to tree item "Sequrity\Linked Servers".
    Read more

    Oracle Takes Another Page From Open Source

    "Every organization in the world has some form of Microsoft Access and Lotus Notes. And they want nothing more than to get off this technology or older technology that's not Web based or secure." And not every open source project is all that easy, he added. Look at the complexity of open source scripting language PHP. "It can be an esoteric language, and it can be difficult to read and understand some of the scripting language. With APEX, they have an easier time with declaratives, for example," Hichwa said.

    Read more

    Firebird,Flamerobin,KinterbasDB included in archlinux

    Here are firebird package details , they have python-kinterbasdb+flamerobin included in the linux distro, If you don't know what is archlinux therea are some reviews on the distrowatch.org

    Firebird inside: phpBB 3.0 Beta2

    We are pleased to announce the availability of the phpBB3 Beta2 package . With this second beta release we are a great step forward. There is no update path provided due to a number of extensive database schema changes. Everyone having the first beta installed need to re-install the software. If you do a new installation, please be sure to also remove any remaining files, especially those within the cache folder.

    Read more

    Firebird and Visual Studio .NET 2005 Data Designer Access (DDEX)

    There is a new chapter in the Firebird Tutorial for .NET : Firebird Data Access Designer (DDEX) installation . Follow these instructions to get Firebird support in the Visual Studio .NET 2005 (Standard and up): Browse Firebird databases in the Server Explorer Use "Configure Data Source" Wizard to configure SqlDataSource component Connection Properties editor etc. No need for Visual Studio SDK! Posted by Dan on the FirebirdDotNet Blog

    Read more

    Firebird marked as stable on gentoo linux sparc architecture

    Here is the Firebird's Gentoo page (compiled with gcc4.1) and there is more info in the Changelog

    Firebird inside: OroTimesheet

    OroLogic uses firebird in their product OroTimesheet Here is what they say about firebird :) OroTimesheet 5 uses the database Firebird 1.5 to store its data. Firebird is a relational database that can be installed on Windows, Linux, Solaris and other platforms. Using Firebird with OroTimesheet 5 gives users a great reliability and stability (relational database), a low licensing cost (Firebird is free, only OroTimesheet 5 licenses must be bought).

    Read more

    Do Small Businesses Fear Open Source?

    "Fully half of small and medium-sized businesses say they use little to no open source software. An additional 20% say they use it only for applications primarily used by IT. A key issue for emerging enterprises is the depth and quality of support available to deploy and troubleshoot open source software."

    Read more

    Firebird inside: "Help Desk for IIS"

    Help Desk for IIS is a web-based help desk software solution for delivering customer service and support. It easily installs on your MS web server. All information is stored in a Firebird database, and the web pages themselves are produced by server-side ISAPI extension.

    Read more

    Sybase leaves Silicon Valley

    While a wave of consolidation has racked the software world of Silicon Valley in recent years, John Chen, the chief executive of Sybase, has managed to stay under the radar and keep his company profitable. Starting in 1998, Sybase, a maker of relational database software, embarked on a mission to become a leader in the nascent market for mobile information.

    Read more

    Firebird *unofficial* FULL setup for Windows

    See the project page www.parmaja.com/projects/firebirdsetup/ or directly download from here. It includes: Flamerobin GUI tool, FBMonitor tool, the FirebirdSQL FBConfig + alias manager, and FBServiceMonitor monitor. The full InnoSetup script is inlcuded so you can rebuild the setup again with your options.

    Firebird drives more banking applications

    A Russian company specialising in banking software has released a lite version of it's OLAP and datawarehouse system "Nostradamus", which is based on the Firebird open source RDBMS. The full version of "Nostradamus" software run on Oracle 8i and later. The system was made compatible with Firebird in all mostly used aspects, such as visual database table and view editor, glossary system, data sources and receivers with server-side logs support, reports etc. Basically this software is a toolkit for rapid [...]

    Read more

    The case for function based indexes - part two

    Some time ago I wrote about function based indexes, showing a PostgreSQL based case, right now I'll show a Firebird based example, due to the fact that Firebird 2.0 supports Expression Indexes, which are my good old function based indexes. Read More on pabloj's blog

    Firebird used in an large telemetry system - they need an developer

    We are looking for a database developer to work on two related large scale utility radio telemetry projects. The development uses the Firebird (Interbase) database on a Linux platform with a web based user interface. The system connects large numbers of remote telemetry units with the database using custom radio hardware and communications Read More about the job description and system

    On Embedded Firebird and nHibernate

    Was experimenting with embedded Firebird today with nHibernate. Wanted to see if an embedded database could keep up with a highly proprietary flat file format for data lookups. Read More on this blog

    Wednesday, August 23, 2006

    InterBase on a Windows Cluster with Failover

    Anders Melander posted these instructions for configuring InterBase on a Windows cluster with failover to the newsgroups a while back.

    Hyper-Threading and Shared CPU Cache

    Interesting post from Slava Oks on hyper-threading. The long and the short of it is that low-priority threads which touch a lot of memory can really hurt a high-priority thread on the other logical processor by trashing the shared cache. Yet another reason to disable hyper-threading on servers.

    Using Pentaho with Firebird

    To use Firebird as a database source for queries in your pentaho solution you need very little things

    Flamerobin as a GUI for embedded Firebird - Howto

    In general you just need to have Flamerobin connect to Embedded Firebird through local protocol, my setup with Firebird 1.5.3 is like this

    Monday, August 21, 2006

    Voting DevCo Conference Talks

    You can vote for talks for the next DevCo Conference, although it seems few people have done that.

    If you follow Delphi news, you probably know DevCo is hosting a Developer Conference next falls in the San Francisco Bay Area. As usual, potential speakers were invited to submit topics for their talks. Differently from the past, the panel in charge of the conference program has asked the community to vote for your 10 favorite topics. Voting taks place here. Notice you can both rate submissions and vote them, although it is not clear if rating will matter.

    Source: Marco Cantu

    Thursday, August 17, 2006

    Turbo Videos

    A number of interesting videos have appeared on the DevCo Turbos web site, I guess more will be coming.

    Tuesday, August 15, 2006

    V.2.0 Release Candidate 4 Released with a Caveat

    Release Candidate 4 for Firebird 2.0 should start to appear in the mirrors today. Unfortunately, due to a late-breaking issue that was reported and confirmed after these builds were in the system, it should not be treated as production-ready, yet.

    The issue has been addressed and is undergoing QA now. RC 5 should appear before the end of the month. In the meantime, please look at the fixes between RC3 and RC4 and check that any issues you had have been satisfactorily resolved.

    Monday, August 14, 2006

    Firebird 2 Release Candidate 4

    We are pleased to invite you to download your preferred binary kit for Firebird 2 Release Candidate 4. Though very close, this is still a field-testing release. Please check any problem areas you encountered in RC 3 and report to the Firebird-devel list without delay if something isn't working as you expect.
    Please note also that this release will NOT become the final one, due to an issue that appeared after these builds were made.

    Tuesday, August 08, 2006

    Turbo News!

    Be sure to go and Digg this article.

    ComputerWorld Australia: Borland revives 'Turbo' for developer tools

    Neil Rubenking in PC Magazine: New Borland Line Salutes Turbo Pascal Spirit

    The Press Release: Borland's Developer Tools Group Announces Plans to Rev Up Classic Turbo(TM)

    eWeek: Borland Brings Back Its Turbo Tools

    Source: Nick Hodges

    Delphi Wiki

    A Delphi Wiki has been started on http://delphi.wikia.com. I think it's a brilliant idea and I hope it takes off well and becomes a great community resource. So please also spread the word to other Delphi developers.

    Borland’s Developer Tools Group Announces Plans to Rev Up Classic Turbo™

    Borland’s Turbo Pascal® Pioneered Early Software Development Tooling; New Turbo™ Products Offer a Fast and Easy Way to Develop Microsoft® Windows® and .NET Applications

    CUPERTINO, Calif. — August 8, 2006 — Today, the Developer Tools Group of Borland Software Corporation (NASDAQ: BORL) announced plans to release single language versions of Borland Developer Studio, the company’s development environment for Microsoft® Windows® and .NET applications. Bringing back the popular Turbo™ moniker, the new Borland Turbo products offer low-cost, language-specific rapid application development capabilities for students, hobbyist developers, occupational developers as well as individual professionals.

    The Turbo product set includes Turbo Delphi® for Win32, Turbo Delphi for .NET®, Turbo C++® and Turbo C#®. Each version will be available in two editions: Turbo Explorer, a free downloadable version, and Turbo Professional, a version priced less than $500 which is designed to accept thousands of available third-party tools, components and plug-ins. All Turbo editions enable developers to rapidly build high performance GUI, Database, Web, and Web Services applications for Microsoft Windows. Turbo Delphi for .NET and Turbo C# support the Microsoft .NET and ASP.NET platforms. More information is available at www.turboexplorer.com.

    Monday, August 07, 2006

    A Separate .NET 3.0 and What it Means

    Ricky Tan of Microsoft’s MSDN Blogs hints at an RTM within two months for the new .NET Framework 3.0, and leaves us to wonder just what that means for the .NET Developers out there. For those of you that haven’t heard, Microsoft .NET 3.0 Framework is the new name for WinFX and .NET 2.0 bundled together.

    Read more

    Saturday, August 05, 2006

    Firebird-InterBase Backup Scheduler

    FIBS (Firebird-InterBase Backup Scheduler) V2.02 is available.

    FIBS is a lightweight, solid and fast scheduler so as to meet most backup-tasks-needs. It uses firebird/interbase command line tool gbak.exe to backup safetly and mirrors it to any other disc or computer for extra protection against backup-disc crash. FIBS can create GZip compatible compressed backup files if user want to save backup disc space.
    One of the noticable feature of FIBS is that it has multi-threaded architecture. Every backup process (including zipping) is executed in a separate thread. That is, there is no serialisation of backup process including compressing. Although this means that high grade concurrency is given to users to make them free to set lots of backup tasks just the same time, the main advantages resulted multi-threaded architecture is that backup tasks cannot be plugged by the others in trouble. Definitely this is a must-have for a reliable backup scheduling.
    FIBS is designed to run on Win32 environment and to backup local and remote databases.

    More Sun Lies About NetBeans

    From Mark Damon Hughes:

    This is an email I just received from one of Sun's mailing lists:

    Borland says that it is no longer investing in developer tools. Don't
    worry. We've got you covered.

    Sun has the tools to meet your needs, and they're available at no
    cost! With NetBeans you can easily migrate your applications from
    JBuilder to the NetBeans IDE. Additionally, you can be rest assured
    that your investment is protected through training, developer
    certification, third-party components and technical support.

    Of course, this is all blatant lies, and they should stop letting their filthy lying marketing scumbags stop writing to developers who are smarter than they are; of course, this would mean they'd have to stop writing entirely, which can only be a good thing.

    While Borland, Inc. will soon no longer doing development tools, they are still investing in the development team (see Allen Bauer's blog for some current news), and are spinning off "DevCo" (which will probably get a new name) into a new company. So Borland's tools are not dead, nor are they being neglected during the transition. Everything Sun says and implies in that first paragraph is a lie.

    There is essentially no third-party support for NetBeans, that is simply a lie. To reiterate from last time I checked, there were 34 plugins for NetBeans vs. 1094 plugins for Eclipse. Let's ask the source of all wisdom, if anyone is even interested: netbeans plugin finds 17,600 hits. jbuilder plugin finds 746,000 hits. eclipse plugin finds 13,100,000 hits.

    You can easily migrate your Java projects to any IDE, if you use industry-standard ant build.xml files, so this means nothing. "Training, developer certification, [...] and technical support" are nice ways of saying that NetBeans is so awful and unusable that you'll have to ask Sun how to do anything, and they'll charge you for that information.

    Sun, please stop lying in support of your awful IDE. Accept that it sucks, and move on.

    Oracle: Open Source No Threat in Enterprise Database Space

    Oracle is holding its own in the open-source database space, while not seeing any competition in the enterprise database market from open-source companies, Bob Shimp, the vice president of Oracle’s technology business unit, told eWEEK July 31.

    Read full article here.

    FB 2.0 RC4 is coming…

    The releases notes for FB 2.0 RC4 is already available here. Installers and binaries are currently being built.

    Huge success case using Firebird!

    DBA Software, provider of manufacturing (MRP) solutions for small business, announced that its decision two years ago to base its flagship product, DBA Manufacturing Next-Generation, on the Firebird open-source SQL database has been an unqualified success.
    (…)
    “Our free single-user system, which anyone can download from our Website, is testimony to Firebird’s ease of installation,” continued Zumwalt. “Over the past 18 months, more than 10,000 companies have downloaded and successfully installed our manufacturing software without any support assistance.”

    Read full article here.

    3rd Firebird Developers Day - Report

    The report about the 3rd edition of the Brazilian Firebird Developers Day is now online in both portuguese and english. The main index allows you to check reports of the previous editions too.

    VistaDB 3.0 - World’s First Fully Managed Embedded SQL Database

    The SQL databases available for the .NET Framework today, including Microsoft SQL Server 2005, SQL Everywhere, MySQL and Firebird are all based on unmanaged architectures. Therefore when developers create .NET Framework-based applications that embed any of these SQL databases today, the result is an unmanaged application that does not conform to Microsoft’s guidelines. VistaDB 3.0 changes this by enabling developers build fully managed .NET Framework-based SQL database applications that can run natively on desktops, mobile devices and web servers.

    Full article here.

    Embeddable database update to add MIPS

    Firebird 2.0 article in LinuxDevices.com:

    A project maintaining a lightweight, embeddable database is on the cusp of a major version release. Firebird 2.0 will feature a new MIPS architecture port, as well as new features such as derived tables, support for “execute block,” increased table sizes, and better index code.

    Check full article here.

    open source database conference 2006

    The conference will be held again, same time same place. So mark your calendar November 6th-8th opendbcon 2006 in Frankfurt germany.
    The call for papers is still going on. So submit your topics ASAP. The plan is to have a wide range of topics that appeals to managers, developers/DBA’s as well as hackers on the various projects. I am also hoping that there will be a large panel discussion.
    Read more on Poo-Tee-Weet blog

    FIBPlus 6.45 has been released

    Devrace developers continue to improve FIBPlus library and make it better compatible with Firebird 2 (in particular now FIBPlus supports charset UTF8 fields for Firebird 2). That’s why the newest FIBPlus version 6.45 has a number of improvements and 16 bug fixes. FIBPlus 6.45 also supports C++ Builder 2006. For more details please check Release Notes. Fully functional FIBPlus trial version is available for download.

    FB 2.0 support in Mandriva

    Philippe Makowski posted in FB-Support:

    Just to inform you and despite it is not yet official, but Mandriva is soon releasing their Corporate Server 4 distro and on the same time, their will be an official Firebird 2.0 package that will be available as additional software for this version.
    Mandriva Corporate Server is the sell with support from Mandriva and the Firebird will be supported by IBPhoenix.

    So if you need an 5-year Product Maintenance, professional support, Mandriva will be a good choice.

    Of course, the package will be also available from Cooker.

    dbExpress driver “InterXpress for Firebird” version 1.4.2 released

    Martijn Tonies reported:

    “InterXpress for Firebird” is our driver that supports Borlands
    dbExpress technology! Today is the launch of version 1.4.2
    that includes enhancements and fixes.

    You can download a copy of it http://www.upscene.com .

    Currently supported are Delphi 6, Delphi 7, BDS 2006, Kylix 3
    and C++Builder 6.

    What’s fixed, new and changed? Check it out here:
    List Of Fixes

    Buyer nailed down for Borland tools biz

    Borland is expected to announce a deal during the next few weeks having picked a buyer from a shortlist of three candidates narrowed from 10, sources told The Register. The deal is believed to be worth between $100m and $150m. More info here.

    New IBObjects subrelease supports FB 2.0

    The new IBObjects subrelease (4.6Bc) supports all the new features of Firebird 2.0. You can download a trial and get more info at the IBObjects site.