In the editorial for the 3d issue of Firebird SQL newsletter we'd like to draw your attention to the upcoming Firebird 3. Firebird Project needs more testers for Firebird 3, and even if you are short in time, you can help Firebird with very simple quick test - download Firebird 3, make backup backup/restore of your current Firebird database and try to work with it.
Firebird 3 snapshots (as well as current development snapshots for 2.5.2 and older releases) are available here:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/snapshot-builds/
To report your findings, please use Firebird Tracker: http://tracker.firebirdsql.org (don’t forget to search it for the similar problem).
The news below was collected from FirebirdNews site. You can periodically visit the site or subscribe to its RSS feed to keep up to date in almost real-time with all the news coming from the Firebird community.
The project roadmap has been updated a bit. The change is to boost the v2.1.5 and v2.5.2 releases at the cost of slightly delaying the v3.0 Alpha release. Firebird 2.1.4 was released exactly one year ago, so now it's a promised time for v2.1.5. It has 53 bugs fixed and no critical issues remaining unresolved. Firebird 2.5.1 was released more than 5 months ago and the expected release date for v2.5.2 is approaching the next month. It has 45 issues resolved up-to-date and a few more are in the pipeline. So it makes a lot of sense to release them sooner rather than later. The v3.0 Alpha release will be going through the preparation stage while all three release candidates (v2.0.7, v2.1.5, v2.5.2) are being field tested, so it's likely to appear shortly after the aforementioned releases, in the second quarter. Thanks for your understanding.
More information on the new release is available here: http://www.upscene.com/displaynews.php?item=20120313 This release extends the per-database monitoring capabilities with database statistics (data/index pages and record version information) monitoring. Adds support for ODS 11.1 (Firebird 2.1) monitoring tables and several other improvements and fixes. In combination with the Trace API, this is a powerful and integrated toolset to optimize and tune your Firebird server, database and client application even further. There are also the following new screencasts available: What's new in V2.5 What's new in V2.0 FREE Lite Edition More information on the product is available in the FB TraceManager section on our website, including an edition comparison sheet, webcasts etc.: http://www.upscene.com/go/?go=fbtm
The Firebird Project team is happy to announce that the v2.0.7 release candidate kits for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X platforms are ready for testing. The download page: http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/firebird-2-0-7-rc1/ Enjoy the testing and please don't hesitate to report the found regressions (if any) in the Firebird-Devel list or in the bug tracker. Regards, Dmitry
smallint
IBExpert.stg
setup_customer.exe
setup_trial.exe
setup_personal.exe
The technology trends we have described put SSDs in an unusual position for a cutting-edge technology: SSDs will continue to improve by some metrics (notably density and cost per bit), but everything else about them is poised to get worse. This makes the future of SSDs cloudy: While the growing capacity of SSDs and high IOP rates will make them attractive in many applications, the reduction in performance that is necessary to increase capacity while keeping costs in check may make it difficult for SSDs to scale as a viable technology for some applications.
More information on the new release is available here: http://www.upscene.com/displaynews.php?item=20120215 Beside the Trace API stuff, V2.5.0 now adds per-database monitoring including:
top - 03:20:39 up 10 days, 8:39, 7 users, load average: 2.08, 1.87, 2.15 Tasks: 1732 total, 1 running, 1730 sleeping, 1 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 11.9%us, 4.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 83.5%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.6%si, 0.0%st Mem: 529177288k total, 378587600k used, 150589688k free, 761532k buffers Swap: 1073741816k total, 130612k used, 1073611204k free, 333281232k cached [root mvv bin]# ps aux | grep -c rdb_inet_server 719
mount: /dev/fiob on /mnt/db type ext2 (rw,noatime) df -h: /dev/fiob 587G 423G 135G 76% /mnt/db
Chipsets that can handle 2 TB of RAM and 8 CPU sockets (<=80 cores, <=160 threads) are the largest "commodity" type hardware available now. These are the largest systems we worked on. 8 GB of lock manager space per database should be just enough for them. With the allocation error check in place we'll have this problem solved for the next year or two until larger systems become common.
I've a first attempt for support firebird into django-south. You can give a try at https://bitbucket.org/maxirobaina/south Feedback is wellcome.
FBClone can clone a Firebird database in one shot (instead of backup/restore cycle) and pump data from one database to another with the same structure, it handles metadata / data charset conversion and may be useful to ease database owner change process or to migrate a database between two different firebird versions (eg. 2.1 -> 1.5)
# portsnap fetch
# portsnap extract
# portsnap update
# cd /usr/ports/databases/firebird25-server
# make -DPACKAGE_BUILDING # make install
firebird_enable="YES"
# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/firebird start
# /usr/local/bin/isql-fb
SQL> create database "tmp/first_database.fdb; SQL> connect "/tmp/first_database.fdb" ; Commit current transaction (y/n)?y Committing. Database: "/tmp/first_database.fdb" SQL>
SQL> CREATE TABLE TEST (ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, NAME VARCHAR(20)); SQL> show tables; TEST SQL> INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (1, 'John'); SQL> INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (2, 'Joe'); SQL> select * from test;
SQL> quit CON>;
# cd /usr/ports/databases/flamerobin/ && make install clean
# cd /usr/ports/databases/php5-interbase/ && make install clean
# /usr/local/bin/php -m
Just updated #php-pdo-firebird package in #ArchLinux User Repo to connect to @FirebirdSQL from PHP 5.3.9. #Firebird http://t.co/XyeaRJE0
How to make an efficient check constraint for an e-mail field in Firebird (if field value not null)?
execute block
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Imagine you have a blob column and you want to add sorting clause to your query based on that column. Crazy? Might be. On the other hand, why not?
All, I would just like to report to the IBO community that the Firebird Conference in Luxembourg was a great success. There were over 60 people in attendance and the sessions I attended were all very good. It's amazing what is being done with Firebird and what is coming in the future. Things are looking very good. The IB Objects session was well attended and it felt like some useful things were learned even by some of the long-time customers. If anyone is interested, the entire session was recorded. I can see about getting permission to put it up on YouTube or to post an MP3 download of it on a file sharing site. Send me a private email. I think most of the fun we had was getting a personal contact with all the people we rub cyber shoulders with every day. Hopefully in the future there will be more people to come and attend. I would like to stress the importance of everyone who uses Firebird to consider being a member of the foundation. Your opinions truly matter and your financial contributions are an investment in Firebird's success. All of those who develop Firebird are awesome people. I really enjoyed getting acquainted with them personally. I wish for them to have the means to be compensated financially for their efforts in Firebird. It could be a significant and justified temptation for them to get hired away from their efforts. The best way we can keep their brilliance and talent solely dedicated to Firebird is to give it the resources to secure their interests. I am working on an idea to give a discount to all those who are members of the Firebird Foundation so if you have some ideas please let me know. I would like to be a strong supporter of Firebird as best I can so I am looking for ways to accomplish this. Kind regards, Jason Wharton www.ibobjects.com
node.exe test.js
I suggest to drop Atkins [for news readers] and start using gmane.org. I use it for several years in FireBase, and it had always been very stable.
I have a server with 16 cores. What do I set the CpuAffinityMask to? 1111 1111 1111 1111 is 65535, should I put 65535? Also, how to I configure the SuperClassic server? This is for Firebird 2.5.
Dear Firebird users,
You probably know that we are in the lucky position to have highly skilled developers working full-time and part-time on the further development of our favorite database, Firebird. A database that you can (and do?) use and distribute for free, that saves you and your customers from all the hassles that come with selling and administering licences.
The Firebird Project developers receive grants from the Firebird Foundation, a fund-raising foundation that was founded nearly ten years ago. The Firebird Foundation is collecting money through memberships, sponsorships and donations.
By becoming a member or a sponsor, or even by doing on-time donations once or from time to time, you can contribute to the further development of Firebird. Especially those of you who use Firebird for commercial, educational or governmental applications will understand that only a database that is under development can be used for serious work.
So, please think about becoming a member or a sponsor. There is something that will fit your possibilities (a basic membership is only USD 50/year). You can find more information at http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/membership/
Thank you.
Best Regards
Philippe Makowski President, Firebird Foundation
The Firebird Developers Day happens annually in Piracicaba, a city distant 160km from São Paulo, mostly surrounded by sugar cane plantations, cut by a famous river (Piracicaba River, there is even a well-known music in Brazil about it) and with a population of 350,000 people. The city has several big companies installed, like Caterpillar, Belgo, Hyundai, etc. and is served by the best highways of the country. For the conference, we use an awesome structure composed by a theater with capacity for 800 people, and two rooms for 200-270 people each, in the Unimep University.
The idea of creating the Firebird Developers Day came after a sucessfull experience organizing the DDD (Delphi Developers Day) with DUG-BR (Delphi Users Group Brasil, where I was the president). Altough the DDD's were organized by DUG-BR, the FDD was (and still is) entire organized by myself. The first edition had the presence of 400 attendees, making FDD the biggest Firebird conference in the world (regarding number of attendees) from the beggining.
The second edition of the conference was really special, since it was the first to have the presence of international speakers: Ann Harrison and Jim Starkey got a very warm welcome from the Brazilian Firebird’s community, which included even TV, radio and newspaper interviews! It is still the FDD edition with the biggest number of attendees — around 620 people!
Since the second edition, we always had the presence of international speakers in the conference, including core developers (Dmitry Yemanov, Vlad Khorsun) and some other well-known names, like Alexey Kovyazin and Dmitry Kouzmenko (from IBSurgeon).
More than an opportunity for the attendees to have access to a great technology knowledge, the conference is a big celebration of the Firebird success in Brazil, where people can exchange experiences with other users, and talk freely with the speakers during all the day. Also, it is the best chance to register/buy Firebird related tools and components, with the huge discounts offered by our sponsors and partners (sometimes, products were sold by less than 50% of the normal price!).
In the latest editions, attendees also had the chance to donate money to the Firebird Foundation. The donations are getting higher every year, and in the 8th edition, attended by 600 participants, we were able to collect USD 2,600!
Brazil is a huge country, and the conference attendees come from all over the place. In the past, we even had attendees travelling 48h by bus to participate, coming from the extreme north of the country (hopefully, flights are now much cheaper, so almost everyone can avoid such long bus trips).
A “location interactive map” with a partial view of this year attendees can be seen at http://goo.gl/wuT8Z. An interesting fact is that, different from what happened in other countries, Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/Embarcadero had sponsored almost all FDD editions, even in the time when Firebird was not officially supported by their tools.
You can find the on-line reports of every FDD edition, in English and Portuguese, with pictures, at http://www.firebirddevelopersday.com.br/fdd/reports/index.html
I wish to thanks all the speakers, attendees and sponsors, for their support all over the years. Without you, this conference would never be a such big success!
Go Firebird!
Carlos H. Cantu Carlos is a software developer since the Apple ][ times. He has two Firebird books published in Brazil, had written dozens of Firebird and Delphi articles for Brazilian magazines, is the maintainer of FireBase and FirebirdNews portals, organizer of the Firebird Developers Day, and also provides Firebird consulting and training services.
The Firebird Project Team
The news below was collected from FirebirdNews site. You can periodically visit the site or subscribe to its RSS feed to keep up to date with all the news coming from the Firebird community.
Script executing time — Linux Ubuntu 10.04.3 Ext4 — FW=ON -> almost 2h. FW=OFF -> 2 minutes ... no barrier parameter mentioned in /etc/fstab
Small changes list compensations Hostname and user (from environ) send as is.
Added savepoint() and rollback to savepoint support (and tests) Added _op_execute_immediate() operation Services.getAttachedDatabaseNames() bugfix Bugfix for python3 Correct file attibute for some py modules
Segmentation fault for a FreePascal program, that connects to a FB 2.5 database inside a thread. The segmentation fault just occurs, when there is a Firebird exception caught inside the thread.
I remember when I added the LOWER function to Firebird. I needed to grep (for nod_upper) and change dozens of files... Now to add even a window function (which the framework is prepared to) it takes just a few localized changes http://bit.ly/uAt3ZP... Now adding LAST_VALUE and NTH_VALUE.
