Jaybird 2.2.15 Release Notes

1 General Notes

Jaybird is a JCA/JDBC driver suite to connect to Firebird database servers.

This driver is based on both the JCA standard for application server connections to enterprise information systems and the well-known JDBC standard.

The JCA standard specifies an architecture in which an application server can cooperate with a driver so that the application server manages transactions, security, and resource pooling, and the driver supplies only the connection functionality. While similar to the JDBC XADataSource concept, the JCA specification is considerably clearer on the division of responsibility between the application server and driver.

1.1 Jaybird 2.2.x End-Of-Life

Jaybird 2.2.15 is the last version of Jaybird 2.2.x, and we will not plan new changes or fixes for 2.2.x. This effectively means that Jaybird 2.2.x is End-Of-Life.

If you run into problems, we will recommend that you switch to Jaybird 3 (or 4 once it is released). Contact us on Firebird-Java for questions.

1.2 Supported Firebird versions

Jaybird 2.2.15 was tested against Firebird 2.5.8, and Firebird 3.0.4, but should also support other Firebird versions from 1.0 and up. The Type 2 and embedded server JDBC drivers require the appropriate JNI library. Precompiled JNI binaries for Windows and Linux platforms are shipped in the default installation, other platforms require porting/building the JNI library for that platform.

Connecting to Firebird 3 requires some additional configuration, see Jaybird and Firebird 3.0 for details.

Firebird 4 is not formally supported in Jaybird 2.2.x, although connecting and most functionality will work. We suggest that you use Jaybird 3.x or higher for Firebird 4. Support for newer data types like DECFLOAT and NUMERIC/DECIMAL with precision higher than 18 will be introduced in Jaybird 4.

This driver does not support InterBase servers due to Firebird-specific changes in the protocol and database attachment parameters.

1.3 Supported Java versions

Jaybird 2.2.15 supports Java 6 (JDBC 4.0), Java 7 (JDBC 4.1) and Java 8 (JDBC 4.2). Support for earlier Java versions has been dropped.

Jaybird 3 supports Java 7, 8, and 11.

1.4 Specification support

Jaybird 2.2.15 supports the following specifications:

Specification Notes
JDBC 4.2 Driver does not fully support JDBC 4.2 features, but implements large update count methods by calling the normal update count methods, and methods with SQLType by calling methods accepting the java.sql.Types integer value. Supports new java.Time classes with some caveats.
JDBC 4.1 Driver implements all JDBC 4.1 methods added to existing interfaces. The driver explicitly supports closeOnCompletion, most other methods introduced with JDBC 4.1 throw SQLFeatureNotSupportedException.
JDBC 4.0 Driver implements all JDBC 4.0 interfaces and supports exception chaining.
JCA 1.0 Jaybird provides implementation of javax.resource.spi.ManagedConnectionFactory and related interfaces. CCI interfaces are not supported. Although Jaybird depends on the JCA 1.5 classes, JCA 1.5 compatibility is currently not guaranteed.
JTA 1.0.1 Driver provides an implementation of javax.transaction.xa.XAResource interface via JCA framework and XADataSource implementation.
JMX 1.2 Jaybird provides a MBean to manage Firebird servers and installed databases via JMX agent.

2 What’s new in Jaybird 2.2

2.1 Changelog

2.1.1 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.15

Jaybird 2.2.15 is the final version of Jaybird 2.2.x, we recommend switching to Jaybird 3.

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.15:

  • Fixed: Exceptions during fetch of cached result sets (holdable over commit, scrollable and metadata) prevented prepared statement reuse/re-execute with error “Attempt to reopen an open cursor” (JDBC-531)
  • Fixed: Jaybird cannot parse Firebird version numbers with revisions (JDBC-534)
  • Fixed: Incorrect parsing of Firebird version numbers (JDBC-535)

Known issues in Jaybird 2.2.15

  • Connecting to Firebird 2.5 and earlier with a Firebird 3 fbclient.dll may be slow with native connections, see CORE-4658. Workaround is to connect to the IPv4 address instead of the hostname, or to use a Firebird 2.5 or earlier fbclient.dll.

2.1.2 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.14

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.14:

  • Fixed: FBTraceManager.loadConfigurationFromFile strips line breaks (JDBC-493)
  • Improved: Added explicit Automatic-Module-Name: org.firebirdsql.jaybird to manifest for forwards compatibility with Java 9 modularization. (JDBC-511)

2.1.3 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.13

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.13:

  • Improved: Support for Firebird 4 object name length of 63 characters (JDBC-467)
  • Various improvements to thread safety and incomplete object validity checks. (JDBC-469) (JDBC-470)
    Some methods did not throw an SQLException when the object (ResultSet, Statement, Connection) was already closed. This sometimes lead to an unclear RuntimeException at a later point. In other cases an SQLException was thrown, even though the object was valid.
  • Fixed: Generated keys query for table with space character (or any other character below \u00A0 that was not a-z, A-Z, 0-9, $, _, or :) in its (quoted) name returns empty generated keys result set (JDBC-481)

2.1.4 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.12

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.12:

  • Fixed: ResultSetMetaData reports precision 0 for computed columns in Firebird 2.5 and earlier (JDBC-450)
    If Firebird reports precision 0, Jaybird will now estimate it to be precision 19 (not 18). This will be improved in Jaybird 3 to report 18.
  • Calling addBatch() or executeBatch() on a statement prepared with one of the generated keys options will now throw an FBDriverNotCapableException, instead of an unclear BatchUpdateException on executeBatch. (JDBC-451)
    Support for batch execution on a prepared statement with getGeneratedKeys support will be added in Jaybird 3.0 (see JDBC-452).
  • Fixed: ResultSet.absolute(0) should not throw an exception, but position the result set before the first row (JDBC-453)
  • Fixed: ResultSetMetaData.getPrecision of a numeric column when no transaction is active throws an SQLException (JDBC-464)
    As part of this fix, the handling of queries executed by FBDatabaseMetaData has been changed. Most metadata queries are now kept prepared for reuse.

2.1.5 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.11

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.11:

  • Fixed: Dialect 1, NUMERIC(15,2) and DatabaseMetadata.getColumn returns 0 for DECIMAL_DIGITS (JDBC-426)
  • Updated error messages from latest Firebird 3 to add missing messages (JDBC-428)
  • Fixed: ResultSet.getObject() returns byte[] instead of String for BLOB SUB_TYPE 1 when using octetsAsBytes (JDBC-431)
  • Improvement: Support Firebird 3 48-bit transaction ids. (JDBC-432)
    Note that FBMaintenanceManager.commit/rollbackTransaction(long) with longer than 32 bit transaction ids requires Firebird 3.0.1 because of CORE-5224.
  • Fixed: Batch insert with setBinaryStream inserts an empty BLOB SUB_TYPE TEXT (JDBC-433)
    This is the same issue as JDBC-312 that was fixed in Jaybird 2.2.4 for BLOB SUB_TYPE BINARY.
  • Changed locking to coarser blocks with - as far as possible - a single lock object per connection for all connection-derived objects (JDBC-435)
    This should prevent deadlocks on concurrent access as in some cases locks were obtained in different orders (eg (statement, connection), and (connection, statement)). The downside is reduced concurrency, but as using a connection from multiple threads concurrently is discouraged anyway, that is an acceptable price to pay.

2.1.6 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.10

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.10:

  • Improvement: Transmit encrypted password (isc_dpb_password_enc and isc_spb_password_enc) in pure java protocol (JDBC-406)
    With this change the password is hashed using the UnixCrypt hash. Be aware that this does not really improve security: it only hides the password, but an attacker can still use this hash to gain access to Firebird.
  • Improvement: Specify isc_tpb_lock_timeout in transaction mapping (JDBC-407)
    This change was already in Jaybird 2.2.9, but not documented. This improvement was contributed by Vjacheslav Borisov
  • Fixed: DatabaseMetaData.supportsGetGeneratedKeys does not report real availability of generated keys feature (JDBC-412)
    DatabaseMetaData.supportsGetGeneratedKeys will now only report true when the statement parser has been loaded (antlr-runtime is on the classpath) and the connected Firebird version supports INSERT .. RETURNING ...
  • Fixed: FBCachedClob throws SQLException instead of SQLFeatureNotSupportedException (JDBC-414)
    Some of the optional methods of Clob (especially length related) in FBCachedClob threw FBSQLException which prevents Hibernate from functioning correctly (for example in org.hibernate.type.descriptor.java.DataHelper#determineLengthForBufferSizing). These methods now throw FBDriverNotCapableException (which is a subclass of SQLFeatureNotSupportedException).
  • Fixed: Transaction mapping cannot be configured through JDBC URL (JDBC-421)
  • Fixed: FBSQLWarning.getMessage() could return null instead of message (JDBC-423)

2.1.7 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.9

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.9:

  • Fixed: Result set of type CLOSE_CURSORS_AT_COMMIT isn’t correctly closed on commit (JDBC-307)
    At commit the client side cursor is correctly closed; no explicit close is sent to the server as the commit will take care of this. This change may result in performance degradation if you use a lot of blobs as those are now properly closed again, we will address this in JDBC-401 for Jaybird 3.0.
  • Fixed: Open (output) blob in auto-commit prevents connection close. Fixed by fixing JDBC-307, see above. (JDBC-348)
  • New feature (experimental): Use isc_tpb_autocommit in auto commit mode (JDBC-399)
    This option is enabled with the connection property useFirebirdAutocommit, see Use isc_tpb_autocommit in auto commit mode (experimental) for further details. Idea and initial implementation provided by Smyatkin-Maxim.
  • Fixed: “Exception. couldn’t close blob: org.firebirdsql.gds.GDSException: invalid BLOB handle” on close of connection obtained from DBCP data source. Fixed by fixing JDBC-307, see above. (JDBC-400)
  • Fixed: CallableStatement.getMetaData() and getParameterMetaData() call throws exception when no input parameters provided when out parameter registered (JDBC-402)
    This changes the error reported when attempting to get metadata of a stored procedure without registering all out parameters. For retrieval of (parameter) metadata it will prepare the statement (potentially with too many parameter placeholders) and leaves error handling to the server.
  • Change: ResultSetMetaData will now report (VAR)CHAR CHARACTER SET OCTETS columns as Types.BINARY or Types.VARBINARY when using octetsAsBytes=true connection property. (JDBC-408)

2.1.8 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.8

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.8:

  • Support for Java 5 has been dropped
  • Fixed: LibreOffice doesn’t display tables with more than 41 records (JDBC-383)
  • Improvement: Don’t use Firebird provided IP address for connecting event channel (JDBC-384)
  • Fixed: Connection.getMetaData().getColumns result set contains wrong (empty) COLUMN_DEF if column type was defined using domain (JDBC-388)
  • Fixed: Unable to retrieve update count after result set (JDBC-390)
    After executing a query that produces a result set, calling getMoreResults will allow getUpdateCount to actually return the update count where previously it always returned -1. This also allows obtaining the update count after a select query (even when executed using executeQuery). For selects the result will usually be 0.
  • Fixed: SELECT statements are processed for getGeneratedKeys by appending RETURNING (+ all columnnames) (JDBC-391)
  • Fixed: Generated key grammar does not correctly handle quoted table names (JDBC-392)
  • Fixed: Generated key grammar does not detect returning clause in update and delete (JDBC-393)

2.1.9 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.7

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.7:

  • Fixed: blob return value of executable procedure obtained through getters on CallableStatement is 8 byte blob id, instead of expected blob content (JDBC-381)
    This was a regression caused by the changes of JDBC-350.

2.1.10 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.6

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.6:

  • Reverted Firebird 3 workaround for updatable result sets as bug has been fixed in Firebird (JDBC-330)
  • Fixed: Processing and closing the ResultSet from callable statement and then using the getters throws NullPointerException (JDBC-350)
    Using both the getters and the result set for the same callable statement is incorrect; the ability to do this might be removed in a future version of Jaybird. A ResultSet should be used for selectable procedures, while the getters should be used with executable procedures.
  • Fixed: FBManagedConnectionFactory.tryCompleteInLimboTransaction doesn’t work with recent Firebird 3 builds (JDBC-353)
  • Fixed: Jaybird can throw a NullPointerException when a fatal connection error has occurred (JDBC-359)
  • Fixed: Calling close on a JCA connection triggers exception Connection enlisted in distributed transaction (JDBC-362)
  • Fixed: Potential memory-leak when using a lot of different connection strings and/or properties (JDBC-364)
  • Fixed: FBRowUpdater.buildInsertStatement doesn’t quote column names (JDBC-370)
  • Fixed: EncodingFactory doesn’t handle UnsupportedCharsetException (JDBC-371)
  • Fixed: Current method of quoting in FBRowUpdater incorrect for dialect 1 (JDBC-372)

2.1.11 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.5

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.5:

  • Fixed: getCrossReference broken by changes of JDBC-331 (JDBC-335)
  • Added: basic support for Java 8 java.time in PreparedStatement.setObject() and ResultSet.updateObject() (JDBC-339)
    As part of this change the supported sub-second precision for java.sql.Timestamp has been increased from 1 millisecond to the maximum Firebird precision of 100 microseconds (or 0.1 millisecond)1.
  • Fixed: Deadlocks and other thread safety issues with classes in org.firebirdsql.pool (JDBC-341)

2.1.12 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.4

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.4:

  • Fixed: Exceptions during statement preparation leave connection and transaction open after explicit close (JDBC-311)
  • Fixed batch update (or insert) with blob set through setBinaryStream() sets empty blob for all but the first batch entry (JDBC-312)
  • Fixed incomplete checks of database, transaction, statement and blob handle validity before continuing with actions. These incomplete checks could lead to unexpected exceptions (for example a NullPointerException in iscDatabaseInfo) (JDBC-313)
  • Fixed error when setting connection charset equal to “file.encoding” java property (JDBC-314)
  • Fixed connection character set not correctly set when specifying the Java connection characterset (charSet or localEncoding property) (JDBC-315)
  • Fixed incorrect lengths and/or radix reported by getTypeInfo and getColumns metadata (JDBC-317, JDBC-318)
  • Initial Java 8 / JDBC 4.2 support (JDBC-319)
  • Firebird 3 BOOLEAN type support, see Support for Firebird 3 BOOLEAN type (JDBC-321)
  • Added fallback of loading GDSFactoryPlugin implementations to prevent NullPointerException in Hibernate reverse engineering wizard in NetBeans (JDBC-325)
  • Fixed: Jaybird should specify dialect 3 in dpb when no explicit dialect was set (JDBC-327)
  • Fixed: several DatabaseMetaData methods defined by JDBC to only accept the actual table name also accepted a LIKE-pattern or empty string or null. This was changed to conform to JDBC. This change can break applications that relied on the incorrect behavior (JDBC-331)
    Affected methods are: getPrimaryKeys, getBestRowIdentifier, getImportedKeys, getExportedKeys and getCrossReference. As part of this change getIndexInfo now handles names in the wrong case slightly different.Jaybird 3.0 will further modify and restrict the pattern matching and case sensitivity of metadata methods. See Future changes to Jaybird.

2.1.13 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.3

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.3:

  • Fixed incorrect synchronization in native and embedded protocol (JNI) implementation for iscBlobInfo and iscSeekBlob (JDBC-300)
    WARNING: Although Jaybird strives for correct synchronization, a JDBC Connection, and its dependent objects should be used from a single Thread at a time, sharing on multiple threads concurrently is not advisable.
  • Fixed holdable ResultSet is closed on auto-commit (JDBC-304, JDBC-305)
  • Fixed table names missing or padded with spaces in Database view of IntelliJ IDEA (JDBC-308, IDEA-100786)
  • Fixed incorrect JDBC minor version reported under Java 7; this resulted in an incorrect column name (for Java 7) in the metadata of DatabaseMetaData.getColumns(...) (JDBC-309)
  • Added IOException to cause of GDSException with error 335544721; “Unable to complete network request to host “”” for further investigation (JDBC-306)

2.1.14 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.2

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.2:

  • Fixed: FBMaintenanceManager.listLimboTransactions() reports incorrect transaction id when the result contains multi-site transactions in limbo (JDBC-266)
  • Fixed: Calling PreparedStatement.setClob(int, Clob) with a non-Firebird Clob (eg like Hibernate does) or calling PreparedStatement.setClob(int, Reader) throws FBSQLException: “You can’t start before the beginning of the blob” (JDBC-281)
  • Fixed: Connection property types not properly processed from isc_dpb_types.properties (JDBC-284)
  • Fixed: JNI implementation of parameter buffer writes incorrect integers (JDBC-285, JDBC-286)
  • Changed: Throw SQLException when calling execute, executeQuery, executeUpdate and addBatch methods accepting a query string on a PreparedStatement or CallableStatement as required by JDBC 4.0 (JDBC-288)
    NOTE: Be ware that this change can break existing code if you depended on the old, non-standard behavior! With addBatch(String) the old behavior lead to a memory leak and unexpected results.
  • Fixed: LIKE escape character JDBC escape ({escape '<char>'}) doesn’t work (JDBC-290)
  • Added: Support for a connect timeout using connection property connectTimeout. This property can be specified in the JDBC URL or Properties object or on the DataSource. If the connectTimeout property is not specified, the general DriverManager property loginTimeout is used. The value is the timeout in seconds. (JDBC-295)
    For the Java wire protocol the connect timeout will detect unreachable hosts. In the JNI implementation (native protocol) the connect timeout works as the DPB item isc_dpb_connect_timeout which only works after connecting to the server for the op_accept phase of the protocol. This means that – for the native protocol – the connect timeout will not detect unreachable hosts within the timeout. As that might be unexpected, an SQLWarning is added to the connection if the property is specified with the native protocol.
  • As part of the connect timeout change, hostname handling (if the hostname is an IP-address) in the Java wire protocol was changed. This should not have an impact in recent Java versions, but on older Java versions (Java 5 up to update 5) this might result in a delay in connecting using an IP-address, if that address can’t be reverse-resolved to a hostname. Workaround is to add an entry for that IP-address to the /etc/hosts or %WINDIR%\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts file.

2.1.15 Changes and fixes in Jaybird 2.2.1

The following has been changed or fixed in Jaybird 2.2.1:

  • Fixed: UnsatisfiedLinkError in libjaybird22(_x64).so undefined symbol: _ZTVN10__cxxabiv117__class_type_infoE on Linux (JDBC-259)
  • Added connection property columnLabelForName for backwards compatible behavior of ResultSetMetaData#getColumnName(int) and compatibility with bug in com.sun.rowset.CachedRowSetImpl (JDBC-260)
    Set property to true for backwards compatible behavior (getColumnName() returns the column label); don’t set the property or set it to false for JDBC-compliant behavior (recommended).
  • Fixed:setString(column, null) on “? IS (NOT) NULL” condition does not set parameter to NULL (JDBC-264)
  • The charSet connection property now accepts all aliases of the supported Java character sets (eg instead of only Cp1252 now windows-1252 is also accepted) (JDBC-267)
  • Fixed: values of charSet property are case-sensitive (JDBC-268)
  • Fixed: setting a parameter as NULL with the native protocol does not work when Firebird describes the parameter as not nullable (JDBC-271)

2.1.16 Changes and fixes since Jaybird 2.2.0 beta 1

The following was changed or fixed after the release of Jaybird 2.2.0 beta 1:

  • ConcurrentModificationException when closing connection obtained from org.firebirdsql.ds.FBConnectionPoolDataSource with statements open (JDBC-250)
  • Memory leak when obtaining multiple connections for the same URL (JDBC-249)
  • CPU spikes to 100% when using events and Firebird Server is stopped or unreachable (JDBC-232)
  • Events do not work on Embedded (JDBC-247)
  • Provide workaround for character set transliteration problems in database filenames and other connection properties (JDBC-253); see also Support for Firebird 2.5.
  • FBBackupManager does not allow 16kb page size for restore (JDBC-255)
  • Log warning and add warning on Connection when no explicit connection character set is specified (JDBC-257)

2.2 Support for getGeneratedKeys()

Support was added for the getGeneratedKeys() functionality for Statement and PreparedStatement.

There are four distinct use-cases:

  1. Methods accepting an int parameter with values of Statement.NO_GENERATED_KEYS and Statement.RETURN_GENERATED_KEYS

    When NO_GENERATED_KEYS is passed, the query will be executed as a normal query.

    When RETURN_GENERATED_KEYS is passed, the driver will add all columns of the table in ordinal position order (as in the (JDBC) metadata of the table). It is advisable to retrieve the values from the getGeneratedKeys() result set by column name.

    We opted to include all columns as it is next to impossible to decide which columns are filled by a trigger or otherwise and only returning the primary key will be too limiting

  2. Methods accepting an int[] parameter with column indexes.

    The values in the int[] parameter are the ordinal positions of the columns as specified in the (JDBC) metadata of the table. For a null or empty array the statement is processed as is. Invalid ordinal positions are ignored and silently dropped (be aware: the JDBC specification is not entirely clear if this is valid behavior, so this might change in the future)

  3. Methods accepting a String[] parameter with column names.

    The values in the String[] are the column names to be returned. The column names provided are processed as is and are not checked for validity or the need of quoting. Providing non-existent or incorrectly (un)quoted columns will result in an exception when the statement is processed by Firebird.

    This method is the fastest as it does not retrieve metadata from the server.

  4. Providing a query already containing a RETURNING clause. In this case all of the previous cases are ignored and the query is executed as is. It is possible to retrieve the result set using getGeneratedKeys().

This functionality will only be available if the ANTLR 3.4 runtime classes are on the classpath. Except for calling methods with NO_GENERATED_KEYS, absence of the ANTLR runtime will throw FBDriverNotCapableException.

This functionality should work for INSERT (from Firebird 2.0), and for UPDATE, UPDATE OR INSERT and DELETE (from Firebird 2.1).

2.3 Java 6 and JDBC 4.0 API support

Support was added for the following JDBC 4.0 features:

2.4 Java 7 and JDBC 4.1 API support

Support was added for the following JDBC 4.1 features:

Other methods added by JDBC 4.1 will throw FBDriverNotCapableException (a subclass of SQLFeatureNotSupportedException).

2.5 Java 8 and JDBC 4.2 API support

Minimal support for JDBC 4.2 was added in Jaybird 2.2.4 and extended in 2.2.5:

2.6 Jaybird on Maven

Jaybird 2.2.15 is available on maven, with a separate artifact for each supported Java version.

Groupid: org.firebirdsql.jdbc, artifactid: jaybird-jdkXX (where XX is 16, 17 or 18).
Version: 2.2.15

For example:

When deploying to a JavaEE environment, exclude the javax.resource connector-api dependency as this will be provided by the application server.

2.7 Native and Embedded (JNI) 64-bit Windows and Linux support

The JNI libraries for native and embedded support now also have a 64 bit version.

2.8 Support for Firebird 2.5

Added support for Firebird 2.5 Services API enhancements:

Since Firebird 2.5, Firebird supports full UTF-8 database filenames and other connection properties (Database Parameter Buffer values). Jaybird does not yet support these changes, but a workaround is available:

This workaround consists of two steps:

  1. Ensure your Java application is executed with the system property file.encoding=UTF-8 (either because that is the default encoding for your OS, or by explicitly specifying this property on the commandline of your application using -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8)
  2. Include property utf8_filename=1 in the JDBC URL or (non-standard) properties of the datasource

This will only work if the Firebird server is version 2.5 or higher.

2.9 Support for Firebird 3.0

Jaybird 2.2.x only supports Firebird 3.0 using the legacy authentication. The new authentication model and wire protocol encryption is not yet supported. Technically these new protocol options will work when using the Type 2 driver, but this hasn’t been fully tested.

When using Jaybird with Firebird 3.0, make sure that

The new BOOLEAN data type is supported

See Jaybird and Firebird 3 for more details.

2.10 Improved support for OpenOffice / LibreOffice Base

The interpretation of the JDBC standard by Jaybird differs from the interpretation by OpenOffice / LibreOffice. To address some of the problems caused by these differences, Jaybird now provides a separate protocol for OpenOffice / LibreOffice.

When connecting from Base, use the protocol prefix jdbc:firebirdsql:oo:. Be aware that this is a variant of the pure Java wire protocol and not the native or embedded protocol.

Issues addressed by this protocol:

2.11 Use isc_tpb_autocommit in auto commit mode (experimental)

Added in Jaybird 2.2.9

This option is enabled by specifying the connection property useFirebirdAutocommit=true.

With this option, Jaybird will configure the transaction to use isc_tpb_autocommit with autoCommit=true. This means that Firebird server will internally commit the transaction after each statement completion. Jaybird itself will not commit until connection close (or switching to autoCommit=false). The exception is if the statement was of type isc_info_sql_stmt_ddl, in that case Jaybird will commit on statement success and rollback on statement failure (just like it does for all statements in normal auto commit mode). The reason is that Firebird for some DDL commands only executes at a real commit boundary and relying on the Firebird auto-commit is insufficient.

On statement completion (as specified in JDBC), result sets will still close unless they are holdable over commit. The result set is only closed client side, which means that the cursor remains open server side to prevent roundtrips. This may lead to additional resource usage server side unless explicitly closed in the code. Note that any open blobs will be closed client- and server-side (until this is improved with JDBC-401).

A connection can be interrogated using FirebirdConnection.isUseFirebirdAutocommit() if it uses isc_tpb_autocommit.

If you manually add isc_tpb_autocommit to the transaction parameter buffer and you enable this option, the isc_tpb_autocommit will be removed from the TPB if autoCommit=false.

Artificial testing with repeated inserts (using a prepared statement) against a Firebird server on localhost shows that this leads to a reduction of execution time of +/- 7%.

Support for this option is experimental, and should only be enabled if you 1) know what you’re doing, and 2) really need this feature. Internally isc_tpb_autocommit uses commit_retaining, which means that using this feature may increase the transaction gap with associated sweep and garbage collection impact.

2.12 Other fixes and changes

A full list of changes is also available at:

3 Compatibility changes

Jaybird 2.2 introduces some changes in compatibility and announces future breaking changes. The version previously announced as Jaybird 2.3 will be released as Jaybird 3.0.

3.1 Java support

Java 5 support has been dropped starting with Jaybird 2.2.8 as Java 5 has been on End-Of-Public-Updates3status since October 2009.

Java 6 support will be dropped for Jaybird 3.0 as Java 6 has been on End-Of-Public-Updates status since February 2013. This is a change from previous announcements that support would be dropped with Jaybird 3.1.

Java 7 support will be dropped for Jaybird 3.1 as Java 7 has been on End-Of-Public-Updates status since April 2015.

Java 9 support is expected to be introduced with Jaybird 3.0. There are no plans to add Java 9 support to Jaybird 2.2.x, although the driver is expected to function if JDBC 4.3 specific features are avoided.

For compatibility with Java 9 modules, versions 2.2.14 and 3.0.3 introduced the automatic module name org.firebirdsql.jaybird. This guarantees a stable module name for Jaybird, and allows for future modularization of Jaybird.

3.2 Firebird support

Jaybird 2.2 supports Firebird 1.0 and higher, but is only tested with Firebird 2.1, 2.5 and 3.0.

Firebird 4 is not formally supported in Jaybird 2.2.x, although connecting and most functionality will work.

Firebird 1.0 and 1.5 support will be dropped with Jaybird 3.0. In general this should not impact the use of the driver, but might have impact on the availability and use of metadata information. This also means that starting with Jaybird 3.0, bugs that only occur with Firebird 1.0 and 1.5 will not be fixed.

Firebird 2.0 support will be dropped with Jaybird 3.1.

3.3 Important changes to Datasources

The ConnectionPoolDataSource and XADataSource implementations in org.firebirdsql.pool and org.firebirdsql.pool.sun contain several bugs with regard to pool and connection management when used by a JavaEE application server. The decision was made to write new implementations in the package org.firebirdsql.ds.

The following implementation classes have been deprecated and will be removed in Jaybird 3.0:

Their replacement classes are:

We strongly urge you to switch to these new implementations if you are using these classes in an application server. The bugs are described in JDBC-86, JDBC-93, JDBC-131 and JDBC-144.

The deprecated classes can still be used with the DataSource implementations WrappingDataSource as the identified bugs do not occur with this implementation, but we advise you to switch to FBSimpleDataSource. If you require a standalone connection pool (outside an application server) or statement pooling, please consider using a third-party connection pool like C3P0, DBCP or HikariCP.

The new ConnectionPoolDataSource and XADataSource implementations only provide the basic functionality specified in the JDBC specifications and do not provide any pooling itself. The ConnectionPoolDataSource and XADataSource are intended to be used by connection pools (as provided by application servers) and should not be connection pools themselves.

3.4 Future changes to Jaybird

The next versions of Jaybird will include some – potentially – breaking changes. We advise to check your code if you will be affected by these changes and prepare for these changes if possible.

3.4.1 Removal of deprecated classes, packages and (interface) methods

As announced above, the ConnectionPoolDataSource implementations in org.firebirdsql.pool and org.firebirdsql.jca will be removed in Jaybird 3.0. The entire org.firebirdsql.pool package will be removed.

The following (deprecated) classes will also be removed:

  • org.firebirdsql.jdbc.FBWrappingDataSource (old deprecated class subclassing org.firebirdsql.pool.FBWrappingDataSource), only included in jaybird-full jar

Furthermore the following interfaces will be removed as they are no longer needed:

  • FirebirdSavepoint (identical to java.sql.Savepoint)

The following interfaces will have some of the methods removed:

  • FirebirdConnection
    • setFirebirdSavepoint() replace with Connection#setSavepoint()
    • setFirebirdSavepoint(String name) replace with Connection#setSavepoint(String name)
    • rollback(FirebirdSavepoint savepoint) replace with Connection#rollback(Savepoint savepoint)
    • releaseSavepoint(FirebirdSavepoint savepoint) replace with Connection#releaseSavepoint(Savepoint savepoint)

Visibility of the following classes will be reduced as they are implementation artifacts and should not be considered API:

  • org.firebirdsql.jdbc.FBDriverPropertyManager (to package private)

If you are still using these interfaces, classes or methods, please change your code to use the JDBC interface or method instead.

In FBMaintenanceManager the following changes will be made:

  • getLimboTransactions() will return long[] instead of int[]
  • limboTransactionsAsList() will return List<Long> instead of List<Integer>
  • getLimboTransactionsAsLong() (introduced in 2.2.11) will be removed in favor of getLimboTransactions()
  • limboTransactionsAsLongList (introduced in 2.2.11) will be removed in favor of limboTransactionsAsList

These methods were previously not defined in the MaintenanceManager interface.

3.4.2 Handling (VAR)CHAR CHARACTER SET OCTETS as (VAR)BINARY type

From Jaybird 3.0 on (VAR)CHAR CHARACTER SET OCTETS will be considered to be of java.sql.Types type (VAR)BINARY. This should not impact normal use of methods like get/setString(), but will impact the metadata and the type of object returned by getObject() (a byte array instead of a String).

The connection property octetsAsBytes will no longer have an effect in Jaybird 3.

3.4.3 Handling connections without explicit connection character set

When no connection character set has been specified (properties lc_ctype or encoding with Firebird character set, or charSet or localEncoding with Java character set), Jaybird will currently use the NONE character set. This means that the Firebird server will return the bytes for (VAR)CHAR columns as they are stored, while Jaybird will convert between bytes and Strings using the local platform encoding.

This default has the potential of corrupting data when switching platforms or using the same database with different local encodings, or for transliteration errors when the database character set does not accept some byte combinations.

Jaybird 3 will reject a connection if no explicit character set has been specified (see JDBC-257 and JDBC-446).

For the time being, Jaybird 2.2 will log a warning and add a warning on the Connection when no explicit character set was specified.

Review your use of the connection character sets and change it if you are not specifying it explicitly. Be aware that changing this may require you to fix the data as it is currently stored in your database if your database character set does not match the local platform encoding of your Java application. If you are sure that NONE is the correct character set for you, specify it explicitly in your connection string or connection properties.

3.4.4 Replacement or upgrade of logging library

Logging in Jaybird 3.0 will be changed. Support for Log4J will be removed and we will switch to java.util.logging.

3.4.5 Stricter JDBC compliance for DatabaseMetaData methods

The current implementation of DatabaseMetaData methods do not conform to the JDBC specification when it comes to case sensitivity and quoted object names.

In Jaybird 3.0 meta data methods will no longer do the following:

  • Remove quotes around object names
  • Trying the uppercase value, when the original parameter value failed to produce results

For example:

In Jaybird 2.2 using getColumns(null, null, "tablename", "column%") will return COLUMN1(!). Unquoted object names are stored uppercase in Firebird, so in Jaybird 3.0 this will produce no rows as tablename does not match TABLENAME.

Changing the query to getColumns(null, null, "TABLENAME", "column%") in Jaybird 2.2 and 3.0 will only produce one row (with column2), as COLUMN1 does not match column%.

In Jaybird 2.2 using getColumns(null, null, "\"TABLENAME\"", "column%") will return column2 as the quotes will be stripped, with Jaybird 3.0 this will produce no rows.

4 Distribution package

The following file groups can be found in distribution package:

Jaybird has compile-time and run-time dependencies on the JCA 1.5 classes. Additionally, if Log4J classes are found in the class path, it is possible to enable extensive logging inside the driver. If the ANTLR runtime classes are absent, the generated keys functionality will not be available.

Native dependencies (required only for Type 2 and Embedded):

The Windows DLLs have been built with Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 SP1. To use the native or embedded driver, you will need to install the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP 1 redistributable available at:

4.1 License

Jaybird JCA/JDBC driver is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Text of the license can be obtained from http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html.

Using Jaybird (by importing Jaybird’s public interfaces in your Java code), and extending Jaybird by subclassing or implementation of an extension interface (but not abstract or concrete class) is considered by the authors of Jaybird to be dynamic linking. Hence our interpretation of the LGPL is that the use of the unmodified Jaybird source does not affect the license of your application code.

Even more, all extension interfaces to which application might want to link are released under dual LGPL/modified BSD license. Latter is basically “AS IS” license that allows any kind of use of that source code. Jaybird should be viewed as an implementation of that interfaces and LGPL section for dynamic linking is applicable in this case.

4.2 Source Code

The distribution package contains the normal sources in jaybird-2.2.15-sources.jar; this file does not include the sources of the tests, nor the sourcecode for other JDK-versions.

Full source code, including tests and build files, can be obtained from the GitHub repository. The repository URL is https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/jaybird

5 Documentation and Support

5.1 Where to get more information on Jaybird

The most detailed information can be found in the Jaybird Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). The FAQ is included in the distribution, and is available on-line in several places.

JaybirdWiki is available at https://github.com/FirebirdSQL/jaybird/wiki

Jaybird 2.1 Programmers Manual: http://www.firebirdsql.org/file/documentation/drivers_documentation/Jaybird_2_1_JDBC_driver_manual.pdf

5.2 Where to get help

The best place to start is the FAQ. Many details for using Jaybird with various programs are located there. Below are some links to useful web sites.

5.3 Contributing

There are several ways you can contribute to Jaybird or Firebird in general:

See also http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/consider-your-contribution/

5.4 Reporting Bugs

The developers follow the [email protected] list. Join the list and post information about suspected bugs. List members may be able to help out to determine if it is an actual bug, provide a workaround and get you going again, whereas bug fixes might take awhile.

If you are sure that this is a bug you can report it in the Firebird bug tracker, project “Java Client (Jaybird)” at http://tracker.firebirdsql.org/browse/JDBC

When reporting bugs, please provide a minimal, but complete reproduction, including databases and sourcecode to reproduce the problem. Patches to fix bugs are also appreciated. Make sure the patch is against a recent master version of the code. You can also fork the jaybird repository and create pull requests.

5.5 Corrections/Additions to Release Notes

Please send corrections, suggestions, or additions to these Release Notes to the mailing list at [email protected].

6 JDBC URL Format

Jaybird provides different JDBC URLs for different usage scenarios:

6.1 Pure Java

jdbc:firebirdsql://host[:port]/<database>

Default URL, will connect to the database using the Type 4 JDBC driver using the Java implementation of the Firebird wire-protocol. Best suited for client-server applications with dedicated database server. Port can be omitted (default value is 3050), host name must be present.

The <database> part should be replaced with the database alias or the path to the database. In general it is advisable to uses database aliases instead of the path the file.

On Linux the root / should be included in the path. A database located on /opt/firebird/db.fdb should use the URL below (note the double slash after port!).

jdbc:firebirdsql://host:port//opt/firebird/db.fdb

Deprecated but still available alternative URL:

jdbc:firebirdsql:host[/port]:<database>

6.2 Using Firebird client library

jdbc:firebirdsql:native:host[/port]:<database>

Type 2 driver, will connect to the database using client library (fbclient.dll on Windows, and libfbclient.so on Linux). Requires correct installation of the client library.

jdbc:firebirdsql:local:<database>

Type 2 driver in local mode. Uses client library as in previous case, however will not use socket communication, but rather access database directly. Requires correct installation of the client library.

6.3 Embedded Server

jdbc:firebirdsql:embedded:<database>

Similar to the Firebird client library, however fbembed.dll on Windows and libfbembed.so on Linux are used. Requires correctly installed and configured Firebird embedded library.

7 Using Type 2 and Embedded Server driver

Jaybird 2.2 provides a Type 2 JDBC driver that uses the native client library to connect to the databases. Additionally Jaybird 2.2 can use the embedded version of Firebird so Java applications do not require a separate server setup.

However the Type 2 driver has its limitations:

Due to multi-threading issues in the Firebird client library as well as in the embedded server version, it is not possible to access a single connection from different threads simultaneously. When using the client library only one thread is allowed to access a connection at a time. Access to different connections from different threads is however allowed. Client library in local mode and embedded server library on Linux do not allow multithreaded access to the library. Jaybird provides necessary synchronization in Java code, however the mutex is local to the classloader that loaded the Jaybird driver.

Care should be taken when deploying applications in web or application servers: put jar files in the main library directory of the web and/or application server, not in the library directory of the web or enterprise application (WEB-INF/lib directory or in the .EAR file).

7.1 Configuring Type 2 JDBC driver

The Type 2 JDBC driver requires the Jaybird JNI library to be installed and available to the Java Virtual Machine. Precompiled binaries for Windows and Linux platforms are distributed with Jaybird.

Please note that Jaybird 2.2 provides an update to the JNI libraries to support new features. It is not compatible with the JNI library for Jaybird 2.1 or earlier.

After making Jaybird JNI library available to the JVM, the application has to tell driver to start using this by either specifying TYPE2 or LOCAL type in the connection pool or data source properties or using appropriate JDBC URL when connecting via java.sql.DriverManager.

7.2 Configuring Embedded Server JDBC driver

The Embedded Server JDBC driver uses the same JNI library and configuration steps for the Type 2 JDBC driver.

There is however one issue related to the algorithm of Firebird Embedded Server installation directory resolution. Firebird server uses a pluggable architecture for internationalization. By default server loads fbintl.dll or libfbintl.so library that contains various character encodings and collation orders. This library is expected to be installed in the intl/ subdirectory of the server installation. The algorithm of directory resolution is the following:

  1. FIREBIRD environment variable.
  2. RootDirectory parameter in the firebird.conf file.
  3. The directory where server binary is located.

When Embedded Server is used from Java and no FIREBIRD environment variable is specified, it tries to find firebird.conf in the directory where the application binary is located. In our case the application binary is the JVM and therefore Embedded Server tries to find its configuration file in the bin/ directory of the JDK or JRE installation. The same happens to the last item of the list. In most cases this is not desired behavior.

Therefore, if the application uses character encodings, UDFs or wants to fine-tune server behavior through the configuration file, the FIREBIRD environment variable must be specified and point to the installation directory of the Embedded Server, e.g. current working directory.

7.3 Support for multiple JNI libraries

Up to Jaybird 2.0 only one client library could be loaded in a single JVM. That could be either an embedded Firebird library (fbembed.dll/libfbembed.so), or Firebird client library (fbclient.dll/libfbclient.so). This could lead to problems, For example, if embedded Firebird was used first, the JDBC driver would access the database file directly instead of using the local IPC protocol if only the path to the database was specified. It was not possible to change this without restarting the JVM.

Since Jaybird 2.1, Jaybird is able to correctly load arbitrary number of shared libraries that implement the ISC API and forward the requests correctly depending on the type of the driver being used.

8 Usage and Reference Manual

8.1 Events

Events is one of the unique features in the Firebird RDBMS and allows asynchronous notification of the applications about named events that happen in the database. Information on this feature can found in the free IB 6.0 documentation set as well as in The Firebird Book by Helen Borrie.

The interfaces and classes for the event support can be found in org.firebirdsql.event package, which includes:

Please note, that each instance of FBEventManager will open a new socket connection to the Firebird server on the port specified by Firebird.

Similar to other JDBC extensions in Jaybird, the interfaces are released under the modified BSD license, the implementation of the code is released under LGPL license.

8.2 Default holdable result sets (closed ResultSet in auto-commit mode)

This connection property allows to create holdable result sets by default. This is needed as a workaround for the applications that do not follow JDBC specification in regard to the auto-commit mode.

Specifically, such applications open a result set and, while traversing it, execute other statements using the same connection. According to JDBC specification the result set has to be closed if another statement is executed using the same connection in auto-commit mode. Among others the OpenOffice/LibreOffice Base users have problems with the JDBC compatibility in Jaybird.

The property is called:

Note, the price for using this feature is that each holdable result set will be fully cached in memory. The memory occupied by it will be released when the statement that produced the result set is either closed or re-executed.

8.3 Updatable result sets

Jaybird provides support for updatable result sets. This feature allows a Java application to update the current record using the updateXXX methods of java.sql.ResultSet interface. Updates are performed within the current transaction using a best row identifier in the WHERE-clause. This sets the following limitation on the result set “updatability”:

8.4 Firebird management interfaces

Jaybird provides full support of the Firebird Services API that allows Java applications to perform various server management tasks:

8.5 Jaybird JDBC extensions

Jaybird provides extensions to some JDBC interfaces. JDBC extension interface classes are released under modified BSD license, on “AS IS” and “do what you want” basis, this should make linking to these classes safe from the legal point of view. All classes belong to org.firebirdsql.jdbc.* package.

The table below shows all JDBC extensions present in Jaybird with a driver version in which the extension was introduced.

Interface Since Method name Description
FirebirdDriver 2.0 newConnectionProperties() Create new instance of FirebirdConnectionProperties interface that can be used to set connection properties programmatically.
connect(FirebirdConnectionProperties) Connect to the Firebird database using the specified connection properties.
FirebirdConnectionProperties 2.0 see JDBC connection properties section for more details.
FirebirdConnection 1.5 getIscEncoding() Get connection character encoding.
2.0 getTransactionParameters( int isolationLevel ) Get the TPB parameters for the specified transaction isolation level.
2.0 createTransactionParameterBuffer() Create an empty transaction parameter buffer.
2.0 setTransactionParameters( int isolationLevel, TransactionParameterBuffer tpb ) Set TPB parameters for the specified transaction isolation level. The newly specified mapping is valid for the whole connection lifetime.
2.0 setTransactionParameters( TransactionParameterBuffer tpb ) Parameters are effective until the transaction isolation is changed.
2.2.9 isUseFirebirdAutocommit() Returns true if the connection uses isc_tpb_autocommit in auto-commit mode.
FirebirdDatabaseMetaData getProcedureSourceCode(String) Get source code for the specified stored procedure name.
getTriggerSourceCode(String) Get source code for the specified trigger name.
getViewSourceCode(String) Get source code for the specified view name.
FirebirdStatement 1.5 getInsertedRowsCount() Extension that allows to get more precise information about outcome of some statement.
getUpdatedRowsCount()
getDeletedRowsCount()
1.5 hasOpenResultSet() Check if this statement has open result set. Correctly works only when auto-commit is disabled. Check method documentation for details.
1.5 getCurrentResultSet() Get current result set. Behaviour of this method is similar to the behavior of the Statement.getResultSet(), except that this method can be called as much as you like.
1.5 isValid() Check if this statement is still valid. Statement might be invalidated when connection is automatically recycled between transactions due to some irrecoverable error.
2.0 getLastExecutionPlan() Get execution plan for the last executed statement.
FirebirdPreparedStatement 2.0 getExecutionPlan() Get the execution plan of this prepared statement.
2.0 getStatementType() Get the statement type of this prepared statement.
FirebirdCallableStatement 1.5 setSelectableProcedure( boolean selectable ) Mark this callable statement as a call of the selectable procedure. By default callable statement uses EXECUTE PROCEDURE SQL statement to invoke stored procedures that return single row of output parameters or a result set. In former case it retrieves only the first row of the result set.
FirebirdResultSet 2.0 getExecutionPlan() Get execution plan for this result set.
FirebirdBlob 1.5 detach() Method detaches a blob object from the underlying result set. Lifetime of the detached blob is limited by the lifetime of the connection.
1.5 isSegmented() Check if this blob is segmented. Seek operation is not defined for the segmented blobs.
1.5 setBinaryStream( long position ) Opens an output stream at the specified position, allows modifying blob content. Due to server limitations only position 0 is supported.
FirebirdBlob.BlobInputStream 1.5 getBlob() Get corresponding blob instance.
1.5 seek(int position) Change the position from which blob content will be read, works only for stream blobs.
FirebirdSavepoint4 2.0 interface is equivalent to the java.sql.Savepoint interface introduced in JDBC 3.0 specification, however allows using Firebird savepoints also in JDBC 2.0 (JDK 1.3.x) applications.

8.6 JDBC connection properties

The table below lists the properties for the connections that are obtained from this data source. Commonly used parameters have the corresponding getter and setter methods, the rest of the Database Parameters Block parameters can be set using setNonStandardProperty setter method.

Property Getter Setter Description
database + + (deprecated) Path to the database in the format [host/port:]<database>. This property is not specified in the JDBC standard. Use the the standard defined serverName, portNumber and databaseName instead.
serverName + + Hostname or IP address of the Firebird server
portNumber + + Portnumber of the Firebird server
databaseName + + Database alias or full-path
type + + Type of the driver to use. Possible values are: PURE_JAVA or TYPE4 for type 4 JDBC driver, NATIVE or TYPE2 for type 2 JDBC driver, EMBEDDED for using embedded version of the Firebird.
blobBufferSize + + Size of the buffer used to transfer blob content. Maximum value is 64k-1.
socketBufferSize + + Size of the socket buffer. Needed on some Linux machines to fix performance degradation.
buffersNumber + + Number of cache buffers (in database pages) that will be allocated for the connection. Makes sense for ClassicServer only.
charSet + + Character set for the connection. Similar to encoding property, but accepts Java names instead of Firebird ones.
encoding + + Character encoding for the connection. See Firebird documentation for more information.
useTranslation + + Path to the properties file containing character translation map.
password + + Corresponding password.
roleName + + SQL role to use.
userName + + Name of the user that will be used by default.
useStreamBlobs + + Boolean flag tells driver whether stream blobs should be created by the driver, by default false. Stream blobs allow seek operation to be called.
useStandardUdf + + Boolean flag tells driver to assume that standard UDFs are defined in the database. This extends the set of functions available via escaped function calls. This does not affect non-escaped use of functions.
defaultResultSetHoldable + + Boolean flag tells driver to construct the default result set to be holdable. This prevents it from closing in auto-commit mode if another statement is executed over the same connection.
tpbMapping + + TPB mapping for different transaction isolation modes.
defaultIsolation + + Default transaction isolation level. All newly created connections will have this isolation level. One of: TRANSACTION_READ_COMMITTED, TRANSACTION_REPEATABLE_READ, TRANSACTION_SERIALIZABLE
defaultTransactionIsolation + + Integer value from java.sql.Connection interface corresponding to the transaction isolation level specified in isolation property.
nonStandardProperty Allows to set any valid connection property that does not have corresponding setter method. Two setters are available: setNonStandardProperty(String) method takes only one parameter in form propertyName[=propertyValue], this allows setting non-standard parameters using configuration files. setNonStandardProperty(String, String) takes property name as first parameter, and its value as the second parameter.
connectTimeout + + The connect timeout in seconds. For the Java wire protocol detects unreachable hosts, for JNI (native protocol) only defines a timeout during the op_accept phase after connecting to the server.
useFirebirdAutocommit + + (experimental) When enabled Jaybird does not commit on JDBC auto-commit boundaries, but instead relies on the isc_tpb_autocommit feature of Firebird.

9 JDBC Compatibility

The Jaybird driver is not officially JDBC-compliant as the certification procedure is too expensive. The following lists some of the differences between JDBC specification and Jaybird implementation. This list is not exhaustive.

9.1 JDBC deviations and unimplemented features

The following optional features and the methods for their support are not implemented:

The following methods are implemented, but deviate from the specification:

10 Jaybird Specifics

Jaybird has some implementation-specific issues that should be considered during development.

10.1 Result sets

Jaybird behaves differently not only when different result set types are used but also whether the connection is in auto-commit mode or not.

10.2 Using java.sql.ParameterMetaData with callable Statements

This interface can be used only to obtain information about the IN parameters. Also it is not allowed to call the PreparedStatement.getParameterMetaData method before all of the OUT parameters are registered. Otherwise the corresponding method of CallableStatement throws an SQLException, because the driver tries to prepare the procedure call with incorrect number of parameters.

10.3 Using ResultSet.getCharacterStream with blob fields

Jaybird JDBC driver always uses connection encoding when converting array of bytes into character stream. The BLOB SUB_TYPE 1 fields allow setting the character encoding for the field. However when the contents of the field is sent to the client, it is not converted according to the character set translation rules in Firebird, but is sent “as is”. When such fields are accessed from a Java application via Jaybird and character set of the connection does not match the character encoding of the field, conversion errors might happen. Therefore it is recommended to convert such fields in the application using the appropriate encoding.

10.4 Heuristic transaction completion support

Current JCA implementation does not support XAResource.forget(Xid). It might be important in cases where a distributed transaction - that was at some time in-limbo - was either committed or rolled back by the database administrator. Such transactions appear to Jaybird as successfully completed, however XA specification requires resource manager to “remember” such transaction until the XAResource.forget(Xid) is called.

10.5 Compatibility with com.sun.rowset.*

The reference implementation of javax.sql.rowset included with Java in package com.sun.rowset does not correctly look up columns by name as it ignores column aliases and only allows look up by the original column name5 (this specifically applies to com.sun.rowset.CachedRowSetImpl).

We advise you to either only access columns by their index or use an implementation which correctly uses the column label for column lookup (which is either the alias or the original column name if no alias was defined).

Jaybird 2.2.1 introduced the connection property columnLabelForName for backwards compatible behavior of ResultSetMetaData#getColumnName(int). Set property to true for backwards compatible behavior (getColumnName() returns the column label); don’t set the property or set it to false for JDBC-compliant behavior (recommended).

10.6 Support for Firebird 3 BOOLEAN type

Jaybird 2.2.4 introduces support for the Firebird 3 BOOLEAN type. A boolean field can also be set with all numeric setters and the string setter (as implied by JDBC 4.1 appendix B).

For numeric types, currently only 0 will set to false and all other values will set to true. This is something that might change in the future. Only 0 for false and 1 for true are guaranteed, in the future we might decide to throw a conversion exception for other values!

For string types we currently set true for "true", "T", "Y" and "1" (case insensitive, ignoring whitespace), all other values will set false; this is for compatibility with the current getBoolean behaviour of FBStringField. This is something that might change in the future. Only "true" and "1" for true and "false" and "0" for false are guaranteed (case insensitive, ignoring whitespace), in the future we might decide to throw a conversion exception for other values!

When using string or numeric setters for a boolean field we strongly recommend to only use the guaranteed values (0, 1, "0", "1", "true" and "false"). Better yet: use the boolean setter instead.

11 Connection pooling with Jaybird

As described in Important changes to Datasources, the ConnectionPoolDataSourceimplementations in org.firebirdsql.pool contain some serious issues. The connection pool capability which depends on these classes will be removed in Jaybird 3.0.

This change leaves only the ConnectionPoolDataSource implementations in org.firebirdsql.ds (for use by application server connection pools). There are no plans to reintroduce a new standalone connection pooling capability. We probably will migrate some of the features like statement pooling to the normal JDBC driver.

If you require standalone connection pooling, or use an application server which has no built-in connectionpool, please consider using a third-party connection pool like c3p0, DBCP or HikariCP.

11.1 Description of deprecated org.firebirdsql.pool classes

WARNING: This section provides information on deprecated classes

See Important changes to Datasources

Connection pooling provides effective way to handle physical database connections. It is believed that establishing new connection to the database takes some noticeable amount or time and in order to speed things up one has to reuse connections as much as possible. While this is true for some software and for old versions of Firebird database engine, establishing connection is hardly noticeable with Firebird 1.0.3 and Firebird 1.5. So why is connection pooling needed?

There are few reasons for this. Each good connection pool provides a possibility to limit number of physical connections established with the database server. This is an effective measure to localize connection leaks. Any application cannot open more physical connections to the database than allowed by connection pool. Good pools also provide some hints where connection leak occurred. Another big advantage of connection pool is that it becomes a central place where connections are obtained, thus simplifying system configuration. However, main advantage of good connection pool comes from the fact that in addition to connection pooling, it can pool also prepared statement. Tests executed using AS3AP benchmark suite show that prepared statement pooling might increase speed of the application by 100% keeping source code clean and understandable.

11.2 Usage scenario

When some statement is used more than one time, it makes sense to use prepared statement. It will be compiled by the server only once, but reused many times. It provides significant speedup when some statement is executed in a loop. But what if some prepared statement will be used during lifetime of some object? Should we prepare it in object’s constructor and link object lifetime to JDBC connection lifetime or should we prepare statement each time it is needed? All such cases make handling of the prepared statements hard, they pollute application’s code with irrelevant details.

Connection and statement pooling remove such details from application’s code. How would the code in this case look like? Here’s the example

Lines 1-16 show typical code when prepared statement pooling is used. The application obtains a JDBC connection from the data source (instance of javax.sql.DataSource interface), prepares some SQL statement as if it is used for the first time, sets parameters, and executes the query. Lines 12 and 15 ensure that statement and connection will be released under any circumstances. Where do we benefit from the statement pooling? The call to prepare a statement in lines 3-4 is intercepted by the pool, which checks if there’s a free prepared statement for the specified SQL query. If no such statement is found it prepares a new one. In line 12 the prepared statement is not closed, but returned to the pool, where it waits for the next call. Same happens to the connection object that is returned to the pool in line 15.

11.3 Connection Pool Classes (deprecated)

Jaybird connection pooling classes belong to the org.firebirdsql.pool.* package. Description of some connection pool classes:

Class Description
AbstractConnectionPool Base class for all connection pools. Can be used for implementing custom pools, not necessarily for JDBC connections.
BasicAbstractConnectionPool Subclass of AbstractConnectionPool, implements javax.sql.ConnectionPoolDataSource interface. Also provides some basic properties (minimum and maximum number of connections, blocking and idle timeout, etc) and code to handle JNDI-related issues.
DriverConnectionPoolDataSource Implementation of javax.sql.ConnectionPoolDataSource for arbitrary JDBC drivers, uses java.sql.DriverManager to obtain connections, can be used as JNDI object factory.
FBConnectionPoolDataSource Jaybird specific implementation of javax.sql.ConnectionPoolDataSource and javax.sql.XADataSource interfaces, can be used as JNDI object factory.
FBSimpleDataSource Implementation of javax.sql.DataSource interface, no connection and statement pooling is available, connections are physically opened in getConnection() method and physically closed in their close() method.
FBWrappingDataSource Implementation of javax.sql.DataSource interface that uses FBConnectionPoolDataSource to allocate connections. This class defines some additional properties that affect allocated connections. Can be used as JNDI object factory.
SimpleDataSource Implementation of javax.sql.DataSource interface that uses javax.sql.ConnectionPoolDataSource to allocate physical connections.

11.4 org.firebirdsql.pool.FBConnectionPoolDataSource (deprecated)

This class is a corner stone of connection and statement pooling in Jaybird. It can be instantiated within the application as well as it can be made accessible to other applications via JNDI. Class implements both java.io.Serializable and javax.naming.Referenceable interfaces, which allows using it in a wide range of web and application servers.

Class implements both javax.sql.ConnectionPoolDataSource and javax.sql.XADataSource interfaces. Pooled connections returned by this class implement javax.sql.PooledConnection and javax.sql.XAConnection interfaces and can participate in distributed JTA transactions.

Class provides following configuration properties:

11.4.1 Standard JDBC Properties

This group contains properties defined in the JDBC specification and should be standard to all connection pools.

Property Getter Setter Description
maxIdleTime + + Maximum time in milliseconds after which idle connection in the pool is closed.
maxPoolSize + + Maximum number of open physical connections.
minPoolSize + + Minimum number of open physical connections. If value is greater than 0, corresponding number of connections will be opened when first connection is obtained.
maxStatements + + Maximum size of prepared statement pool. If 0, statement pooling is switched off. When application requests more statements than can be kept in pool, Jaybird will allow creating that statements, however closing them would not return them back to the pool, but rather immediately release the resources.

11.4.2 Pool Properties

This group of properties are specific to the Jaybird implementation of the connection pooling classes.

Property Getter Setter Description
blockingTimeout + + Maximum time in milliseconds during which application can be blocked waiting for a connection from the pool. If no free connection can be obtained, exception is thrown.
retryInterval + + Period in which pool will try to obtain new connection while blocking the application.
pooling + + Allows to switch connection pooling off.
statementPooling + + Allows to switch statement pooling off.
pingStatement + + Statement that will be used to “ping” JDBC connection, in other words, to check if it is still alive. This statement must always succeed.
pingInterval + + Time during which connection is believed to be valid in any case. Pool “pings” connection before giving it to the application only if more than specified amount of time passed since last “ping”.

11.4.3 Runtime Pool Properties

This group contains read-only properties that provide information about the state of the pool.

Property Getter Setter Description
freeSize + - Tells how many free connections are in the pool. Value is between 0 and totalSize.
workingSize + - Tells how many connections were taken from the pool and are currently used in the application.
totalSize + - Total size of open connection. At the pool creation – 0, after obtaining first connection – between minPoolSize and maxPoolSize.
connectionCount + - (Deprecated). Same as freeSize.

11.5 org.firebirdsql.pool.FBWrappingDataSource

This class is a wrapper for FBConnectionPoolDataSource converting the interface from javax.sql.ConnectionPoolDataSource to javax.sql.DataSource. It defines same properties as FBConnectionPoolDataSource does.

11.6 Runtime object allocation and deallocation hints

The Ppool implementation shipped with Jaybird can provide hints for the application where the connection was obtained from the pool, when it was released back to the pool, when the statement was prepared. Such information is written into the log when appropriate system properties are set to true.

11.6.1 List of properties

Property name Description
FBLog4j Enables logging inside driver. This is the essential property, if it is not present or set to false, no debug information is available.
When it is set to true, pool automatically prints the following information:
- When physical connection is added to the pool – DEBUG
- When a maximum pool capacity is reached – DEBUG
- When connection is obtained from pool – DEBUG
- When connection is released back to pool – DEBUG
- Whether pool supports open statements across transaction boundaries – INFO
FBPoolShowTrace Enables logging of the thread stack trace when debugging is enabled and:
- Connection is allocated from the pool – DEBUG
- Thread is blocked while waiting for a free connection – WARN\

  1. With java.sql.Timestamp the 100 microsecond precision is only available through getNanos() and setNanos()

  2. See http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/tryResourceClose.html

  3. See http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/eol-135779.html

  4. To be removed in Jaybird 3.0

  5. See JDBC-162 and http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=7046875 for details