Firebird News

Tuesday, January 25, 2005

New documents added to firebird 2.0 Unstable by Dmitry Yemanov

Changes can be traced in the What's new text file on sourceforge . Some documents are not added yet.

* SQL improvements:
1) Introduced SEQUENCE as a synonym for GENERATOR (as per SQL-99)
2) Added SQL-99 compliant NEXT VALUE FOR
3) Implemented REVOKE ADMIN OPTION FROM statement
See also:
/doc/sql.extentions/README.sequence_generators
/doc/sql.extentions/README.ddl.txt
* ISQL improvement:
Command line switch -b to bail out on error when used in non-interactive mode.
Also,return an error code to the operating system.
See also:/doc/README.isql_enhancements.txt

* Context variables
Added support for context variables via RDB$GET_CONTEXT and RDB$SET_CONTEXT system functions
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.context_variables2

* SQL improvement:
Allowed PLAN, ROWS and ORDER BY clauses in UPDATE/DELETE statements
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.select_expressions
Added an equivalence predicate which behaves exactly as equality/inequality, but treats NULL = NULL as TRUE
Syntax: A IS [NOT] DISTINCT FROM B
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.distinct

* More SQL improvements:
1) Allowed FIRST/SKIP/ROWS/PLAN and ORDER BY clauses in views
2) Added CROSS JOIN (A CROSS JOIN B means something like A INNER JOIN B ON 1 = 1 or just FROM A, B)
3) Allowed UNION in subqueries and INSERT statement
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.select_expressions

* UDF improvement:
Ability to signal SQL NULL via a NULL pointer
See also: /doc/sql.extentions/README.ddl.txt

* Expression indices:
Implemented indices based on arbitrary expressions
Syntax: CREATE [UNIQUE] [ASC[ENDING] | DESC[ENDING]] INDEX ON ( )
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.expression_indices

* IIF builtin function :
Added IIF (, , ) as a shortcut for CASE WHEN THEN ELSE END
See also:
/doc/sql.extentions/README.iif

* Improved ISQL:
1) Fixed bug SF #910430 - ISQL and database dialect
2) Add SET HEADING ON/OFF option
3) Add -M2 command-line option to send output of statistics and plans to the same file than the rest of the output
See also:/doc/README.isql_enhancements.txt

* New database shutdown modes are introduced Single-user and full
shutdown modes are implemented
See also:/doc/README.shutdown_modes.txt

* Implemented EXECUTE BLOCK statement It is now possible to use dynamic PSQL with this statement
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.execute_block

* Implemented support for default parameters for stored procedures
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.default_parameters

* Re-worked logic of updatable views This solves problems with views that are implicitly updatable,but still have update triggers
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.view_updates

* Added SQL200X ROWS clause New syntax to limit amount of records you want to get
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.rows

* Support for explicit cursor syntax in PSQL It is now possible to declare and use multiple cursors in PSQL
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.cursors

* Improved PLAN clause Allowed to specify more possible paths for the engine
Example: PLAN (A ORDER IDX1 INDEX(IDX2, IDX3))
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.plan

* Added LEAVE syntax support PSQL loops now may be marked with labels and terminated in Java style
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.leave_labels

* Improved ROW_COUNT Now it's possible to get number of selected rows as well
See also: /doc/sql.extentions/README.context_variables

* Derived tables support Implemented support for derived tables in DSQL (subqueries in FROM clause) as defined by SQL200X
See also:/doc/sql.extentions/README.derived_tables.txt

* New backup technology Implemented fast on-line physical incremental backup facilities
See also: /doc/README.nbackup.txt

* Generic cleanup. Various cleaning and tidying up of code, warnings removal,64-bitness cleanup, numerous minor bugfixes

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