Firebird News

Thursday, April 28, 2005

Java UDF and procedures support in Firebird

It's been a while since we have published a document describing possible
architecture to support external procedures written in different languages.
Today we have released first preview version of Java support in Firebird.

This release includes a modified version of Firebird 2.0 (though it is quite
old version), modified version of JayBird 1.5.5 and few examples that show
ability to call arbitrary Java code as an UDF, selectable procedure, and
also an example of trigger accessing the new.* and old.* contexts.

This is experimental stuff, server might crash, might corrupt the database.
Do not use it in production environment. Main goal of this release is to
show what we have been working on and to gather your comments and
suggestions.

As I wrote, I am away till end of the week, please post your questions to
the mailing list, Eugeney Putilin will try to answer your questions.

Files can be downloaded from JayBird Wiki:


http://jaybirdwiki.firebirdsql.org/download/Downloads

Roman

Wednesday, April 27, 2005

System Defined Functions

>  I came across this document
> (http://community.borland.com/article/0,1410,27563,00.html) which gives an
> idea about extending Interbase using SDF (not UDF) which I found quite
> interesting. OOI could the same methodology apply to FB?

Written late 1999, remember this discussion well.
It was on the back of
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_70_thoughts

"Standard Function Library

Most other database products have a large complement of built-in functions. We are definitely behind the curve in this area. We
should have many more functions than we currently have, even with the UDF library we provide.

It's a great feature to permit users to write their own UDFs. However, most users don't want to spend the time and effort to design,
compile, debug, declare, and deploy their own function libraries. They want these functions to be present by default, especially for
commonly used functions that are ubiquitous in other database products.

We should have functions implemented in the engine, not as a UDF library. Making the functions built-in allows them to be used on
NetWare and makes them more convenient to use on all platforms. It also simplifies installation and maintenance because no auxiliary
UDF library is needed.

See the list of functions in other database products at the end of this document."

We are already doing it.... Any new function added directly to the engine currently uses this
mechanism.

Paul Beach

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

Looking for a robust database system?

THE little known open source relational database management system FirebirdSQL is finally gaining momentum and recognition.

Read full article by loke kar seng

Request for V2 linux snapshots

I found that the linux snapshots are fairly outdated, the ones in

http://www.firebirdsql.org/download/snapshot_builds/linux/fb2/

are from 15-2-2005. Why aren't they included in the automatic build
mechanism (any more)?

Volker
[ed : agrees with his request]

Stored Procedure Generator Version 1 (Beta) released under the IDPL (Open Source license)

TECT Software Ltd are pleased to announce the immediate availability of Stored Procedure Generator Version 1 (Beta) under the IDPL Open Source license. Full source can be downloaded from their website. This is the first step in making all their products Open Source.

Open Source ODBC Driver V2.0 (Beta) released

Updated Beta 2.0 (114) ODBC Driver libraries are available.

Fbtalk (fbtalk.net) reloaded

FBTalk (http://www.fbtalk.net) has been re-launched as a web based
forum for users of Firebird RDBMS. It includes several topics for
Firebird users to use and participate in, including:

o Support Area.
o Online Firebird related Polls.
o 3rd Party Announcements.
o Links section.

I would like to invite all FB users to visit FBTalk
(http://www.tectsoft.net/) and help build a new web
based community forum dedicated to Firebird.

------
Si Carter

There are plenty of others carving up Oracle's lunch

I received many emails after last week's column on open-source databases, reminding me there are plenty of others carving up Oracle's lunch.

They are absolutely right, and PostgreSQL and Firebird, in particular, deserve a mention alongside mySQL. Email me if you've seen big Aussie installations.

http://xrl.us/fvxu (Link to australianit.news.com.au)

Bruce McCabe is an independent analyst and managing director of S2 Intelligence.


Firebird 2.0 Alpha 2 on the way

Anyone having pending checkins to the HEAD please either commit today
or defer your commit until the tree is tagged. If anyone knows about
some Alpha 2 release showstopper, please reply here. The tree will be
tagged tomorrow.

Dmitry

[ed: list of fixes in Alpha 2]



SMP in Firebird, Vulcan - defined

I presume we agree on the definition of SMP -- two more
processes sharing memory and scheduling symmetrically.
By SMP friendly, I mean a system that can effectively utilize
the resources effectively.

Firebird classic was designed for clusters (as defined by DEC),
which now exist only on VMS and some research envvironments.
Anything thatcan run a cluster is just strolling on SMP.

There are distinct downside to classic -- it can thrash under
heavy update load, security enforcement is nil, and you have
to trust application programs not to walk on the lock table
and page nubbers.If you can live with those constraints, it's
as SMP friendly as a database gets.

Vulcan, I hope, gives the benefits of classic without any of
the drawbacks. If you want or need super high bandwidth database
access,you can tweak the configuration files run in classic more
or even hybrid.


--

Jim Starkey
Netfrastructure, Inc.

Monday, April 25, 2005

Firebird 2 Nightly Snapshot Builds

This is a daily snapshot build. It is intended for Firebird
developers and experienced beta testers. It is generated automatically.
It is untested. It comes with no guarantees. It may work and it may screw up
your system. Do not use it unless you know what you are doing.
Nightly download area (for windows only)

Straws In The Wind:[Firebird] Database

"I got an email recently from a long time associate of mine, Paul Beach,
who is now deeply involved in the FireBird Open Source project. He tells
me that several developers he knows are developing applications with
FireBird for deploying on USB memory sticks – a kind of "application on
a stick". The relevance of FireBird to this is that FireBird is
extremely economic in terms of space (and yet scales very well)."

http://xrl.us/fvkz (Link to www.it-director.com)

HP-UX ,AIX and MVS support added to native JDBC-JCA Driver

Quote from the build_native.xml

Currently Supported Platforms:
Platform Compiler/Linker
AIX xlC (Visual Age compiler)
HP-UX aCC (HP aCC+ compiler)
Linux GCC
MVS z/OS os390 (c++)
Solaris GCC, CC (Sun ONE compiler)
Windows MSVC 6

MVS Requirements:
=================
Jaybird was successfully built on MVS using z/OS. Several steps were
necessary to work around the ASCII/EBCDIC character issues.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Poor Boy’s Oracle - Open Source Oracle (and free)

"In the midst of my metamorphosis into a web-standards adherent, I
suddenly got bit (again) by the database bug. This is to blame, the
first really decent book written (in English) on the Firebird database
platform. In my efforts to “fill out the toolbox,” I’ve been searching
for a decent database platform that won’t kill my meager (read:
non-existent) budget." ....

http://rdc.nowhereville.com/wp/index.php?p=554

.net 2.0 Beta 2 and Firebird .net provider updates

I have done some updates this week on v2.0 sources to get it working with the .NET Framework 2.0 Beta 2.

I'm thinking on release an Alpha 1 for testing, but, before i want to known opinions :)

Some things to have in mind:

* The releases will be done using FirebirdClient name.

* There are changes in public namespaces name's:

FirebirdSql.Data.Firebird -> FirebirdSql.Data.FirebirdClient
FirebirdSql.Data.Firebird.Services -> FirebirdSql.Data.Services
FirebirdSql.Data.Firebird.Isql -> FirebirdSql.Data.Isql

* The CommandBuilder now inherits from the DbCommandBuilder .NET Framework class and uses his command generation.

* There will be no documentation package for now, as i'm thinking on left only documentation on Firebird and FirebirdClient specific features that are no covered by the .NET Framework documentation.

* The Schema support remains unchanged.

* The design time support needs testing but i'm not too much worried for now on this topic.

The nunit test suite is running without errors :) .


Opinions are welcome

Carlos Guzmán Álvarez
Vigo-Spain

"Is Oracle A Legacy Technology" - feedback :)

Some feedback created by firebird community (page hits) :


"Over the last couple of weeks I posted a couple of articles that generated a
lot of feedback, so much so that I thought it worth posting an update article
summarising some of the comments I received. The articles were on subjects that
tend to pretty much divide the Oracle community so it was no surprise that
opinions were in both cases pretty divergent.
The first article was entitled "Is Oracle A Legacy
Technology"
and was based on a couple of articles by
Mogens Nørgaard that
argued that databases are now, like operating systems and disk storage, a
commodity technology and that the Oracle RBDMS in particular is actually now a

"legacy" technology. The article was linked to on a number of blogs and
generated a lot of referrals from the Firebird (an open-source RDBMS)
news site
."

Full text about feedback is on Mark's weblog
(even some responses from microsoft)

Loading Video from a Database Table with JDBC

"While playing with Java Player class, I came to the following problem: How to feed the Player with a multimedia stream from a database table"

In anoter post he shows how to load images from database (blobs)

My database professor at school recommends ...

Quote of the day :
"I was able to get the MySQL and Firebird databases installed on MacOS X. My database professor at school recommends Interbase, so Firebird is the closest thing I can come to a reliable substitute. Not bad since Firebird is based upon the Interbase source."
found it on this blog post

Thursday, April 21, 2005

don't use MBCS characters in the database name or folder

Long story short :
"If the DB file's path or filename contains
some extended characters or east-asian characters
(Chinese/Japanese/Korean etc.), the connection to the
db cannot be initialized."


Sean Leyne answered to bug report:

"As to your specific problem; there are no plans for this case
to be fixed for the v2.0 release.

There is a simple workaround, which is available -- don't use
MBCS characters in the database name or folder. It is not
the best answer, but it does work."

Wednesday, April 20, 2005

Firebird at The Examiner Newspaper

The Examiner Newspaper is Australia's second-oldest
newspaper, first appearing on March 12, 1842.
We use Firebird for a variety of core-business
processes, from web-based information gathering
from advertising clients, to internal CRM and
Directory services.

The need arose for a database with a proven track record,
stability, and performance under unpredictable loas.
With ~200 workstations in 7 sites, our data storage
needs had to be available 24/7, as a newspaper relies
on the data it receives - No data, no newspaper.

Firebird, with it's ~20 years of growth and enterprise use,
was the ideal choice for our organisation. Now with 5
databases collectively storing ~3GB of data, not a single
minute has been lost due to administration time.

Firebird has proven itself to be the right choice for us.

Nigel Weeks
Tech Support & Systems Developer

Tuesday, April 19, 2005

New forum added to firebird planetarium
the semi official forum is located on devshed.com

FogCreek considers to support Firebird wiithin FogBugz

Joel Spolsky says: "I've been seriously considering Firebird for a
future
release."
See: http://support.fogcreek.com/default.asp?fogbugz.4.1650.3

BTW: FogBugz is a project management system for software teams
(http://www.fogcreek.com/FogBugz)

Saturday, April 16, 2005

Firebird RDBMS supported in phpbb 2.1.x

It was posted on phpbb development forums

"To download the new version CVS snapshots you need to use the 2.1.x column on the snapshots page"

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Firebird in Mandriva 10.2 official!

Philippe Makowski wrote on general list:

Not, on the cd's (not enough space :( )
but there is an official rpm in the last offcial distrib

cf :
http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/rpms/mandrake/official/10.2/i586/media/contrib/firebird-1.5.2.4731-0.2mdk.i586.html


and that before the merge with Connectiva.

New Firebird's slogan -- a summary

Firebird: The legend continues.
Firebird: Meet the Legend.
Firebird: Pure Power.
Firebird: Empower Yourself.
Firebird: Powerful, Reliable or Easy? Pick any three. (love this one,
but it's better for e-mail signature than general slogan)
Firebird: More than database.
Firebird: Solution that works.
Firebird forever.
Firebird: Plain sailing.
Firebird: What else?
Firebird: Simply clever. (but it's used by Skoda Auto)
Firebird: Inspired database.
Firebird: Just works.
Firebird: Smart technology.
Firebird: Proven solution.
Firebird: A database with vision.

Many slogans listed above could be mixed to make new ones, for example:

Firebird: Inspired Technology.
Firebird: Proven Technology.
Firebird: More than Technology.
Firebird: More than Solution.
etc.

Best regards
--Pavel

Wednesday, April 13, 2005

TCP_NODELAY is now on (both superserver and classic)

Currently TcpNoNagle flag in firebird.conf is default on for classic and super servers.
The Nagle algorithm is described in rfc1122
and is better explained in Firebird's Closed Features:

Disabling the TCP/IP Nagle Algorithm typically
improves speed on slow networks.

The Nagle TCP/IP algorithm was designed to avoid
problems with small packets, called tinygrams, on slow
networks. The algorithm says that a TCP/IP connection
can have only one outstanding small segment that has
not yet been acknowledged. The definition of "small"
varies but usually it is defined as "less than the
segment size" which on ethernet is about 1500 bytes.

By default, the socket library will use an internal
algorithm known as Nagle's algorithm for buffering
bytes on write before actually sending the data in
order to minimise actual physical writes.

mod_auth_firebird - apache module

Marcus Merrin asked on security focus

"Has anyone tried to make the equivalent of apache's mod_auth_mysql for
Firebird? I guess it would be called mod_auth_ibase. It doesn't look
like it would take too much hacking .."

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

VulcanJ production ready

The VulcanJ test ware should be ready for general use now. I ran the sourceforge copy of the test ware last night against our build of Vulcan using S64, Windows XP, MVS, Linux, and R64 (AIX). The test ware worked on all hosts, although not all of the were clean against Vulcan. :)  I pushed some corrections this morning, to support FB2.0.

I ran VulcanJ against Firebird 2 on Windows this morning, using the snapshot build, Firebird Version: WI-T2.0.0.10711 Firebird 2.0 Alpha 1. It almost ran clean. There was a problem with CHECK constraints (4 tests) that was reported here earlier and that Dimitry was going to address. The only other problem is an issue where an extra null seems to be appended to error messages when using Jaybird (that I also see with Vulcan, but not FB1.5). I haven't been able to reproduce this problem outside of the Java environment. So, I had 5 failure/errors in total with the FB2.0/Windows.

I have added Adriano's request to include SET NAMES ASCII in some of the ISQL tests for internationalization reasons, and corrected the binary/ASCII problems from the initial push. And fixed Adriano's comment that output directories were not created properly when they did not exist. Thanks, Adriano!!!

I discussed privately with Pavel where to put the test ware, and for the time being, it will stay at firebird/VulcanJ in the source tree where it was initially pushed. Not ideal, but ok for now. Pavel is welcome to move it to where he sees fit later.

Please let me know your experience with the test ware, and if you find any problems.

-b

Bill Oliver
Product Specialist, Base SAS

Sunday, April 10, 2005

New switch for gbak

replace_database switch was dangerous , it was decided to be changed in this thread

From the firebird2 ChangeLog

1. New switch for gbak -RECREATE_DATABASE [OVERWRITE].
Simple RECREATE_DATABASE is equal to CREATE_DATABASE,
RECREATE_DATABASE OVERWRITE is equal to REPLACE_DATABASE.
2.gbak uses isc_dpb_overwrite to create database over existing files
3.engine overwrite existing files only if asked explicitly by
user by setting isc_dpb_overwrite to 1
4.fixed unregistered bug - when gbak uses service manager and passed
command line contains invalid switch. Service reports error and finish
but not call Service::svc_started therefore response is not send and gbak
is stalled forever

Enterprise Library for Firebird 0.7.0

Enterprise Library data provider for the Firebird database. Distributed under the terms of the LGPL license.

Changelog:
* License changed into LGPL

* Cleaned up "bin" and "obj" directories from some files which were used during the initial development process

* Minor changes to "NorthwindForFirebird.sql" (thanks to Alessandro Petrelli)

Download Page


Firebird related products from TECT Software are available immediately under a freeware license

TECT Software Ltd announces that all Firebird related products from TECT Software are available immediately under a freeware license. Products included are:

  • Firebird/Interbase Backup Manager
  • Firebird Helm Interface (FBHelm)
  • Firebird/Interbase Stored Procedure Generator
  • Firebird/Interbase Server Properties

Friday, April 08, 2005

VulcanJ/Firebird test - imported in cvs

VulcanJ is a SQL test suite, originally designed for testing the "Vulcan" port Firebird, a popular open-source database. This suite contains two packages - org.firebirdsql.isql and org.firebirdsql.nist

Tests in the isql package were were previously implemented under QMTest. These tests use Junit to fork an ISQL process and compare the output from the ISQL run to a benchmark log. They do not test the JDBC API at all. These tests can only be used with the Firebird ISQL utility.

Tests in the nist package are written in Java and can be run against any database that provides a JDBC driver. These tests use JDBC metadata to determine if the database supports transactions, string manipulation, sort order of NULL's, and other database-specific items.

Tests in the com.sas.nist package are derived from the NIST (National Institue of Standards and Technology) test suite. See http://www.itl.nist.gov/div897/ctg/sql_form.htm.


Source code can be found in firebird cvs repository
How to run it is described in introduction document

Crypto Code in Vulcan


A few months back we had a long discussion of what crypto libraries to
use. Mr. O'Donahue was arguing for SSL, I was pushing Crypto++ 4.2, and
others were mentioned.

Crypto 4.2, it turns out, neither compiles nor runs on AMD64. Current
version, 5.2.1, supports AMD64, but has grown enormously, and for all
practical purposes, is no longer subsettable. My interest has been
exclusively with DES, SHA-1, and RSA, though I expect to phase out DES
in favor of AES in the distant future. After weeks of head bashing, I
have come to the conclusion that Crypto++ and I are going separate ways.

I've been looking at crypto packages for a couple of weeks now. I'm
looking for a subsettable crypto package. The requirements are:

1. Compatible license (BSD, Mozilla, or equivalent)
2. C++
3. Subsettable
4. Support for RSA, DES, SHA, and AES

I haven't found anything that meets all requirements. To be frank,
Crypto++ comes closest, but the smallest subset blew my rpm from 3 MB to
14 MB, requires special switches to extend the internal space in the
Microsoft C++ compiler, and brings so much extraneous classes that the
original project gets lost in Visual Studio.

The basic problem is modularity. RSA, has two functions, public key
encryption and digital signatures. Digital signatures require a hash
(the signiture, not unreasonably, specifies the hash), which tends to
suck in SHA, MD2, MD5, RC4, and who knows what else. Those guys
invariable pull in x509 certificate stuff that drag in virtually
everything else in the crypto world.

A little research has shown that almost all free crypto code goes back
to SSLeay written by Eric Young. SSLeay is the foundation of OpenSSL
The license requires that you give Eric Young credit in your
documentation and that you not release the source under another license,
especially GPL. Much or most of the code in Crypto++, in fact, comes
from SSLeay. The downside of SSLeay is that it is written in relative
primitive C and anything sucks in just about everything.

Unless somebody knows of a package that has escaped my attention, I
think the acceptable solution is to do yet another free packagin of
SSLeay. I think the best way to attack the problem is:

1. Define abstract classes for each class crypto algorithm: Symmetic
block cipher, asymmetric block cipher, and hash.
2. Define a set of classes that civilize block transformations into
buffered transformations and implement "modes"
3. Implement simple primitive classes for each algorithm
4. Implement higher level classes to handle things like digital
signatures.

The key is to build the thing in layers so you can get at RSA for
session key exchange without bring into all of digitial signatures and
x509 certificates.

Since Eric Young has taken the step of putting his code in the public
domain unencumbered, I'm planning to do the same. There are two ways I
can go. I can do it myself and make it available when I'm done, or if
there is interest, run this as an informal open source project from
Netfrastructure CVS server.

Anyone interested?

--

Jim Starkey

Thursday, April 07, 2005

ibpp - progress

"You know I always try to keep myself informed of your progress and issues so that I can pick up new needs for IBPP.
Unfortunately march 2005 has been quite badly exceptional for me (mainly health issues & work overload issues).
You heard quite nothing from me for some weeks and it will still be the case for 1 or 2 weeks (roughly until around April 20).
Though I'm back, reading news from this list and considering to complete some old unfinished work in IBPP "soon".
You should expect a new IBPP "stable" beta late this month or at least early in May (because beginning of May I'll be free from a work-charge and that should give me 10 hours free a week.

I wanted to tell you that the Blob interface received enhancements some weeks ago (this is checked in the HEAD of IBPP CVS, though I still do not recommend you to depend on the HEAD branch for the time being). You'll find the ability to directly read or write a blob to/from a std::string through the Statement::Get/Set methods, essentially short-circuiting completely the need to use a Blob temporary variable for simple use cases.

This feature at least is already heavily used in our private builds at TIP Group inside release commercial software. So I expect the beta of this next IBPP iteration will be very short.

There is also a Row concept, that, I expect, could be used to implement sort of client-side caching of rows when retrieving a dataset. But more on this later.

And the IBPP::Exception now inherits from std::exception allowing a better integration with standard compliants developments. (Look at the ibpp.h from CVS HEAD if you want to see the structure of this and not take wrong paths in between).

See you soon here, "

--
Olivier Mascia

Monday, April 04, 2005

SHA1 is now broken, should FB 2.0 still use it?

Bug Submitted By: Simon McKenna (hypersi)
Summary: SHA1 is now broken, should FB 2.0 use it?

Initial Comment:
>From README.sha1.txt:

"New hashing algorithm, selected for firebird 2.0, is
SHA-1"

However, some clever Chinese researchers have made
brute force attack on SHA-1 far more attractive:

http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0503.html#1

I'm sure you fine folks already know this, but a
headsup just in case :)

peace
si


----------------------------------------------------------------------

>Comment By: Sean Leyne (seanleyne)
Date: 2005-04-04 12:36

While the SHA-1 algorithm has been cracked, and a
algorithm is now available to make the attack more possible.

The most important aspect of the article is:

"...On the software side, the main comparable is a 264
keysearch done by distributed.net that finished in 2002. One
article put it this way: "Over the course of the competition,
some 331,252 users participated by allowing their unused
processor cycles to be used for key discovery. After 1,757
days (4.81 years), a participant in Japan discovered the
winning key." Moore's Law means that today the calculation
would have taken one quarter the time -- or have required one
quarter the number of computers -- so today a 269
computation would take eight times as long, or require eight
times the computers."

This means that it would take **32 years or 2.4 million
computers** to find a matching SHA-1 hash!

Further the article continues:

"For the average Internet user, this news is not a cause for
panic. No one is going to be breaking digital signatures or
reading encrypted messages anytime soon. The electronic
world is no less secure after these announcements than it
was before."

Accordingly, there is nothing in the article which will affect
Firebird security and its use of SHA-1 for the foresable future.

Finally, there has already been much discussion of a new
feature to enable a plug-in security architecture which would
allow for users to implement their own security
tools/algorithms (SHA-224, SHA-256, SHA-384, or SHA-
512). The implementation of the new security approach is
being discussed as a v3.0 feature.

VulcanJ, a Firebird regression test suite

We have developed a test suite which we run nightly to verify Vulcan functionality. This test suite, called VulcanJ, has over 800 tests that are a combination of ISQL tests and Java (JDBC) tests. There have been several cases where nightly runs of the test ware uncovered problems that would have been missed otherwise. We also run the tests before committing changes to our internal source code management system. I have now run the test ware against FB2.0, and would like to make it available to the community at large.

The test ware is based on Junit and Ant. VulcanJ will generate a HTML report which immediately shows where a problem is occurring. In the case of the ISQL tests, the HTML report also shows the comparison between the faulty run and the original benchmark run. Running the tests against FB2.0 generated 2 problems, one of which Pavel has entered a bug track on, and the other, which I posted here this week as a Vulcan problem, also shown up in FB2.0. VulcanJ also includes Java tests that are based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and customized for firebird-specific queries.

I have sent advance copies of the test ware to Roman and Pavel, and they have encouraged me to push my code to a new CVS module. I hope to push this test ware to a sourceforge next week (at firebird/VulcanJ), but if you want advance review I can send you a zip immediately. Detailed doc and usage instructions are included in the kit. There is a little bit of work left to do, to make sure I remove company-specific references in the source, but then I should be ready to push.

-b

Bill Oliver
Product Specialist, Base SAS

New version php4-interbase in Debian

I prepared a new version of php4-interbase. Gregorz, are you in a
position to sponsor an upload?

People on pkg-firebird-general might want to rush in
for the fun early to help testing.

Here is the changelog.

* New upstream release
* Acknowledging NMU. (Closes: #294000)
* Bump php4-dev build-dep to (4:4.3.10-10) to ensure
building without zts
* Remove the -zts phpapi. Urgency high as this
is release critical.(Closes: #301329)
* Updated copyright file to incorporate newer
version of the license
* Incorporated Czech translation (Closes: #274066)

The packages can be found here:

http://www.cd-uitleen.nl/debian/

Cheers,
Remco

Sunday, April 03, 2005

FIBS 1.0.1 Firebird-Interbase Backup Scheduler

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 PKZip compatible compressed backup files, if user wants to. 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 zipping. Surely this means that high grade concurrency has been given to users to make them free to set lots of backup tasks just the same time.
It's been solved some potential scheduling problem with version 1.0.1.
[ED is free as in free beer :postcardware
Scroll down to awards]

I submitted FIBS and TC Converter to a dozen of download sites in March 2005. They have awarded these ratings.

New Backup in 3 sentences

Leyne, Sean on firebird-support

"Additionally, v2.0 includes a new backup tool (currently named NBackup)
which will allow you to:

- take a direct OS copy of a live/online database

- make an image copy of a live/online database

- create incremental database backups"

Debian:Request an adopter for the php4-interbase package

Remco Seesink wrote 

"I sent an RFA (request for adoption). In Debian terms that means I don't
have enought time available to do proper maintaining, but haven't given
up on the package yet (which would be orphaning). This is important
because holding on to a package while not maintaining it proper will
hurt users. But I still want to see this package make it into sarge in
good shape and I will do my best for that.

This means that a anyone is now free to take over maintainership of the
package. If you are not a Debian Developer it could be done through
finding a sponsor who is a Debian Developer and can check your package.
That is how I do it."

Friday, April 01, 2005

(re)port Firebird to OpenVMS ? - not a joke ;)

Nigel Weeks wrote:
> Just wondering how hard it would be to (re)port Firebird to OpenVMS on
> Alpha(not VAX)?
> We've got three twin-processor AlphaServer's, each with 1GB of ram, doing
> nothing.
> Anyone got ideas on which compilers are still freely available?
>
> Please tell me if it's a complete waste of time, as they'd make great beer
> fridges! ;-)

I'd look into beer. The VMS port hasn't compiled for a decade, I
suspect. Immediately after Firebird started a couple of groups tried to
build it, got discouraged, and quit.

Regards,


Ann
[Ed that was responded on firebird-support]

new version of flamerobin

Just for 1April :)
http://www.flamerobin.org

MyFireGreSql 1.0 - united open source databases

Today a new project is announced that many oss developers had been awaiting
MyFireGreSql 1.0 will be the new base code for mysql 6.0 ,firebird 3.0,postgresql 9.0
We needed a big shake up in open source database world and working on the common code base have it's
advantages:Firebird and Postresql could borrow from mysql's speed , mysql can use MVCC for it's
transactions engine from postgresql or firebird's one .
SQL2003 will be implemented in all three engines now that is published as standard .So why working on a three SQL2003 implementations when we could work only on one? , The project's model is linux kernel where vendors are using only one source code for their distributions (patched properly) but there is only one organization for working on the kernel osdl.