Firebird 2.0 Beta 1: New Features

Firebird 2.0 Beta 1 is available - follow the link in the download section. Some of the new features:

1. incremental hot backup
2. derived tables (subqueries in FROM clause)
3. storing databases on raw devices
4. new EXECUTE BLOCK allows the client to call an "unnamed stored procedure" which is sent as a command
5. IIF(condition, value1, value2) added as a shortcut to CASE WHEN condition THEN value1 ELSE value2 END
6. CROSS JOIN is supported ("a CROSS JOIN b" equals "a INNER JOIN b ON 1 = 1")
7. ROWS introduced to replace FIRST/SKIP
8. SEQUENCE introduced as a shortcut to GENERATOR
9. "NEXT VALUE FOR sequence" introduced as a shortcut to "GEN_ID(sequence, 1)"
10. Default values for stored procedure arguments
11. Index length limit (252 bytes) is removed
12. Expression indexes introduced
13. Optimizer improvements
14. New string functions: LOWER() and TRIM()
15. Security improvements (better password encryption, active protection agains brute-force attacks, users can change their own passwords...)
16. and many others...

See more in the release notes (PDF inside a ZIP).
Ps: article source dotnetfirebird

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