Author: IBSurgeon News

Mission of IBSurgeon company is protect Firebird databases against corruptions, help to manage, monitor and solve serous problems.

HQbird 2024 is released

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We are glad to announce that HQbird version 2024 is released!
HQbird is advanced distribution of Firebird, with many improvements in the areas of performance, high availability, development, and more. It is intended for large enterprises and development companies with many Firebird installations, offering performance, protection from various threats, and mass maintenance.

Version 2024 introduces support of Firebird 5, and continue to support versions 4.0, 3.0, 2.5, with various improvements in the engine, high availability, tooling, and encryption.

HQbird is 100% compatible with Firebird, no need to perform backup/restore, you can install HQbird in trial mode in parallel with vanilla Firebird, and switch between instances.

The detailed list of HQbird features which improves Firebird can be found here, and below there are the biggest improvements of version HQbird 2024:

  1. Replacing queries “on the fly”
  2. Plugins for performing external connections with ODBC and MySQL
  3. Streaming/Change Data Capture with ready-to-use Kafka plugin, and plugin-building framework.
  4. Automation support to work with many databases on the server (for clients with SaaS model), with ability to create “replica server”
  5. Multi-instance support, which makes migration process from old Firebird versions much easier. HQbird 2024 is also integrated with Mass Migration Framework
  6. Automatic correction of firebird.conf configuration in case of erroneous configuration.

All features are described here.

HQbird v2024 has 2 licenses (click here to see purchasing options):

  • Per server, suitable for small and medium companies, US$899/server
  • Unlimited License, for large enterprises and software development companies, cost US$13465/year for unlimited number of installations.

Download HQbird v2024 here.

Customers with support contracts, subscriptions, or recent maintenance purchases (within the last 13 months), as well as customers who bought HQbird in the last 30 days, will get free upgrades in the next 10 days.

FirebirdSQL: internal files, temporary files, and environment variables

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In this article we will describe the types of Firebird internal and temp files, and also consider how they are stored and managed through configuration parameters and environment variable of OS.
FirebirdSQL: internal files, temporary files, and environment variables

The article continues series of articles and materials devoted to the mastering of installation and configuration of Firebird:

IBSurgeon Library -> Installation And Configuration


New article: How Firebird Database Encryption Works

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The new article “How Firebird Database Encryption Works” is based on the materials of the workshop “Database Encryption” at Firebird Conference 2019 in Berlin, Germany, presented by Alex Peshkoff, Firebird Project, and Alexey Kovyazin, IBSurgeon.

The article describes how Firebird database encryption works, on the server-level, on the client-side, how to configure database encryption, how to use it from the various types of applications (Delphi, Java, .NET).

New Version of Firebird Encryption Plugin Framework

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IBSurgeon releases a new version of Firebird Encryption Plugin Framework: the set of source files and ready-to-use compiled binaries to implement database encryption for Firebird databases.

Main features of Firebird Encryption Plugin Framework (version 2021):

1. Support of Firebird 4.0 and Firebird 3.0 out of the box, on Windows 32bit/64bit and Linux 32bit/64bit. The new version is ready to use with Firebird 4.0 without recompilation (but databases must be migrated, of course)

2. Client-side KeyHolder support. Now, fbclient.dll can load keys from KeyHolder.conf on the client-side, it allows the transparent and safe connection of developer tools, Firebird command-line tools. and other applications without key exchange support.

3. Included low-level tool for decryption of databases in case of corruption and (new in v2021) license of FirstAID recovery tool for 10 databases.

4. Gbak.exe supports encrypted backup and restore.

5. Client application examples are available for Delphi, Lazarus, PHP, .Net, Java, etc.

6. Now 2 licenses are available:
a) Unlimited license with sources, it includes upgrades for all minor releases of Firebird 4.0.x – USD$1999 (EUR 1655)
b) Unlimited license with sources and implementation consulting for 1 application, includes upgrades for all minor releases of Firebird 4.0.x – USD$2499(EUR 2055)

All existing customers of Firebird Encryption Framework Unlimited License will receive this major upgrade for free!

Download the demo version of Firebird Encryption to try it with your application!

IBSurgeon Firstaid 7.0 is released

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IBSurgeon releases version 7 of FirstAID: recovery for Firebird and InterBase databases. 
This version includes the following new features and bugfixes:

  1. Support of InterBase is extended till the version of 2020
  2. Firebird 4 support was aligned with changes in ODS of Firebird 4.0 Beta 2 version, almost ready for the release
  3. Addressable space for 64-bit machines was increased to 3Gb, which allows to open and recover bigger databases
  4. Several bugfixes for BOOLEAN data type recovery and BLOBs processing

Download FirstAID now: https://ib-aid.com/en/ibsurgeon-firstaid/ 

Clients with available FirstAID activations (from version 3.0+) can download and use version 7.0 with existing licenses.

Those clients who have exhausted all activations, or users of FirstAID before 3.0, can upgrade here https://ib-aid.com/en/upgrades-ibsurgeon/

HQbird 2020 Update 1

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The 1st minor update of HQbird 2020 introduces several useful features and important bug fixes:

Features:

  • New updated HQbird user guide – in PDF and HTML
  • HQbird FBDataGuard shows the time on the server in the upper left corner
  • HQbird FBDataGuard during the installation automatically generates a name for the HQbird instance using hostname and date, and also set random background color (you can change name and color in the Alerts setup dialog – just click on the server name)

Bug fixes

  • Updated OpenJDK distribution with HQbird for Windows to support changes in world time zones (Brazil DST, etc)
  • Fixed problem with Office365 emails in alerts settings
  • Fixed “Foreign key error” problem for several specific situations
  • Parameter TempSpaceLogThreshold to track big sortings now has the alias TempCacheLog
  • ALTER CONNECTION POOL statements are not replicated anymore

 

Download HQbird 2020 now.

HQbird 2020 is released. Now it is simply the fastest Firebird

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Veja a versão em Português abaixo.

IBSurgeon is glad to announce the general availability of HQbird 2020. HQbird 2020 is the new release of the advanced FirebirdSQL distribution with a lot of new features:

  • Multi-thread Sweep, Backup, Restore (in Firebird 2.5 and 3.0, HQbird Enterprise only)
    • Sweep – up to 6x faster
    • Backup – up to 5x faster
    • Restore – up to 2x faster
    • Please note: to enable multi-thread features set in firebird.conf parameter MaxParallelWorkers=64 and restart Firebird
  • Speed-up heavy reports (up to 5x times) (Firebird 3.0, HQbird Enterprise only)
    • Queries with many fields in SELECT and large sorting (GROUP BY, ORDER BY, etc) can automatically use REFETCH plan to gain up to 5x performance
    • New parameter in firebird.conf to manage sort behavior
    • No changes in applications’ sources/SQLs required
  • Encryption Plugin (3.0, HQbird Enterprise only)
    • AES256 strong encryption, for Windows and Linux, low penalty on performance
    • gbak with encryption support, decrypt low-level tool (for recovery)
    • Examples of sources for Delphi, NET, PHP, Java
    • Support of encrypted databases in HQbird
  • Authentication plugin for transparent Execute Statement On External (3.0, HQbird Enterprise only)
    • allows establishing trusted authentication of ESOE without password
  • RSA-UDR: sign documents (strings and BLOBs) (3.0, HQbird Enterprise only)
    • Public/Private Keys generation
    • SQL functions to calculate digest, sign documents and verify the signature
  • Enhanced performance monitoring reports (2.5, 3.0)
    • Low penalty on performance, easy to schedule
    • Top queries reports: time-consuming, frequent, CPU-consuming, disk, etc
  • Enhanced silent installation and registration – on Windows
  • Automatic upgrades of HQbird: checking and download
  • Control Center For Firebird (2.5, 3.0, for subscription customers only)
    • Review status of many Firebird servers on the same page
    • Notifications about successful backups and critical problems

The detailed description of HQbird 2020 features is available in HQbird User Guide https://ib-aid.com/download/docs/hqbirduserguide2020.pdf

More details: https://ib-aid.com/en/news/hqbird-2020-is-released-now-it-is-simply-the-fastest-firebird/

Licensing

The existing subscription customers and customers with active maintenance will receive HQbird 2020 automatically in the next few days.

The customers with very recent purchases and customers from Firebird Developers Day 2019 (Brazil) also will receive HQbird 2020.

Upgrades

You can upgrade from any old version of HQbird to HQbird 2020: https://ib-aid.com/en/upgrades-ibsurgeon/

em Portuguese

Lançamento do HQbird 2020: Firebird Turbinado

O IBSurgeon tem o prazer de anunciar a disponibilidade geral do HQbird 2020. O HQbird 2020 é o novo lançamento da avançada distribuição do FirebirdSQL com muitos recursos novos:

  • Multi-thread sweep, backup, restauração (no Firebird 2.5 e 3.0, apenas no HQbird Enterprise)
    • Sweep – até 6x mais rápido
    • Backup – até 5x mais rápido
    • Restaurar – até 2x mais rápido
    • Para ativar os recursos multi-thread configurados no parâmetro firebird.conf MaxParallelWorkers = 64 e reiniciar o Firebird
  • Acelere relatórios pesados (até 5x vezes) (Firebird 3.0, apenas HQbird Enterprise)
    • As consultas com muitos campos em SELECT e a classificação grande (GROUP BY, ORDER BY, etc) podem usar automaticamente o plano REFETCH para obter desempenho de até 5x
    • Novo parâmetro no firebird.conf para gerenciar o comportamento de classificação
    • Não são necessárias alterações nas origens / SQL dos aplicativos
  • Plug-in de criptografia (3.0, apenas HQbird Enterprise)
    • Criptografia forte AES256, para Windows e Linux, baixa penalidade no desempenho
    • gbak com suporte à criptografia, descriptografar ferramenta de baixo nível (para recuperação)
    • Exemplos de fontes para Delphi, NET, PHP, Java
    • Suporte de bancos de dados criptografados no HQbird
  • Plug-in de autenticação para declaração de execução transparente no externo (3.0, apenas HQbird Enterprise)
    • permite estabelecer autenticação confiável do ESOE sem senha
  • RSA-UDR: assinar documentos (strings e BLOBs) (3.0, apenas HQbird Enterprise)
  • Geração de chaves públicas / privadas
    • Funções SQL para calcular resumo, assinar documentos e verificar a assinatura
  • Relatórios aprimorados de monitoramento de desempenho (2.5, 3.0)
    • Baixa penalidade no desempenho, fácil de agendar
    • Top SQL queries: demorado, frequente, CPU, disco, etc.
  • Instalação e registro silenciosos aprimorados – no Windows
  • Atualizações automáticas do HQbird: verificação e download
  • Centro de Controle para Firebird (2.5, 3.0, apenas para clientes de assinatura)
    • Revise o status de muitos servidores Firebird na mesma página
    • Notificações sobre backups bem-sucedidos e problemas críticos

A descrição detalhada dos recursos do HQbird 2020 está disponível no Guia do Usuário do HQbird (em Ingles) https://ib-aid.com/download/docs/hqbirduserguide2020.pdf

Licenciamento

Os clientes de assinatura existentes e os clientes com manutenção ativa receberão o HQbird 2020 automaticamente nos próximos dias.

Os clientes com compras muito recentes e clientes do Firebird Developers Day 2019 (Brasil) também receberão o HQbird 2020.

Atualizações

Você pode atualizar de qualquer versão antiga do HQbird para o HQbird 2020: https://ib-aid.com/en/upgrades-ibsurgeon/

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