Author: IBSurgeon News

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

How to track deadlocks in firebird

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As you probably know, Firebird Conference 2019 will include the practical workshops, and the article “How to track deadlocks in Firebird” is one of the sneaks peeks of the workshop “All About Transactions”, which will be done by Vlad Khorsun, Firebird core developer, and Alexey Kovyazin from IBSurgeon.

To help developers investigate the update conflicts (deadlocks), Firebird puts into error messages the reference to the concurrent transaction – i.e., the transaction where the concurrent update is not yet committed. Together with Trace API, it gives us the ability to track both conflicting operations.

Let’s consider the practical steps on how to do it: read the article “How to track deadlocks in Firebird“.

New article: Fast conversion from Firebird 2.5 to 3.0 with streamed backup-restore

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If you need to convert a very big Firebird 2.5 database to 3.0, or many databases during the short period of time (for example, overnight or during the weekend), you will definitely find useful this article: it describes how to speed up the backup-restore process by 25-30% with stream backup-restore process. 
Please read  Fast conversion of Firebird 2.5 databases to Firebird 3.0

HQbird 2018R4

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The minor release of HQbird, the advanced distribution of Firebird for enterprises, is available: 2018R4. The new version contains the following fixes:

  1. Improved replica initialization sequence under high load.
  2. Latest patches from Firebird sources, including the patch for tmpwatch problem for 3.0 at CentOS
  3. Simplifications of the interface for the database replication setup
  4. Significant changes in Performance Monitoring: now HQbird generates 3 reports (Duration, Frequency, and Summary), and also XLS report with top-consuming applications and statements, with all performance details (fetches, reads, writes, etc). FBPerfMon tool is excluded from HQbird ServerSide, since their functions are mostly covered by extended capabilities of Performance Monitoring.
  5. Several bug fixes

Download HQbird 2018R4 now!

23 More Ways To Speed Up Firebird

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The new article with the collection of tips and tricks to improve Firebird database performance: 23 More Ways To Speed Up Firebird. The article is based on the appropriate presentation from “Firebird Performance Tour” seminar.

Why “23 more”?

Some of you can remember the article 45 Ways To Speed Up Firebird, which was published in May 2016. Now it is time for some more tips and tricks, mostly based on the experience of optimization and maintenance of the Firebird databases and servers with the high number of connections (1000+).

HQbird 2018 R3 is released

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HQbird Firebird logoIBSurgeon is happy to announce the new release of HQbird – advanced Firebird distribution for enterprises, with the following features: native (high-performance and transactions friendly) master-slave replication, improved performance, advanced performance monitoring, automated backups, proper maintenance.
HQbird is 100% compatible with Firebird, it does not require backup/restore to move between HQbird and community Firebird.

This release includes many new features and improvements:

Advanced support of DDL during the replication

  • Automatic configuration:
    • operative and archive logs are created and registered automatically in replication configuration and Cloud Backup jobs
    • Windows installer has the option to install a replica with pre-configured database instance.
    • Improved automatic database re-initialization
  • The Pool of Execute On External connections now is available in Firebird 3.0 (as it was in 2.5) which included to HQbird – greatly increases stability and speed of Execute On External statements. The pool can be reviewed and controlled by SQL commands
  • New monitoring options:
    • Performance Summary to see cumulative reads/writes/fetches and SQL Ping to monitor database response
    • Detailed information about all temporary files in Firebird
  • Indices statistics job now recalculates all indices in AUTO mode (recommended to set it to run once per week)
  • Automatic upgrade now is also in Linux installer, as it was in Windows – if you already had HQbird installed, Linux installer will update it correctly without reinstallation
  • New context variable indicating is it master or replica RDB$GET_CONTEXT(‘SYSTEM’, ‘REPLICA’)
  • Fixes in the interface: icons, sorting order of graphs, etc

Download HQbird 2018 R3 and upgrade your existing version!
If you have a valid Firebird Support Service agreement or active Maintenance subscription, our technicians will contact you to perform the upgrade.

Please note that all licenses are compatible with HQbird 2017 and HQbird 2018.

Also, If you already tried HQbird and need a new trial – please send the request to support@ib-aid.com

New version of Firebird Encryption Plugin Framework: now with gbak support!

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IBSurgeon is glad to announce the availability of the new version of Encryption Plugin Framework for Firebird: the fast and easy way to add transparent and strong (AES256) encryption for Firebird databases.

The new version includes the following features:

  • Pre-built binaries for Firebird 3.0.3: Windows 32/64 and Linux 32/64
  • gbak.exe with encryption of databases and backups.
  • Full sources included
  • Unlimited license for redistribution with all business applications of your company
  • Detailed examples of the implementation in Delphi, PHP, etc
  • Implementation support – our engineers will help you to implement and integrate encryption
  • (Optional) SQL development tool with the encryption support

Download and try IBSurgeon’s Encryption Plugin for Firebird now!

HQbird 2018: New version of advanced FirebirdSQL distribution

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We are glad to release the new major version of advanced Firebird (2.5 and 3.0) distribution: HQbird 2018. The key new features are the following:

  1. Online initialization of asynchronous replication (in the Enterprise edition). Now it is possible to initialize and re-initialize database replicas with zero downtime of the master server.
  2. Automatic performance monitoring (in all editions), with the performance reports which show the slowest and the most frequent SQL queries, and with the advanced monitoring of long-running active transactions.
  3. Pool of connections for external statements (for version 2.5) which greatly increases the performance of Execute On External statements
  4. Pool of prepared statements (for version 3.0) which greatly improves the performance in case of frequent parametrized queries
  5. New version of Firebird SQL Studio, now with the support of encrypted databases

Please refer to HQbird User Guide for more details!

For those, who downloaded trials of previous HQbird versions: we have reset all previous trial registrations to the end of December 2017.

All registered users of HQbird 2015, HQbird 2016 and HQbird 2017 will receive the free upgrade to HQbird 2018!
For Windows users – it is possible to install HQbird 2018 over the existing installation and keep the configuration.

HQbird 2018 comes in 3 editions:

  • Standard ($399): automatic backups, automatic maintenance, and automatic performance monitoring
  • Professional ($599): Standard + Recovery tools (FirstAID Tech Support) + SQL Studio.
  • Enterprise ($799): Professional+ replication (asynchronous and synchronous)

More details here: https://ib-aid.com/en/hqbird-features

Please feel free to ask any questions through email support@ib-aid.com

Fast, Furious, and Cheap: server with good-enough performance for small business database for less than US$1000

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It is easy to get a powerful server if you are ready to spend many $$$: there are leading vendors like Dell, HP, and many less known hardware companies, they will be happy to sell you a powerful machine.
However, money is always a problem, especially for small businesses and start-ups, so there is a great demand for «good-enough» cheap solutions.

The new article from IBSurgeon describes the practical approach for building «good-enough» database server with the sufficient performance for small business. It also contains calculations and links to the specific products we recommend.
Fast and Cheap Server?

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