Technical Articles Archives - Page 19 of 78

Kitto – A framework for creating data-driven web applications with Delphi and ExtJS

February 15, 2012 mariuz Leave a comment

Kitto allows to create Rich Internet Applications based on a data model that can be mapped onto any database. The client-side part uses ExtJS (through the ExtPascal library) to create a fully AJAX application, allowing you to build standard and advanced data-manipulating forms in a fraction of the time.

Kitto is aimed at Delphi developers that need to create web application without delving into the intricacies of HTML, CSS, Javascript or learning to use a particular library such as ExtJS, yet it allows access to the bare metal if required.

Kitto includes a database-agnostic data-access layer, allowing to create applications that work on any database engine and port applications between database engines.

A Kitto application is described in a set of easily maintained YAML files, keeping definitions abstract and declarative and allowing for future extensions. Business rules are enforced either declaratively or through small javascript fragments on the client, or in Delphi code on the server.

Kitto was designed by Nando Dessena and its development is sponsored by Ethea, which uses Kitto for internal development projects and client work and provides Kitto-related tools, support and development services.

Start here for further information.

The getting started guide can be tested with Firebird and Delphi

InfoQ: Q&A with Jiri Cincura of the Firebird Database Project about the ADO.NET provider , ORM ,EF …

January 31, 2012 mariuz Leave a comment

Jiri Cincura was recently interviewed for InfoQ article – Q&A with Jiri Cincura of the Firebird Database Project. We touched Firebird, ADO.NET, O/RMs, Entity Framework etc. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Update: The article seems to be retracted for the moment , Don’t panic we asked why and investigate the cause (see the comments section) ,

Here is the full text from Google cache

We recently spoke with Jiri Cincura of the Firebird database project.

InfoQ: Can you tell us briefly about yourself and your role in creating the ADO.NET provider for Firebird?

Jiri: Currently I’m project lead for the ADO.NET provider for Firebird project. And actually only one active right now. I’m doing majority of development (although there are some worth contributions) and all the stuff around, like testing, releases, issue tracker watching, replying in mailing list etc.

InfoQ: And for the benefit of our readers who are unfamiliar with it, who would you describe Firebird?

[See remaining text…]

Jiri: Firebird is a fully featured RDBMS, with small footprint and zero maintenance. It supports all standard features you’d expect – stored procedures, triggers, views, UDFs, monitoring, online (remote) backup/restore etc. There’s also so called Embedded version, that just one main DLL and few supporting it, without install or need to copy something somewhere. You’ll just reference this DLL and you have all the features of standalone (network) Firebird in your application. And of course, whole Firebird is completely free (and open source).

InfoQ: In the SQL Server world we have to deal with a serious trade-off. If you choose to use the embedded version, SQL Server Compact, then you lose the ability to use a lot of features. Is there any sort of tradeoff like that for Firebird or do you really get access to the whole feature set either way?

Jiri: Absolutely not. Firebird Embedded is fully featured as “big” server. It’s even built from same sources, only with different output (DLL file). You can use everything Firebird offers. And not only that. Migration is super easy. You’ll just take the database file and put it to some place where server can access it and you’re done.

InfoQ: So what’s involved in writing a ADO.NET provider?

Jiri: It’s actually pretty simple. You’re fixing bug, moving with features as Firebird server moves further and improving stability and code itself. Cleanup, refactoring. With all that you’re trying to keep backward compatibility and not introduce some breaking changes. And on the other hand you’re moving along with .NET and ADO.NET (i.e. Entity Framework) world and other data access providers and components.

InfoQ: DId you also work on the Entity Framework provider? If so, what’s your opinion of the ORM?

Jiri: Yes I did. I worker on provider since early versions around 2007. I believe Firebird was first 3rd party ADO.NET provider to have working Entity Framework support (and it’s open source). I think Entity Framework is good ORM, comparable to others, like LLBLGen Pro or NHibernate. It’s not here that long but still very good. I don’t think anybody can say i.e. NHibernate is best because … Every project needs something more and something less. And every ORM (including Entity Framework) has strong points and places where there’s room for improvement.

InfoQ: What areas in particular do you think the .NET-based ORMs need to improve upon?

Jiri: There’s mismatch between relational world and OOP world, even if you believe ORMs are hiding it, it’s there. For simple small applications, this is not a problem. But for a big applications, the ORM needs to be flexible enough to allow really experienced developer hook in and in rare cases when performance is critical or special needs are placed in front of him/her allow to do it own way without creating huge disruption in your code.

InfoQ: If you had more resources available to you (i..e. developers, hardware, etc), what would you like to do with Firebird and .NET that you can’t do right now?

Jiri: Provide more seamless experience for .NET developers using Firebird and improve codebase. Move further faster and provide more features, both from Firebird world and (ADO).NET world.

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New python fdb driver works on Python3 (in git repository only)

January 30, 2012 mariuz Leave a comment

The new driver fdb is branched in github for Python 3.x (work in progress).
You can check the progress by following this thread on firebird-python list and here is another one.

The Perfect Database Server: Firebird 2.5.1 And FreeBSD 9

January 16, 2012 mariuz Leave a comment

Here is the guide on installing Firebird 2.5.1 from FreeBSD 9 Ports and
creating your first test database; also we show you how to install
Flamerobin GUI (administration tool) and the PHP driver for it. This was tested on fresh FreeBSD 9 on a kvm-linux virtual machine.

[See remaining text…]

Download a compressed snapshot of the Ports Collection into /var/db/portsnap.

# portsnap fetch

Or update it.
If you are running Portsnap for the first time, extract the snapshot into /usr/ports:

# portsnap extract

If you already have a populated /usr/ports directory and you are just updating, run the following command instead:

# portsnap update

Enter firebird server ports directory:

# cd /usr/ports/databases/firebird25-server

Compile and install firebird server:

# make -DPACKAGE_BUILDING

# make install

Enable it by adding

firebird_enable="YES"

in

/etc/rc.conf.

Start it with:

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/firebird start

logs and security2.fdb seems to be in /var/db/firebird.

# /usr/local/bin/isql-fb

To create a new database:

SQL> create database “tmp/first_database.fdb;

SQL> connect “/tmp/first_database.fdb” ;

Commit current transaction (y/n)?y

Committing.

Database: “/tmp/first_database.fdb”

SQL>

If you want to create a simple table then insert 1-2 rows and select from it; here is one example:

SQL> CREATE TABLE TEST (ID INT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, NAME VARCHAR(20));

SQL> show tables;

TEST

SQL> INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (1, ‘John’);

SQL> INSERT INTO TEST VALUES (2, ‘Joe’);

SQL> select * from test;

ID NAME

============ ====================

1 John

2 Joe

To quit the isql-fb console, type quit:

SQL> quit

CON>;

For a good open source GUI admin tool you might check the flamerobin administration tool included in ports repository; it can be installed by a simple:

# cd /usr/ports/databases/flamerobin/ && make install clean

To use firebird with php, you will need the php5 driver:

# cd /usr/ports/databases/php5-interbase/ && make install clean

You can choose to compile php with apache support (I have chosen cli, cgi , and apache support);

check it if is enabled with:

# /usr/local/bin/php -m

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RemObjects Article : Accessing Firebird Embedded databases from Data Abstract for .NET

January 12, 2012 mariuz Leave a comment

This article shows how to use Data Abstract for .NET and Firebird Embedded together (and that it’s no effort at all to do this). All you need is to deploy the needed dll’s and to remember about the x86/x64 compatibility caveat.

Firebird from the beginning

January 10, 2012 Cantu One comment

It was just released the first webinar video from the Mind the Bird campaign. The webinar is about the history of Interbase and Firebird, by Ann Harrison.

Help testing TcpRemoteBufferSize parameter

December 23, 2011 Cantu Leave a comment

The parameter TcpRemoteBufferSize found in firebird.conf is supposed to set the maximum size of a packet being transfered. The default value for Firebird is 8K, and the maximum accepted is 32767. Theoretically, bigger packets should make the transfer of large resultsets faster (mostly noticed when connection is high latency networks, aka internet).

Recently, I did some tests with this parameter, but wasn’t able to find any differences in the time of a fetchall with a select first 2000 * from some_table_with_no_blobs_and_lots_of_records. A similar test that I did last year, with different FB version and O.S. showed a speed increase of almost 3x in the fetchall time when the packet size was set to 32K, but seems that I cannot reproduce this with my current environment anymore.

If you have some time, please do some tests with this parameter, and publish the results in the comments of this post. Remember to test changing the value at client, at server, and at both, and to mention what Firebird version was used (at server, and client library too, if different). Also, I recommend to run the first select/fetchall at last one time before getting the results, to fill Firebird and O.S. cache and get more accurate results.

If you are a “hardcore” user, you may also want to install Wireshark and have an inside view of the communication process.

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