Category: Developer News

News from the Firebird developers.

Firebird 4 alpha

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Firebird Project announces the first Alpha release of Firebird 4.0, the next major version of the Firebird relational database, which is now available for testing.

This Alpha release arrives with an early preview of the features and improvements currently under development by the Firebird development team, as well as with countless bugfixes. Our users are appreciated giving it a try and providing feedback to this mailing list. Apparent bugs can be reported directly to the bugtracker.

Alpha releases are not encouraged for production usage or any other goals that require a stable system. They are, however, recommended for those users who want to help in identifying issues and bottlenecks thus allowing to progress faster through the Beta/RC stages towards the final release.

Please read the Release Notes carefully before installing and testing this Alpha release.

Download page:
http://www.firebirdsql.org/en/firebird-4-0-0-alpha1/

Release Notes:
http://web.firebirdsql.org/downloads/prerelease/v40alpha1/Firebird-4.0.0_Alpha1-ReleaseNotes.pdf

—
Dmitry Yemanov

Fighting Petya: our experience with retrieving data from the Firebird database files encrypted by ransomware crypto-viruses

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As you know, recently several crypto viruses have attacked many companies – most well-known are Wannacry and Petya. Usually, as reported by many companies, it is necessary to pay a ransom, or, in the case of Petya, all encrypted files will be lost.

Read how we can defeat Petya:
https://ib-aid.com/en/articles/fighting-petya-our-experience-with-retrieving-data-from-the-firebird-database-files-encrypted-by-ransomware-crypto-viruses/

HQbird 2017R2

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HQbird 2017R2 is a major upgrade of advanced Firebird distributive (versions 2.5 and 3.0) with high-availability, replication, optimization, monitoring and recovery tools. Please upgrade the previous version of HQbird with 2017R2 (this upgrade is free for all users of HQbird).

This release includes a lot of improvements in replication, monitoring, and optimization, as well as many bugfixes. Windows installer now supports an automatic upgrade of the existing HQbird installation, Linux support for auto-upgrade will be released later.

The main goal of HQbird 2017R2 is to provide administrators and developers of big Firebird databases with effective management, maintenance, recovery, and optimization tools, in order to keep databases always healthy and available.

More details about HQbird: https://ib-aid.com/hqbird

Jaybird 3.0.1 released

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The Firebird JDBC team is happy to announce the release of Jaybird 3.0.1.

Jaybird 3.0.1 contains the following fixes and changes:

  • Fixed: FBTraceManager.loadConfigurationFromFile strips line breaks (JDBC-493)
  • Fixed: FBDatabaseMetaData.getTables does not list tables where rdb$relation_type is null (JDBC-494)
  • Improvement: Character sets are now initialized lazily (JDBC-495)
  • Fixed: Memory leak caused by retaining blob handles until connection close (JDBC-497)

See the Jaybird 3.0.1 release notes for more information. Jaybird 3.0.1 can be downloaded from the JDBC Driver page.

JayBird 3 is released

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We are happy to announce the release of Jaybird 3.0.0.

Jaybird 3.0 is a big change from Jaybird 2.2 and earlier. The entire low-level implementation has been rewritten to be able to support protocol improvements in newer Firebird versions. We have also made changes with a stricter interpretation of the JDBC requirements, and removed some parts that were either obsolete or not functioning correctly.

Most notable changes in Jaybird 3:

  • Support for wire protocol versions 11, 12, and 13 (without support for encryption and compression); protocol version 13 contributed by Hajime Nakagami
  • Support for the Firebird 3 SRP (Secure Remote Password) authentication mechanism (contributed by Hajime Nakagami)
  • Support for streaming backup and restore (contributed by Ivan Arabadzhiev)
  • Improved Firebird 3 support
  • Improved and stricter JDBC support (including improved java.time support, and more optional methods implemented)
  • Initial JDBC 4.3 (Java 9) support (without real module support)
  • New implementation of the native/embedded Type 2 driver using JNA (a jaybird .dll/.so is no longer needed)
  • Improved character set handling
  • Removal of (buggy) connection pool implementation
  • Removal/replacement of (internal) GDS API

And a large number of smaller bug fixes, improvements, and changes.

We recommend that you do not consider Jaybird 3.0 a drop-in replacement for Jaybird 2.2, and study the release notes carefully. Test your application with Jaybird 3.0 before using it in production.

Jaybird 3.0 supports Firebird 2.0 and higher, on Java 7, 8 and 9. Basic Java 9 compatibility is provided through the Java 8 version of the driver.

See also:

FirstAID 5.0: Firebird 3.0 and InterBase XE7 and support of 100+Gb databases

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We are proud to present IBSurgeon FirstAID 5.0 – the new version of the recovery software with the highest rate of successful repairs. FirstAID 5.0 is a major improvement: now it supports Firebird 3.0, InterBase XE7, and big databases (100Gb+).

Download IBSurgeon FirstAID 5.0

If you are a user of FirstAID version 3.x or 4.x, you can log into IBSurgeon Deploy Center and see that you were automatically upgraded to version 5.0. All your licenses were transferred to 5.0.

IBSurgeon FirstAID 5.0 -50% upgrade offer till May 15
If you have the license for FirstAID version 1.x or 2.x (including Pack 3.x), or if you have used all licenses for 3.x/4.x, we would like to offer you 50% discount to upgrade to FirstAID 5.0 Tech Support (for 50 databases) for the special price: USD$99. This is a limited offer till May 15 only!
Upgrade Now!

Firebird Pascal Client API 1.0.2 is now available for both FPC and Delphi

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MWA Software’s  Firebird Pascal Client API package (fbintf) release 1.0.2 is now available for download. The package has been updated to support Delphi Win32 (from Delphi 2010 onwards) in addition to the Free Pascal Compiler (3.0.0 onwards). The package is otherwise functionally identical to release 1.0.1.

The Firebird Pascal Client API package provides common Pascal language bindings to the Firebird API that are independent of the Firebird API version. Both legacy and Firebird 3 APIs are supported. The fbintf package provides the Firebird API in a format where all data types for SQL data, interface parameters and results are native Pascal types, including all parameter blocks and database information. The Pascal API is pitched at a similar level and purpose to the IBPP Firebird API provided to the C++ world. It is a required dependency for version 2 onwards of IBX for Lazarus, and is provided as both a standalone package and as part of IBX2.

The Firebird Pascal API is intended to be simple to use and to place the minimum burden on the API user when it comes to managing the Firebird client library and the various Pascal objects that are created to provide the API. It is implemented as reference counted COM interfaces which, for the API user, are as easy to use as other managed types such as AnsiStrings and dynamic arrays. The user only needs to worry about accessing and using the interface; disposing of interfaces is performed automatically whenever an interface goes out of scope. It is intended to be a full implementation of the Firebird API, including events, services, blobs and arrays.

It is distributed under the IDP Licence.

The package may be downloaded from https://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/fb-pascal-api

A comprehensive user manual fully describing the API is available from https://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/documentation

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