New Silver sponsor: Ansoft
Ansoft Development Ltd, of the Russian Federation, producer of the Avarda range of products, joins us as a Silver sponsor.
Author: Cantu
I'm the owner of the www.Firebase.com.br site and the author of the books Firebird Essencial, Firebird 2 and Migration Guide to Firebird 3. Loving Firebird even before it was born!
Firebird Foundation new Bronze sponsor
We welcome Cointec Consultores Informática, from Spain, as a Bronze sponsor. Thanks to Jésus Angel García Zarco and his team.
MySQL -> Firebird converter
From Milan Babuskov blog:
I decided to automate conversion of MySQL database to Firebird. I got tired of manual find&replace process, and created a small parser that changes from MySQL to Firebird syntax. Currently it only supports database structure dump (no data, only structure) from PHPMyAdmin. Not all datatypes are supported, but feel free to “fix” it. It’s written in PHP and it’s open source. It would be great if you would send back any modifications you make. Download it here (source code included).
Important! Firebird 2.5 Classic/Superclassic on Linux
From www.firebirdsql.org:
It has been found that V.2.5 Classic for Linux has problems with AST delivery if used with glibc 2.5. With glibc 2.7 it works properly. The situation with glibc 2.6 is unknown for now. If your glibc version is lower than v.2.7, it must be upgraded before using Firebird 2.5 Classic/Superclassic.
Firebird slow? Well, maybe it is Windows fault.
So, you just moved to that new cool server, with lots of RAM, Windows and Firebird 64bits, but suddenly you found that Firebird performance gets worse and worse. When you check TaskMan, you see that 99% of the RAM is being used (and so, swap is going on). If you close Firebird process, RAM usage seems to be back to normal. Weird, uh?
First, you may think this is the common problem of Classic/SuperClassic with too many connections and crazy buffers value… but, you checked all the settings, and everything is ok.
If this happening to you, take a look again in TaskMan (or Process Explorer), and check how much memory the OS Cache is consuming. If you find something abnormal, like if it is consuming almost all of your physical RAM, you should take a look at this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/976618/en-us
Average of Firebird users DB sizes
In a recent survey for the next Firebird Developers Day in Brazil, one of the questions was about the average size of the participants (and/or their customers) databases. A total of 344 people answered, and the result can be seen below:
In general, your (or your customer’s) database has…
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| Percent | Count | Answers | |
|---|---|---|---|
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20.3% | 70/344 | up to 500MB |
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31.1% | 107/344 | up to 2GB |
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20.9% | 72/344 | up to 5GB |
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17.2% | 59/344 | up to 10GB |
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10.5% | 36/344 | more than 10GB |
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| 100.0% | 344/344 | Summary | |
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PS: Note that this survey was directed only to people who intends to participate in the next Brazilian FDD edition.
Firebird 2.1.4 RC1 is out!
The Firebird development team is pleased to announce that a release candidate for Firebird 2.1.4 has been through QA and is available for testing. 64-bit and 32-bit kits are available for Linux, Windows and MacOSX.
Download link is http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=fb214_RC1
Enjoy and do please report problems back to the firebird-devel list, thank you!
Firebird 2.1.4 RC1 almost out
It was almost out of the oven, but a regression bug discovered in the last minute (and already fixed by now) delayed the release of FB 2.1.4 RC1. New binaries are being cooked right now, and you can expect the release to be public available in firebirdsql.org in the next days.
Last week to get 25% discount in Upscene products
Upscene, who produces well known Firebird tools, like DBWorkbench, IBLogManager, etc. announces that this is the last week of the “New Year’s sale” promotion. All the products has 25% discount, using the coupon code NY2011.
Database trends survey (Embarcadero)
Marco Cantu posted in his blog:
…While most of the questions are on the choice and number of servers used (MS SQL Server being the most widely adopted, Oracle the most critical, and Firebird has a significant 4% 5.5% presence for large companies). Other questions are tuned for Embarcadero products (like evaluating the need for automating some DBA tasks). A few questions are interesting for their broad perspective, like those focused on the relationship between developers and DBAs…
Btw, interesting that there is no mention of Embarcadero’s Interbase in the survey results.