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!

New release of Database Master 2.0 for Firebird

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Database Master 2.0 for FireBird has been released. The new version  includes new great featureas, enhancements and some bug fixes.  Database Master also supports Oracle, SQLServer, MySQL, PostgreSQL,  SQLite, MongoDB, XML File, ODBC and OleDB connections.

What is new:

  • MongoDB support: Open Source and Document based database system is  supported now.
  • XML File support: You can add an Xml file as a relational database  and execute SQL queries.
  • Search Engine: You can search any data in your database without  writing any SQL query.
  • New reporting system is implemented.
  • XML Import: You can import your xml file into a database table.
  • New Export File Formats: Word 2007, Excel 2007, OpenOffice, PNG,  XPS, RTF, dBase formats are supported now.
  • Code Factory: You can genarate (C#,Java etc.) code from your database.
  • SQL Script Export: You can export View and Procedure structure now.
  • Templates and Snippets: Database Master supports now SQL tempaltes  and snippets.

Avoid using rand() in where clauses

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I was working today, building a procedure to populate some tables and do some data updates and deletes, for speed testing for one of my FDD sessions.

I decided to use the built-in rand() function of Firebird 2.x in the where clause of updates and deletes, but found out that the execution time was tooking too long to complete. Looking at statistics, it showed weird numbers for Indexed Reads, like, the updates of 5 records generating 80.000 indexed reads in the Primary Key index.

After some debugging, I just found out that rand() was the guilt! I moved it outside the update/delete statement, storing the result in a variable, and using the variable in the where clause. It worked million times faster!

So, moral of history: Don’t use rand() in the where clause of updates and deletes statements. And yep, I know this is quite unusual use 😉

IDEMA – Are you ready?

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SAN JOSE, Calif., June 29, 2010 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — IDEMA (The International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association) today announced the launch of the “Are You Ready?” campaign, an effort to raise awareness in the computer industry about the advances and advantages of long data sectors. IDEMA is the data-storage industry’s trade association dedicated to driving technology standards that support the advancement of data storage. The campaign focuses on helping the computer industry prepare for the transition of hard disk drive (HDD) processing from the historical sector lengths of 512 to 520 byte increments, to increments of 4,096 bytes per sector using a technology referred to as Advanced Format. IDEMA is joined by major hard disk drive manufacturers in the launch and support of the “Are You Ready?” effort.

Read full history here.

New Firebird tech articles

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Morning all,

I’ve uploaded a couple of new documents to the document area. Unfortunately, due to a few problems with VPN timing out over the weekend, I’ve not been able to get the front page updated. I will do soon and the links will be visible.

How the cache works in Firebird:

pdf: http://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/Firebird-cache.pdf
html: http://www.firebirdsql.org/manual/fbcache.html

That is based on information Ann supplied here on the list a while back. She has permitted me to document it and make a manual out of it.

Firebird Internals:

pdf: http://www.firebirdsql.org/pdfmanual/Firebird-Internals.pdf
html: Not uploaded yet – VPN problems.

A work in progress and as yet fairly incomplete. It will be improved as and when I can. Comments & corrections gratefully received!

Enjoy.

Cheers,
Norman.

Stored Procedures contest winners!

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Dear All,

Stored procedures contest is over!
We had 12 submissions for the contest and have chosen 3 winners.

Winners are:

  1. Set of mathematical operations implemented in pure Firebird SQL,
    by pizmon (muirsheendur…@gmail.com)
    Download www.mindthebird.com/MathematicOperation.pdf
  2. XML File creation using Firebird in stored procedures, by Fernando
    Medeiros
    Download www.mindthebird.com/ToCreateXML.pdf
  3. SP_ESCAPE and SP_UNESCAPE stored procedures: generate text with
    line feeds, carriage returns, quotes and tabs in Firebird sql scripts,
    by Fabiano Bonin.
    Download www.mindthebird.com/SP_ESCAPE.pdf

Each winner can choose one of the following licenses from MindTheBird  sponsors:

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