Firebird in top 20 OSS
From IBSurgeon on Tweeter – Harvard Business School: “The Business of Free Software” http://bit.ly/3Hn4ZV Firebird is in top 20 OSS list – not clear how it was counted.
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!
Cast Date to Integer, like Delphi does.
Today I needed to convert a Delphi/Pascal code to Firebird PSQL. Part of the code used the integer value of a date to do some calcs. First, I tried to use Firebird CAST to convert a Date to Integer, but FB can’t do this type of cast (anyway, I’m not sure if the result would be the same as Delphi, since I don’t know what starting date Firebird uses for internal storage). So, the solution was to create a workaround and subtract the date from 30-December-1899 (Dublin Julian Day), ie:
my_int_var = current_date – cast(‘30.12.1899’ as date);
The above line will return the integer value of the today date, as Delphi/Pascal would do. In other words, it is the number of days since 30-Dec-1899.
Evans Data Developers Survey mentions Firebird
Which of the following databases are most used within your organization?
You can participate in this survey and vote for Firebird clicking here.
FDD MegaPack DVD
Sorry, only for portuguese speakers.
Acaba de ser lançado o FDD MegaPack DVD, contendo palestras da segunda, quarta, quinta e sexta edições do Firebird Developers Day. Pedidos on-line através do site da FireBase.
Firebird 2.1.3 released
The team is pleased to announce the release of Firebird 2.1.3, with kits available for Linux and Windows 32-bit and 64-bit platforms. For notes about the release, click here.
CPU suggestions for Interbase/Firebird SQL db server
I work for a small company (fewer than 10 employees). We want to upgrade our primary server hardware this year.
Current server is a HP ML330 G3 with a single Xeon @ 2.8 Ghz, 3GB ram, Raid5 consisting of three 15krpm Ultra320 SCSI drives. OS is Windows 2000 Server.
Our current CPU features hyperthreading, which is enabled. The motherboard is a dual socket board, so initially I was shopping for a second identical CPU (because they’re as cheap as $15 on eBay). But after running some tests, I don’t think it would benefit us.
Our ERP software uses Interbase version 5.6, which does not appear to be multi-threaded based on my tests. I contacted the developer of our ERP package, and they confirmed this: Interbase will NOT utilize multiple physical or logical CPUs. More recent revisions of our ERP software have switched to Firebird db server, which I’ve learned is not multi-thread aware either. This sounds terribly old-fashioned, since modern CPUs are trending toward higher core-count.
Read full post and make your suggestions here.
E/R Studio introduces official support to Firebird
The new version (8.5 beta) of the Data Modeling tool “E/R Studio” (from Embarcadero) introduces official support for Firebird. Based on past information, you can expect more and more Embarcadero tools officially supporting Firebird in the near future.
Interesting report about switching HD to SSD with Firebird
An interesting “report” about the results of switching from Hard-Drives to SSD technology in a Firebird sever machine was posted in Firebird-Devel list by Poul Dige. In his specific case, the improvements of speed was very good. You can read the message here.
Why to use Firebird+IBX
Lars (from Compas Pascal blog) talks about the usage of IBX with Firebird databases. Don’t forget to check the comments for interesting information about compatibility.
Firebird is #1 with Delphi
Wings of Wind blog talks about Firebird support requests for Delphi, with interesting numbers:
The main complaint of some folks was about (lack of) support for their favorite database engine. As perhaps, you know, in this release there is no official SQLite and PostgreSQL support. Well, giving in account that we have already a new DBX driver in this version (Firebird) and the number of votes for PostgresSQL and SQLite compared with the ones for the Firebird DBX driver (which was #1 in QC with more than 1000 votes on all reports – duplicates, variants etc.) is a quite expected result.
(…)
Firebird + MS SQL + mySQL accounts more than 50% from your preferences with Firebird as clear leader. (MS SQL + mySQL = Firebird percentage). Closely follows Oracle and Access (!). Now, with the acquisition of SUN the things (perhaps) will change.
(…)
Also we see a bunch of Firebird/Interbase solutions which are high in ranking: FIBPlus, and a little bit lower IBX and IBObjects almost in par.
Check the full post, including nice graphics.