Database models
Here is a site with dozens of database models to be downloaded. Thanks Fabio Alves for sending the link.
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!
Why Can’t Database Tables Index Themselves?
Interesting article can be read here. Thanks for Fabio Alves for sending the link.
Firebird 2 – New book
My new book, Firebird 2, was released today in Brazil, by Ciencia Moderna publisher. The preface (from Ann Harrison) and the summary can be downloaded here (in portuguese).
Happy Birthday Dmitry!
Today is Dmitry Yemanov birthday 🙂 Let’s give him 10 min. of “no Firebird coding” time, so he can enjoy a piece of the cake!
Time to vote for Firebird in EvansData!
EvansData opened a new survey related to open source software, and Firebird is listed in two questions:
Which Open Source databases do you use most often?
What database are you using on the platform for which MOST of your applications are targeted?
Let’s vote for Firebird! Click here and vote now!
Comments onrecent MySQL announcement
As we know, if you want to distribute MySQL with your application for free, you need to release your application code under GPL, and that’s something that many users doesn’t want to do.
Until now, there was always the option of delivering your application alone, and downloading the MySQL binaries from MySQL site – the license allows this. With the old version binaries not being available for download anymore, many current MySQL customers are in serious trouble, if they want to stay legal.
Of course, there is the option of upgrading the applications to work with the most recent MySQL version, but I presume people needs to be prepared for some compatibility problems. I guess many people out there still uses MySQL 3 and 4 with their software, and wasn’t thinking to move to 5.0 very soon.
For those people, my advice is to check the “Get to know Firebird in two minutes” paper and discover how good, powerful and simple Firebird is. If you have to move to a new MySQL version, maybe it would be better to move to Firebird instead!
Article about Firebird Embedded
Dan Letecky published an article about using embedded version of Firebird with .Net applications:
Firebird is a database with 20 years of history, full set of features (including transactions, stored procedures, hot-backup, excellent scalability, etc.) and a friendly open source license. It is an overlooked but compelling alternative to Microsoft Jet and Microsoft MSDE 2000/SQL Express 2005. Let’s take a look at how it can be used embedded in your desktop application. What makes Embedded Firebird ideal for embedding:
Read the full article here.
More news from Dmitry Y.
Getting back to some old ideas
Adriano dos Santos Fernandes has started a new brainstorming attempt targeted to the old subject of domains being used in procedure parameters and PSQL variables. He offers the prototype implementation and asks for comments. Possibilities to allow NOT NULL and CHECK constraints for parameters/variables are also being discussed. If you’re interested, please follow the discussion in the “firebird-architect” list.
Better error reporting
Did you ever debug a big complex procedure that fails in runtime with a famous “arithmetic exception” error? How much time did it take to find the problematic statement?
Now it should become much easier. Starting with v2.0, you get a stack trace which mentions the failed procedure/trigger along with all its callers. And the next (post-2.0) Firebird version will also report you the line and column numbers (inside the current PSQL body) of the failed statement.
Thanks to Eugene Putilin and Vlad Horsun for this contribution.
Dmitry Yemanov comments about our currently poll
There are more than 500 votes already, so I think the current results are quite representative and hence they actually (more or less) reflect the features people would like to see implemented. Let me comment the top ones.
1. SMP support is a clear winner (23% of votes) in the poll. And this is definitely one of the high priority tasks in the project. As you know, it was the major goal of the Vulcan development and its implementation is being currently tested. The public test versions will be available soon for those who’s willing to test it in real-world scenarios. The final SMP implementation is targeted for the v3.0 release, as stated in our roadmap.
Interview with Paul Ruinzendaal (Fyracle)
Available here (you need to login to read the full interview).