Category: General news

Firebird related news

Migration Guide to Firebird 3 (review)

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Steve Naidamast kindly sent me his personal review of my Firebird 3 Migration Guide. I’m more than happy to share it here:

 

The Migration Guide to Firebird 3.0 is an excellently written technical manual that is filled with all the essential information anyone wanting or needing to work with Firebird 3.0 (now 3.0.x) will require.

Though called a migration guide, this well designed manual provides far more information than simply being relegated to how to move between earlier versions of the Firebird Database Engine and the most recent version of this highly capable database system. As a result, far exceeding the discussion of moving between database systems, this guide provides thorough explanations in detail on the various, unique server types that Firebird offers and how to decide which one is the best option for the requirements at hand, the necessary security configurations for each type of server and how to define users and their associated roles, enhancements to the PSQL language (the SQL variation used by Firebird), discussions on physical access to the server (ie: wire protocols), connection string enhancements, and last but not least, discussion on the Firebird Embedded Database Engine for desktop application development, which has been upgraded from the current 2.5 version.

Though written from the perspective of the needs of a Database Administrator, this manual should be an addition to any professional’s library who is serious about working with Firebird for the long term.

It is by far one of the superior manuals I have read over the years on the subject of database systems. Such manuals should surely aid in the growth of the Firebird Community so that this database system can take its rightful place among the current standards of use in today’s database application development endeavors…

Steve Naidamast
Sr. Software Engineer
Black Falcon Software

 

The Migration Guide to Firebird 3 is available both on paper and PDF formats.

Firebird fbudf Module Authenticated Remote Code Execution

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Here is the description for CVE-2017-11509
An authenticated remote attacker can execute arbitrary code in Firebird SQL
Server versions 2.5.7 and 3.0.2 by executing a malformed SQL statement. The
only known solution is to disable external UDF libraries from being loaded. In
order to achieve this, the default configuration has changed to UdfAccess=None.
This will prevent the fbudf module from being loaded, but may also break other
functionality relying on modules.

Here is the Debian security page with the issue : CVE-2017-11509
And here is the original report https://www.tenable.com/security/research/tra-2017-36

The Frustrations of the long distance Database Application Developer

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Though I have extensive database application development experience, I do not consider myself an expert with the Firebird Database Engine to any degree.  The following article is completely based upon observations and experiences during my attempts to learn and understand this highly capable engine.  As a result, if there are misunderstandings or mistakes I have promoted in my writing, please do not hesitate to send in comments either correcting them or offering alternatives.

See full article here.

Read the new white paper “Authentication in Firebird” from IBPhoenix

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Read the new white paper “Authentication in Firebird” from IBPhoenix: Developments introduced in Firebird 3 provide many options for authenticating users attempting to attach to a database. No longer is authentication restricted to a single method: the methods available are determined by the plug-in authentication modules configured in the global and/or database config files.
Also, there are many interesting articles in Documentation area of IBPhoenix website.

Database .NET 24.8 and dbMigration .NET 8.4 released

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Database .NET 24.8 is an innovative, powerful and intuitive multiple database management tool, With it you can easily edit and manage your Firebird database files.

http://fishcodelib.com/Database.htm (Change Log)

dbMigration .NET 8.4 is a simple, easy and intuitive multiple database migration and data synchronization tool, With it you can easily migrate schema and data to Firebird and vice versa.

http://fishcodelib.com/DBMigration.htm (Change Log)

FDB Python driver v2.0 for Firebird is released

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FDB Python driver for Firebird v2.0 is available for download.

https://pypi.python.org/pypi/fdb

IMPORTANT: This is initial release of new “SweetBitter” driver generation.

During this (v2) generation FDB driver will undergo a transition from
development centered around Python 2.7 / Firebird 2.x to development
centered around Python 3 / Firebird 3. There are some backward
incompatible changes between v2 and v1 generation, and you may expect
some also between individual releases of second generation. To soften
this bitter pill, the second generation will have new functionality,
enhancements and optimalizations gradually added into each public release.

The second generation is also the last one that will directly support
Python 2.7 and will be tested with Firebird 2.

The plan is to move forward with v3 generation (Python 3/Firebird 3+) as
soon as v2 code base will become mature.

What’s new:

* Hooks.
* New modules for parsing Firebird trace & audit logs (fdb.trace), gstat
output (fdb.gstat) and server log (fdb.log)
* Added fdb.utils.ObjectList class for improved object collection
manipulation.
* Modules monitor and schema now use new fdb.utils.ObjectList for
collections of information objects.
* Methods fdb.Connection.database_info() and
fdb.Transaction.transaction_info() now distinguish between text and
binary strings with result_type code.
* Significant changes to documentation.
* Reworked Visitor Pattern support in schema module, added classes
fdb.utils.Visitable and fdb.utils.Visitor.
* …and more (including bug fixes).

Read more at http://fdb.readthedocs.io/en/v2.0/

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