Dozens of new options for Firebird and .NET Framework

Hey!

If you have ever worked with Firebird or Interbase using the standard .NET provider for OLE DB (System.Data.OleDb), you will have likely encountered issues like this:

  • The necessity to add ALL parameters manually.
  • Even though the OLE DB provider supports parameter generation for commands, the .NET provider doesn’t use it, so you as the programmer must do that work on your own.
  • The lack of support for named parameters. Although they actually exist, using them in reality requires a whole set of complex manipulations (the steps needed to add a parameter to a collection, etc.).
  • The impossibility of using multiple DataReader objects at the same time (Multiple Active Result Sets).
  • No execution of SQL scripts which contain several SQL expressions per command.

This list of difficulties a .NET developer has to deal with is far from complete.

Now it’s all different in a fundamentally new ADO.NET Data Provider for OLE DB

IBProvider Team

Firebird driver

IBProvider for Firebird and Interbase has been released.

Changes in IBProvider v2 (build 2.6.06.2688)

  • Addition of UTF-8 charset support
  • Loading of charset information for COLUMN and PROCEDURE_PARAMETERS metadata schemes from system tables.

Changes in IBProvider v3 (build 3.0.0.6327 RC3)

New IBProvider v3 offers the brand new method for working with text data charsets:

  • We added ctype_user property that allows setting the encoding of data coming to client irrespective of the encoding in which this data is coming from database server.
  • New algorithms of BLOB fields converting provide for quick work with flowing data, optimization of interaction with ICU library.
  • We added ctype_none property that allows setting the charset for working with text data in NONE encoding.
  • Other important changes.
  • Support of Firebird and Interbase charsets aliases.

See detailed information on working with new character set processor in Firebird and Interbase character sets.

Text columns size in Firebird 2.X

IBProvider started to control text columns size when working with Firebird 2 servers in Unicode mode. If the length of loaded data exceeds the text column size the exclusion will be generated.

In the new edition of IBProvider Professional 7 codepages support was implemented, bugs were fixed, BLOB-fields access and memory management was improved

IBProvider v3 Release Candidate 3

  • Support of the following codepages added: DOS858, TIS620, BIG5, KSC_5601, GB_2312, SJIS_0208, EUCJ_0208;
  • Bug in the errors handling for OUT-parameters of query was fixed;
  • BLOB-fields access was improved;
  • Memory management was improved;

IBProvider v2/v1

  • BLOB-fields access was improved;
  • Memory management was improved;

Source: Interbase and Firebird driver site

New packages of IBProvider Professional Edition came out

IBProvider v3 Release Candidate 3 [build 3.0.0.4963]

  • NUMERIC-types support was improved.
  • Disabled metadata cache mode performance was increased in 2.5 times.
  • Metadata schemes were updated. Among them in schemes TABLE_INFO and TABLES classification of external (EXTERNAL TABLE) and temporary tables (GLOBAL TEMPORARY PRESERVE/DELETE) was added starting from Firebird 2.1 and Interbase 7.5.
  • Correct processing of active transactions in the connection pool.

New build IBProvider v1.9.9.2547 and IBProvider v2.6.3.2547

  • BLOB-columns metadata description bug was fixed.
  • Correct processing of active transactions in the connection pool.

Details on the Firebird driver site.

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