Yesterday I was asked what relation Sinatica´s Product has to Firebird. After all I mention creating tools for software developers but my blog has many Firebird-related posts.

Great question!

The Product is made for Firebird database users. Programmers and database administrators.

Although I won’t say much more about it for now (including it’s name, that’s why we’ll just call it The Product) I can already tell you that next week The Product will have its first chance to leave the lab and work in a production environment.

So stay tuned for more Firebird articles and news on The product here at Sinática blog.

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Two fantastic days talking about Firebird with great people. That’s how my first Firebird Developers Day was.

Arriving at the Unimep Theater

I learned a few new tricks and left with a very good perspective about the project’s future. This perspective I now share with you.

Firebird 3.0

We can wait a hybrid based on ClassicServer but with good doses of code from both SuperServer and Vulcan. And that’s good. No huge changes that would take decades to stabilize. The Firebird team’s proposal, according to Dmitry Yemanov, is evolutionary and not revolutionary.

Very early in the morning there was a lot of people already.

Dmitry Yemanov also showed strong opinions about having shared data and metadata caches. It seems ClassicServer’s dedicated cache is going to be deprecated very soon. Amen.

Installation and configuration will be easier with only one executable for all architectures.

In the MasterClass I had the opportunity to express how much I like the monitoring tables and how easier they make the life of a Firebird DBA. The good news is that it seems the Firebird team is also interested in extending them.

I was the last one to leave! :)

Firebird 4?

When I asked about a native SQL parser, Dmitry Yemanov said it is very interesting for Firebird and it’s in the plans. But there is no schedule and he can’t make promises.

Internally Firebird translates SQL into a recursive language called BLR. Statements are then executed in BLR. In theory a native SQL parser would bring a slight performance increase. Most importantly, it would make extending Firebird’s SQL syntax a much simpler task.

The same goes to having value distribution histograms in indices. No schedule.

Meetings

Another fantastic part of FDD was meeting and getting to know our Russian colleagues Dmitry Kuzmenko (IBSurgeon), Dmitry Yemanov (Firebird SQL) e Michael Phlippenko (Fast Report). And also some of the Speakers as Alexandre Benson Smith (Thor Software), o Professor Beto (Unimep) e o Luis Paulo (Chamando.com.br).

None of that would be possible, of couse, without the folks at Firebase.com.br. A Big Thanks to them and in special to Carlos Cantu for organizing this event.

See you next year!

This unimep terminal speaks for me.

Good Night. Waiting automatic energy shutdown in a few moments.

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The recent release of Firebird version 2.1.1 is very welcome.

Here are a few of the fixes I consider important for 2.1 production servers and so recommend the update:

• Stability fixes for the monitoring tables
• Fixed possible corruption of the users database, security2.fdb.
• Fixed nBackup, which did not work in version 2.1.
• Fixed a memory leak on DDL statements.

The complete list of bugs fixed and the downloads are at the Firebird SQL website.

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Firebird 2.5 just entered Alpha state. Among the new features is a new server architecture.

Called SuperClassic, it will be the basis for the multi-processor support that we’ll see in Firebird 3.0.

Don’t lose count. Starting from Firebird 2.5 you will be able to choose among SuperServer, ClassicServer and SuperClassic.

Basically SuperClassic is like ClassicServer. Only instead of a process for each attachment it uses a single process with a thread for each attachment. The benefit being that it uses fewer kernel resources and is a bit faster.

Read a deeper comparison between the three architectures.

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This week Brazil is the stage of the world´s biggest Firebird dedicated event.

It is the 5th Firebird Developers Day in Piracicaba, SP, next Saturday July 19th 2008.

This is a great opportunity to exchange ideas, experiences and maybe get to know the people behind the names we usually see in the forums.

There will also be two Master Classes on the day before the event. These are classes on advanced topics, given by two of the  world´s greatest Firebird authorities: Dmitry Kuzmenko and Dmitry Yemanov.

No way I´m going to miss that!

I´m not sure if there will be time to see the city where the fish stops, but I´m sure I´ll enjoy the events.

Are you going too? See you there.

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