Arriving at the Unimep Theater in Piracicaba

FDD is a very special event for me. In its fifth edition two years ago I got to chat with a few Firebird colleagues, show them a couple of Sinática Monitor prototypes and consolidate the idea that later became a successful product. Sinática Information Technology was born a few months later.

The sixth edition on the following year was memorable as well. I had the chance to meet a few more colleagues and establish a partnership with the nice folks at the ActiveDelphi magazine. Four articles were published out of this partnership and a fifth is due out in the June/2010 edition.

The seventh Firebird Developers Day this year will definitively taste new to me. For the first time I’ll go up on the stage and present two talks. The first will be an introduction to new Firebird 2.5 Trace API. The second will bring a practical approach to identifying and solving the most common Firebird performance problems.

I’m working hard to create two interesting, instructive and accessible talks. I have a big ‘thank you’ to Carlos Cantu for the opportunity and an invitation for you.

Come to the 7th Firebird Developers Day in Piracicaba on July the 17th, 2010. You’ll get quality talks on various themes related to Firebird. You’ll get to know in person those forum colleagues you know online only. Plus, you’ll be able to celebrate Firebird’s 10th anniversary. As the largest Firebird event in the world, FDD is not just ‘an’ event it’s ‘the’ event for Firebird users.

Sinática will be physically present at the event’s entrance and Sinática Monitor will be sold at a 50% discount that day only. Get ready and enjoy!

See you there!

And there’s news this year: The Madness Session will let the audience ask any questions directly to the speakers. I liked this idea. Everyone knows there will be time to ask their questions.

Another good news is the presence of Vlad Khorsun, one of Firebird’s current main developers. He will present two sessions. One on CTE (Common Table Expressions) and another on What’s new in Firebird 2.5.

There are two presentations by Dmitri Kouzmenko that you just can’t miss. On one of them, entitled “Database maintenance“, he promises to show different tool to monitor the database. Is he going to mention Sinática Monitor? I have no idea.

There are two other presentations from the Brazilian folks that caught my attention: “Database Structure and Organization for websites” by Maurício Longo and “Optimizing Firebird 2.1 queries using Execute Block and nested selects” by Eduardo Jedliczka.

This event is great and I do recommend. I was there last year and certainly I will be there this year. See you!

Along with the new Sinática Monitor 1.1 comes the new Sinática Online Store.

And please don’t forget our ongoing promotions:

• Discount to Beta Users. (it ends in less than one week!)
• Discount to members of the Firebird Foundation.

If you have any questions regarding Sinática or Sinática Monitor, email me.

It’s called Sinática Monitor for Firebird. And it was specially created to monitor your database and discover those hard-to-find problems.

And that’s just the beginning.

Visit out new site and see screenshots of Sinática Monitor in action.

Sinática Monitor is entirely free during the Beta period.

Download now and find out what it can do for your database.

And please don’t be shy! I want to hear from you. Send me your ideas and suggestions!

I have no idea who came up with this day but I loved it. And here’s what I propose to spread the meme:

Send <your favorite gift> to yourself at work.

When someone asks, say:

- Oh, today is Programmer’s Day and <your beloved one> remembered me.

Let’s make this day and the greatness of our work known to all. Or better let’s make it a national holyday. Or better yet, let’s make it a world-wide holyday! After all we are prefectionists.

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.

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.