Firebird 2.0 Beta Released

The Firebird Project <http://www.firebirdsql.org>> is pleased to announce 
the release of Firebird 2.0 Beta 1 kits for immediate download 
<http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=fb2_...> and 
testing <http://ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_20_qa>>. This 
version of Firebird 2 is an beta version, meant for field testing only 
and not for use in production.

Bugs, problems, etc. can be posted to the Field Test bug tracker
<http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=593943&group_id=...> or to the
Firebird Development <http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=6330>> List.

Firebird 2 release contains a large number of new features:

   1. incremental hot backup
   2. derived tables (subqueries in FROM clause)
   3. storing databases on raw devices
   4. new EXECUTE BLOCK allows the client to call an "unnamed stored
      procedure" which is sent as a command
   5. IIF(condition, value1, value2) added as a shortcut to CASE WHEN
      condition THEN value1 ELSE value2 END
   6. CROSS JOIN is supported ("a CROSS JOIN b" equals "a INNER JOIN b
      ON 1 = 1")
   7. ROWS introduced to replace FIRST/SKIP
   8. SEQUENCE introduced as a shortcut to GENERATOR
   9. "NEXT VALUE FOR sequence" introduced as a shortcut to
      "GEN_ID(sequence, 1)"
  10. Default values for stored procedure arguments
  11. Index length limit (252 bytes) is removed
  12. Expression indexes introduced
  13. Optimizer improvements
  14. New string functions: LOWER() and TRIM()
  15. Security improvements (better password encryption, active
      protection agains brute-force attacks, users can change their own
      passwords...)

 

Beta 1 includes fixes for several problems that showed up in the testing of Alpha kits.
Please read the Release Notes
<http://firebird.sourceforge.net/download/prerelease/rlsno...> for more
details.

Feedback, input and comments related with this release will be appreciated.


-- 
Regards,
Linux admin team