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Development

Firebird adds new features with version 2.1

By Forrest Cook
April 23, 2008

Firebird is one of the popular open-source relational database management systems (RDBMS) that runs under Linux. From the about Firebird document:

[Firebird]

Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL standard features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. Firebird offers excellent concurrency, high performance, and powerful language support for stored procedures and triggers. It has been used in production systems, under a variety of names, since 1981. The Firebird Project is a commercially independent project of C and C++ programmers, technical advisors and supporters developing and enhancing a multi-platform relational database management system based on the source code released by Inprise Corp (now known as Borland Software Corp) on 25 July, 2000.

Stable version 2.1 of Firebird was announced on April 18, 2008: "Firebird 2.1 is a full version release that builds on the architectural changes introduced in the V.2.0 series. Thanks to all who have field-tested the Alphas and Betas during 2007 and the first quarter of 2008 we have a release that is bright with new features and improvements, including the long-awaited global temporary tables, a catalogue of new run-time monitoring mechanisms, database triggers and the injection of dozens of internal functions into the SQL language set."

A summary of new features from the release announcement includes:

  • Database triggers for making user-defined triggers have been added.
  • Global temporary tables are now available for the handling of non-persistent data.
  • New common table expressions are available for making dynamic recursive queries.
  • An optional RETURNING clause which supports update, insert and delete operations has been added.
  • The MERGE function now has an UPDATE OR INSERT statement for performing conditional operations.
  • The new LIST() function can retrieve information in the form of a comma-separated list.
  • New built-in functions have been added to replace UDF library calls.
  • Text BLOBs up to 32K in length can now masquerade as varchars.
  • Procedural SQL (PSQL) local variables can now be declared using domains.
  • PSQL variables and arguments can be COLLATEd.
  • A new DDL CREATE COLLATION command has been added, replacing the need for a script.
  • New Unicode collations can be applied to any character set.
  • The ability to perform run-time database snapshot monitoring via SQL has been added.
  • The performance of the remote protocol has been improved to better support operation on slow networks.

More details on the version 2.1 release are available in the release notes [PDF]. The document should be read by those who are upgrading from older versions of Firebird. The release notes list a number of additional changes, including:

  • The reworking of the on disk structure (ODS).
  • Improvements to the PSQL error stack trace.
  • The availability of more context information.
  • A new fbsvcmgr command-line interface to the Services API.
  • Support for named cursors.
  • Implementation of the new XNET local transport protocol.
  • A rework of the garbage collection mechanism.
  • The Services API to Classic architecture port has been finished.
  • Lock timeouts are now available for WAIT transactions.
  • New Database Shutdown Modes have been added.
  • The NULL handling for UDFs has been improved.
  • There have been synchronization logic improvements.
  • Support has been added for 64 bit platforms.
  • Larger record enumeration limits are now supported.
  • Debugging improvements have been added.
  • Connection handling on the POSIX superserver has been improved.
  • The PSQL invariant tracking system has been reworked.
  • The ROLLBACK RETAIN clause is now supported.
  • There have been improvements made to the optimizer routines.
  • Numerous Windows improvements have been added.

Clearly, the Firebird developers have been busy working on this software. If the above lists aren't enough, the Firebird home page notes that there is a mechanism for users to request more new features. The development roadmap for 2008 gives an idea of where the project is headed. Several bug fix releases are scheduled for version 2.1 in the near future and work on the next major release, version 2.5, is already in progress. Firebird is available for download here.

Comments (5 posted)

System Applications

Clusters and Grids

Assimilator: announcing the 1.1 release (SourceForge)

Version 1.1 of Assimilator has been announced. "Assimilator is a set of tools and services providing a self-monitoring, self-managing and self-healing environment for distributed computing. Assimilator 1.1 has been posted. It contains bug fixes, JMX support, drag and drop of oar files onto the console, and various cleanup work."

Comments (none posted)

Database Software

PostgreSQL Weekly News

The April 20, 2008 edition of the Postgres Weekly News is online with the latest PostgreSQL DBMS articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

SQLite release 3.5.8 announced

Version 3.5.8 of SQLite, a light weight DBMS, has been announced. "Changes associated with this release include the following: Expose SQLite's internal pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) via the sqlite3_randomness() interface New interface sqlite3_context_db_handle() that returns the database connection handle that has invoked an application-defined SQL function. New interface sqlite3_limit() allows size and length limits to be set on a per-connection basis and at run-time. Improved crash-robustness: write the database page size into the rollback journal header. Allow the VACUUM command to change the page size of a database file..."

Comments (none posted)

Embedded Systems

BusyBox 1.10.1 announced

Stable version 1.10.1 of BusyBox, a collection of command line utilities for embedded systems, has been announced: "Bugfix-only release for 1.10.x branch. It contains fixes for fuser, init, less, nameif, tail, taskset, tcpudp, top, udhcp."

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Interoperability

Cooperative Linux: v0.7.3 (rc3) release candidate available (SourceForge)

Version 0.7.3 rc3 of Cooperative Linux has been announced. "Cooperative Linux is the first method for optimally running Linux on Windows and other operating systems natively. It is a port of the Linux kernel and support code that allows it to run cooperatively without emulation along with another operating system".

Comments (none posted)

Web Site Development

mod_perl 2.0.4 announced

Version 2.0.4 of mod_perl, the Perl language interface to the Apache web server, has been announced. "frankie_guasch writes "Finally, it's here and it works with Perl 5.10!"

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Miscellaneous

SBLIM: New Release - sfcb 1.3.0 (SourceForge)

Version 1.3.0 of SBLIM has been announced. "SBLIM (pronounced "sublime"), the Standards Based Linux Instrumentation for Manageability is an IBM-initiated Open Source project, intended to enhance the manageability of GNU/Linux systems. It does so by enabling WBEM, Web Based Enterprise Management. A new major release of sfcb, 1.3.0, is now available from our SourceForge download page. Along with many bugfixes, there are several new features".

Comments (none posted)

SIMPL: v3.2.0 released (SourceForge)

Version 3.2.0 of SIMPL has been announced. "Send/Receive/Reply messaging, popularized in commericial RTOS's such as QNX, is intuitive and simple to understand and an immensely powerful way of designing distributed software applications. This project aims to bring these tools to Linux. This release adds the RS232 surrogate to the mix. It also changes the default header format for TCP/IP intersurrogate communications to text format in anticipation of fully obsoleting binary (byte order dependent) format in future releases."

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Desktop Applications

Audio Applications

Renoise 1.9.1 "GOLD" released

Version 1.9.1 of Renoise has been announced. "Renoise is a contemporary digital audio workstation (DAW) based upon the heritage and development of tracker software. Its primary use is the composition of music using samples (in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, Ogg, and MP3 format), and MIDI sequencing of VSTi soft synths. Changes: With input from a very enthusiastic user community, two and a half months were spent on bug fixes and stability improvements for the Linux beta. The work has paid off and the Linux version is now officially 1.9.1 "GOLD" like it's OS X and Windows counterparts."

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Data Visualization

JSynoptic: V2.4.2 delivery (SourceForge)

Version 2.4.2 of JSynoptic has been announced, it adds several new capabilities "JSynoptic renders information graphically. It can be used as a simple graph plotter, or as a complex run-time monitoring environment. The user sets up shapes (like plots) on graphical pages, and uses data sources (ex: ASCII file) to render information."

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Environments

GNOME 2.23.1 released

Version 2.23.1 of the GNOME desktop environment has been announced. "Welcome to the 2.23 development cycle! This is the first release in our trip to GNOME 2.24, which will be out in September, in around five months. We'll hopefully enjoy some nice new bugs and crashes, while we'll have to live with new features, improvements or fixes. To be honest, I was a bit sad when I smoketested this release because I was expecting to see way more problems. I didn't even see a single crash."

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GNOME Software Announcements

The following new GNOME software has been announced this week: You can find more new GNOME software releases at gnomefiles.org.

Comments (none posted)

KDE Commit-Digest (KDE.News)

The April 13, 2008 edition of the KDE Commit-Digest has been announced. The content summary says: "Complete source rewrite, with many improvements, in KInfoCenter. Important work on the "Quick Launch", "Folder View", and "RSSNOW" Plasma applets. Initial work towards future support for a list of timezones tooltip for the digital-clock Plasmoid. KMoon is obsoleted by the Plasma "Luna" applet. "Ozone", a fork of the Oxygen window decoration style which respects system colour preferences. Get Hot New Stuff support for icon themes in KDE. KNotify notifications interface now conforms to the Galago specification..."

Comments (none posted)

KDE Software Announcements

The following new KDE software has been announced this week: You can find more new KDE software releases at kde-apps.org.

Comments (none posted)

Desktop Publishing

Scribus 1.3.3.11 released

Version 1.3.3.11 of Scribus, a desktop publishing system, has been announced. "This stable release adds the following: Several fixes and improvements to text frames and the Story Editor. New Arabic Translation. More translation and documentation updates. Many improvements to PDF Forms exporting and non-Latin script handling in PDFs. Several fixes to protect against possible crashes. Improved Color Managed Display in some cases. Some fixes to the Scripting plugin."

Comments (none posted)

Games

Ember 0.5.2 released

Version 0.5.2 of Ember has been announced by the WorldForge virtual world project, it includes new capabilities and bug fixes. "Ember version 0.5.2 has been released and is now available from the WorldForge download site. Ember is a 3d client for the WorldForge project. It uses the Ogre 3d graphics library for presentation and CEGUI for its GUI system."

Comments (none posted)

Interoperability

Wine 0.9.60 released

Version 0.9.60 of Wine has been announced. Changes include: Improved support for the .NET framework, Better services handling through a separate services.exe process, Support for ATI fragment shader, Better support for http proxies, Window management fixes, Pre-compiled fonts are now available in the source tree and Lots of bug fixes.

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Mail Clients

Claws Mail 3.4.0 released

Version 3.4.0 of Claws Mail has been announced. "New in this release: Added support for /dev/mem_notify. This Linux kernel feature will allow applications to be notified that memory has to be freed before getting OOM-killed. For more information: http://lwn.net/Articles/267013/. Enabled moving/copying folders to root folders when using the folder selection dialogue. Global and per-folder templates can now override the From name. Added a tooltip with extended folder stats. (Hover the cursor over the short stats on the right, below the message list.)..."

Comments (none posted)

Music Applications

The initial release of ladosc

The first release of ladosc has been announced. "ladosc is a set of ladspa plugins for composing music with Linux."

Full Story (comments: none)

Strasheela 0.9.5 released

Version 0.9.5 of the Strasheela music composition system has been announced. "This release enhances Strasheela's capabilities for outputting microtonal music into sound synthesis formats such as Csound or MIDI. The actual playback pitch of notes can be defined by tuning tables, which are similar to the scale format of Scala".

Full Story (comments: none)

Office Suites

Security vulnerabilities fixed in OpenOffice.org 2.4

Version 2.4 of OpenOffice.org has been announced. "Please note that OpenOffice.org version 2.4, released on 27th March, fixed a number of security vulnerabilities. To our knowledge, none of these has been exploited; however, in accordance with industry best practice, we recommend all users upgrade to 2.4. This information has been withheld until now to ensure that all the products derived from the OpenOffice.org codebase have been able to include these security fixes before the public announcement of the vulnerabilities."

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Speech Software

eSpeak 1.37 announced

Version 1.37 of the eSpeak speech synthesis program has been announced. From the ChangeLog file: "Added build options for pulseaudio and sada sound systems. Bug fixes: Fixed crash on some very long words. Fixed crash when saying "ligature A E". Added support for mbrola Spanish voices es1, es2. Fixed letter names lang=it 'v' 'x'"

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Web Browsers

Ubuntuzilla: 4.4.6 released. (SourceForge)

Version 4.4.6 of Ubuntuzilla has been announced. "Ubuntuzilla is a python script that allows the user to install the latest versions of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla SeaMonkey, and Mozilla Thunderbird on Ubuntu Linux, with minimal disturbance to the system. This version has a fix to make it work properly on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy), and a couple minor enhancements."

Comments (none posted)

Languages and Tools

C

GCC 4.3.1 status report (2008-04-17)

The GCC 4.3.1 status report for April 17, 2008 has been published. "GCC 4.3.1 is due around 2008-05-05. As soon as the P1 bugs are fixed and we have -mcld workaround for the x86 direction flag issue, we'll release 4.3.1-rc1. One of the 4 P1s has approved patch and one has been failing also in 4.1/4.2, so IMHO we could release 4.3.1 even without it being fixed. But the remaining two, PR35758 and PR35773, are new C++ 4.3/4.4 regressions and is something that really should be fixed before 4.3.1."

Full Story (comments: none)

Caml

Caml Weekly News

The April 22, 2008 edition of the Caml Weekly News is out with new articles about the Caml language.

Full Story (comments: none)

Java

GJDoc 0.7.9 released

Version 0.7.9 of GJDoc has been announced. "gjdoc is the GNU documentation generation framework for java source files. This release is mainly to make sure that gjdoc can generate documentation for the latest version of GNU Classpath (0.97.1). The support for the 1.5 language features isn't complete, but this release of gjdoc should be able to at least handle the basics and generate documentation for java source code files that contain generics, annotations and enumerations."

Full Story (comments: none)

OpenXava: 3.0.1 released (SourceForge)

Version 3.0.1 of OpenXava has been announced. "OpenXava is a framework to develop Java Enterprise/J2EE applications rapidly and easily. Allows you to define applications just with POJOs, JPA and Java 5 annotations. Feature rich and flexible since it's used for years to create business applications with Java."

Comments (none posted)

Lisp

SBCL 1.0.16 has been released

Version 1.0.16 of Steel Bank Common Lisp has been announced. "This version improves introspection of instances, adds support for fcntl file locks, optimizes special variable binding, speeds up MEMBER, ASSOC, and LOGNOT, and fixes many bugs."

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PHP

What's new in Zend Framework V1.5 (developerWorks)

The Zend framework for PHP is popular for developing applications in that language. developerWorks has an article covering the most recent Zend framework release, v1.5. "Zend stands out by putting a huge emphasis on best practices, which appeals to those of you who value sustainability. Zend also makes a point of constructing the framework in a remarkably modular fashion: Most of the individual Zend Framework components can be pulled completely out and used on their own, which appeals to developers who only need a fraction of the available libraries. Zend's flexibility, combined with the solid standardization that comes with emphasizing best practices, makes it a practical framework for a broad spectrum of purposes."

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Python

Python-URL! - weekly Python news and links

The April 21, 2008 edition of the Python-URL! is online with a new collection of Python article links.

Full Story (comments: none)

Tcl/Tk

Tcl-URL! - weekly Tcl news and links

The April 17, 2008 edition of the Tcl-URL! is online with new Tcl/Tk articles and resources.

Full Story (comments: none)

Version Control

GIT 1.5.5.1 announced

Version 1.5.5.1 of the GIT distributed version control system has been announced. "Fortunately there weren't many brown paper bag breakages we needed to fix immediately after releasing 1.5.5, but there do exist some usability and documentation fixes accumulated on the maintenance branch."

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