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V.1.5.6 is the last sub-release in the 1.5.x series. It should now be considered to be at "end-of-life".
In previous sub-releases and versions several DPB parameters were accessible to ordinary users, causing some dangerous loopholes. In some cases, they are settings that would alter the database header settings and potentially cause corruptions if not performed under administrator control; in others, they initiate operations that are otherwise restricted to the SYSDBA.
In this edition, these parameters have been made inaccessible to ordinary users. They are.-
isc_dpb_shutdown and isc_dpb_online
isc_dpb_gbak_attach, isc_dpb_gfix_attach and isc_dpb_gstat_attach
isc_dpb_verify
isc_dpb_no_db_triggers
isc_dpb_set_db_sql_dialect
isc_dpb_sweep_interval
isc_dpb_force_write
isc_dpb_no_reserve
isc_dpb_set_db_readonly
isc_dpb_set_page_buffers (on Superserver)
The parameter isc_dpb_set_page_buffers can still be used by ordinary users on
Classic and it will set the buffer size temporarily for that user and that session only. When used by
the SYSDBA on either Superserver or Classic, it will change the buffer count in the database header, i.e.,
make a permanent change to the default buffer size.
This change will affect any of the listed DPB parameters that have been explicitly set, either by including them in the DPB implementation by default property values or by enabling them in tools and applications that access databases as ordinary users. For example, a Delphi application that included 'RESERVE PAGE SPACE=TRUE' and 'FORCED WRITES=TRUE' in its database Params property, which caused no problems when the application connected to Firebird 1.5.5 or lower, now rejects a connection by a non-SYSDBA user with ISC ERROR CODE 335544788, “Unable to perform operation. You must be either SYSDBA or owner of the database.”
Connection to the Superserver service using the IPServer ("Windows local") protocol is not supported. It might be possible for certain users to use this protocol if fbserver.exe is running in the user's application space.
On these platforms, the Explorer crashes when the Firebird 1.5 control panel applet is installed. This crash does NOT occur with Firebird 2.n, but attempts to backport the changes to Firebird 1.5 did not work.
Since V.1.5.5, the installer disables installation of the 1.5 applet if Windows > XP/Server2003 is detected as the host operating system. The service can still be controlled, like any other, through the Services administration applet.
If you intend to install v.1.5.6 manually from the zip kit, do not copy the Firebird control panel applet to the Windows/System32 folder.
A few bugs that arose since v.1.5.5 have also been fixed. For details, see Release 1.5.5 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.6.
This sub-release addressed some security vulnerabilities reported by RISE Security which were closed in Firebird 2.0.3. Those fixes were back-ported to Firebird 1.5.5.
A few bugs that arose since v.1.5.4 were fixed. For details, see Release 1.5.4 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.5.
The Firebird 1.5.4 sub-release adds no new functionality but building the software for both Classic and SuperServer for HP-UX11 is now supported.
This sub-release introduces a number of additional retrospective fixes to bugs that became apparent and were fixed in the Firebird 2 tree during the Firebird 2.0 beta cycle.
Fixes to bugs introduced in v.1.5, v.1.5.1, v.1.5.2 and v.1.5.3 are appended to the feature list in the section Release 1.5.3 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.4.
A further list of fixes is prepended to the Old Bugs Fixed.
The Firebird 1.5.3 sub-release introduces a number of retrospective fixes to bugs that became apparent and were fixed in the Firebird 2 tree during the pre-alpha and alpha phases of the Firebird 2 development.
Minor enhancements added since v.1.5.2 are described in Firebird 1.5.3 Point Release Additions.
Note the addition of a new optional compatibility parameter to firebird.conf.
For details of this parameter--OldColumnNaming--refer to the section
Compatibility Parameters.
Fixes to bugs introduced in v.1.5, v.1.5.1 and v.1.5.2 are appended to the feature list in the section Release 1.5.2 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.3.
A further list of fixes is prepended to the Old Bugs Fixed.
Minor enhancements added since v.1.5.1 are described in Firebird 1.5.2 Point Release Additions.
Fixes to bugs introduced in v.1.5 and v.1.5.1 are appended to the feature list in the section Release 1.5.1 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.2.
A further list of fixes is prepended to the Old Bugs Fixed.
Point release, Firebird 1.5.1, 14 July 2004 - Document version 151.00
Minor enhancements added since v.1.5 were described in Firebird 1.5.1 Point Release Additions.
Fixes to bugs introduced in v.1.5 are appended to the feature list in the section Release 1.5 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.1.
A further list of fixes is prepended to the Old Bugs Fixed.
A list of (currently one only) Known Issues is included.
Some errata were corrected.
Initial release, Firebird 1.5, 5 February 2004 - Document version 150.08
The Firebird" database engine has been developed by an independent team of voluntary developers from the InterBase® source code that was released by Borland under the InterBase Public License v.1.0 on 25 July 2000.
Development on the Firebird 2 codebase began early in Firebird 1 development, with the porting of the Firebird 1 C code to C++ and the first major code-cleaning. Firebird 1.5 was the first release of the Firebird 2 codebase. During subsequent development of Firebird 2.0 (released in November, 2006) many important bug fixes were back-ported to the v.1.5 codebase.
Firebird 1.0.x (last sub-release v.1.0.3, June 2003) is no longer in active maintenance.
The Firebird binaries can be downloaded through the Firebird website Downloads area. If you are looking for unusual builds that are not linked there, you might wish to plough through Firebird's Sourceforge project download area.
Win32: “WI-V1.5.0.nnnn Firebird 1.5”
Linux: “LI-V1.5.0.nnnn Firebird 1.5”
and so on, where “nnnn” is the build number.
These release notes are currently your only source of free up-to-date documentation of changes that happened since Firebird 1.0.x. Please refer to the Documentation section for locations of recommended documentation.
A Quick Start Guide for v.1.5 should be included in the /doc/ sub-directory of your Firebird installation. This PDF document is also available for download or can be viewed online as a web document.
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This release was built from code ported from the original C to C++, a process begun by Mike Nordell back in 2000. Extensive code cleanup and bug-fixing has continued, along with new memory management and language enhancements. Not least, during the v.1.5 development process, the SQL query optimizer has undergone enhancements and fixes at the hands of Arno Brinkman and others, resulting in reported speed improvement of 30 to 60 percent and more.
Two significant new additions for Windows platforms are Classic server and embedded server.
Note that
Before Firebird 1.5, there had not been a Classic server on Windows for nearly eight years. This one can utilize multiple processors, something which still eludes the Windows Superserver. Although regarded as experimental initially, the reborn Classic model for Windows has proven its mettle.
Embedded server is a dll that merges a single client attachment with a Firebird Superserver for building very quick and efficient stand-alone and briefcase applications.
Several important new language features have been added since version 1.0.x, including the SQL-92 conditonal expression functions CASE, COALESCE and NULLIF. For syntax of these and other new language implementations, please refer to the Language Enhancements section later in this document.
If you have been using Firebird 1.0.x until now, you will notice big changes in the names of modules and the rules for accessing and locating them. Following are some highlights; for detailed information on installation, disk layout and configuration, see the relevant section in this document.
Most modules and constants have been renamed. In most cases, the new names involve some variant of “firebird” or “fb”. For example, the API library is now located in a shared library named “fbclient.dll” on Windows and “libfbclient.so” or “libfbembed.so” on other platforms.
The exception that breaks the rule is the security database, formerly named “isc4.gdb”, which is now called “security.fdb”.
External files used by the server (UDF libraries, BLOB filters, character set libraries, external tables) are now subject to levels of filesystem protection that, in some cases, default to a level that will be different to what you had under Firebird 1.0.x or InterBase.
The new server configuration file, firebird.conf, that replaces ibconfig (Windows) and isc_config (other platforms) contains several new configurable features along with improved self-documentation and organisation.
A database-aliasing feature comes in 1.5. Now you can optionally “soft-code” the database location into your application code using your choice of alias to replace the path string. Actual path locations are stored in a text file, aliases.conf. The main purpose of aliasing, however, is to protect your physical paths from being maliciously “sniffed” on the wire.
The default (and past practice) on Windows server platforms makes it that the
localsystem user runs the program that installs the Firebird service at system start-up.
This could be a serious security vulnerability if the Firebird server should be hacked, since it provides a
window through which the hacker can access the entire machine. The 1.5 version of this program
(instsvc.exe) now accepts a Windows user log-on for the service installation. It is strongly
recommended that you create a Firebird user for this purpose and make use of the new logon feature if your
server is connected to the Internet in any way.
Work was resumed and completed on this tricky feature for the 1.5 client and varchars now cross the wire right-trimmed to actual length plus two bytes.
As it is the client that requests the server to trim varchars, the Firebird 1.5 client (fbclient.dll or libfbclient.so) will trim, even if connected to a pre-1.5 server version. If you use an old client, you will not get trimming, even if you are connected to a 1.5 or later server.
Now you can write conditional insert/update/delete actions in one Before or After trigger to have the one trigger cover all DML actions for that trigger's phase. This cuts down the composition and maintenance of triggers without deprecating the ability to have multiple triggers per phase.
Indexes that enforce named integrity constraints may now be named with user-defined identifiers.
If you use this feature, your database will not be downgradable to v.1.0.x or InterBase®.
Now-in both Release 1.0 and this release-the maximum number of indexes you can define for a table has been increased from 64 to 256.
For the rare times when you need to impose a pessimistic lock, this release adds syntax to place a “reader's lock” on rows as they are output to the client. Use with care.
Connection to the security database is cached in Superserver builds. It means that
security.fdb is loaded when the first connection is made and stays attached until all
client connections are gone.
Where possible, error messages report the cause of SQL errors at a more detailed level. It is IMPORTANT
to note that you will encounter bizarre messages if you use an old interbase.msg or
firebird.msg file.
Limited support for the Services API is now available on Classic server on Linux. Services available from
gbak (backup/restore) and gfix (validate database, shutdown/online,
etc.) work. Others (gstat, server logs, etc.) were not tested and are probably non-functional.
The client library is now named “fbclient.dll”. All server utilities (gbak, gfix, etc) use only the client library fbclient.dll. Connect new applications to fbclient.dll, without requiring gds32.dll ( recommended).
For compatibility with existing applications, it is possible to generate a “clone” of fbclient.dll with the name “gds32.dll” using a new utility named instclient.exe. For exact details, see the installation section and any late installation notes distributed with your Windows kit.
The Superserver client library is now named “libfbclient.so”. For compatibility with existing applications, a symlink “libgds.so” is installed that points back to libfbclient.so. The local client library for embedded applications connecting to Classic server has been renamed to libfbembed.so.
The following group of minor enhancements was added to the Firebird v.1.5.3 point release.-
Command line switch -b to bail out on error when used in non-interactive mode.
Return an error code to the operating system from command-line isql
Added OldColumnNaming parameter to firebird.conf to allow users to revert to pre-V1.5 column naming in Select expressions.
Attempts to send signals via a missing gds_relay may be an exploit attempt. They are now logged.
Previously, a user could log into a server on a Unix/Linux host remotely, using a Linux UID and password accepted on that host. It was recognised as a security hole and fixed in Firebird 2 development. It is an endemic security bug in previous versions and InterBase. The security fix has been back-ported to Firebird 1.5.3: a UID received from the client side is now not trusted.
The following group of minor enhancements was added to the Firebird v.1.5.2 point release.-
Resource lists to check permissions are now computed on the fly as needed. For complex schemas, this significantly reduces memory and CPU time consumption.
Work around bugs in GCC 3.3.2 and 3.3.3
Support GCC 3.4 build
Limit exports of Firebird libraries using version script
Link client library and UDF libraries with POSIX threads. This cures problems with single-threaded hosts like PHP linking with libfbclient.so from CS packages
To prevent the startup status from being overwritten by the next status message, the /etc/init.d/firebird script needed to have a line consisting only of "echo" after RETVAL=$?.
Erik LaBianca extended the Firebird build system to generate source bundles in a generic fashion and without autoconf dependency. He uses this facility for his Fedora Core packages.
These are point release notes that augment the release notes for v.1.5.
Firebird Superserver has a link-time backward compatibility issue with the NPTL (Native POSIX Thread Library) that may cause it to be unstable on Linux distributions that enable the NPTL in the GNU C library, e.g. Red Hat 9, Mandrake 10, Fedora Core. The new NPTL builds of Superserver should solve these problems.
Features of GSEC and GSTAT are now supported via the Services API in CS builds. It means that the entire Services API now works in both Superserver and Classic architectures.
Known issue: GSEC doesn't deliver error status vectors to the client side if forked from the CS process. Any error will prevent the security database from being changed; but the exception is decoded by the server and the appropriate message is delivered via the API communication buffer instead of the status vector. If this situation is not handled properly by the user program, it may cause application-specific errors.
For example, IBExpert displays the message "unexpected output buffer value".
GSTAT supported only the local connection string syntax: you could not specify "localhost:<path>" to retrieve the statistics for a local database. Since Win32 Classic does not yet support the local (IPC) protocol, it wasn't possible to use GSTAT with it. Now GSTAT is fixed to enable it.
You may use either "localhost:" (for TCP/IP) or "\\.\" (for Named Pipes) to work around the Win32 Classic limitation.
GSTAT still can not be run over remote databases. Because it has to open a database file directly to read the header page, it requires local access to the database file. This might change in a future version.
Changes were made in the engine to make the character set NONE more friendly about reading and writing data from and to fields (columns, variables) of another character set.
In Firebird 1.5.0, from a client connected with character set NONE, you could read data in two incompatible character sets-such as SJIS (Japanese) and WIN1251(Russian)-even though you could not read one of those character sets while connected from a client with the other character set. Data would be received "as is" and be stored without raising an exception.
However, from this character set NONE client connection, an attempt to update any Russian or Japanese data columns using either parameterized queries or literal strings without introducer syntax would fail with transliteration errors; and subsequent queries on the stored "NONE" data would similarly fail.
In Firebird 1.5.1, both problems have been circumvented. Data received from the client in character set NONE are still stored "as is" but what is stored is an exact, binary copy of the received string. In the reverse case, when stored data are read into this client from columns with specific character sets, there will be no transliteration error. When the connection character set is NONE, no attempt is made in either case to resolve the string to well-formed characters, so neither the write nor the read will throw a transliteration error.
This opens the possibility for working with data from multiple character sets in a single database, as long as the connection character set is NONE. The client has full responsibility for submitting strings in the appropriate character set and converting strings returned by the engine, as needed.
Abstraction layers that have to manage this can read the low byte of the sqlsubtype field in the XSQLVAR structure, which contains the character set identifier.
While character set NONE literals are accepted and implicitly stored in the character set of their context, the use of introducer syntax to coerce the character sets of literals is highly recommended when the application is handling literals in a mixture of character sets. This should avoid the string's being misinterpreted when the application shifts the context for literal usage to a different character set.
Coercion of the character set, using the introducer syntax or casting, is still required when handling heterogeneous character sets from a client context that is anything but NONE.
Introducer syntax
_ISO8859_1 'ààààà'
Casting
CAST (<string> as varchar(n) character set ISO8859_1)
A debugging enhancement was added, to configure the server to abort a server process and produce a core dump when bugchecks or structured exceptions occur. The new parameter in firebird.conf is BugcheckAbort. It is off (=0) by default.
If turned on, this feature will produce a correct core dump on BUGCHECK or when an external function (UDF, BLOB filter, intl2 function) causes havoc. When BugcheckAbort is not enabled, structured exception handlers or a synchronous signal handler may mask the original cause of problem.
Collation sequence LT_LT was added for the ISO8859_13 charset.
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This chapter describes compatibility issues for migrating existing databases to Firebird 1.5.
The On-Disk Structure of Firebird 1.5 is designated ODS 10.1. This minor ODS upgrade was required because of three changes:
three new indices for system tables
minor changes in the BLR of two system triggers
enhanced encoding of RDB$TRIGGER_TYPE
Certain enhancements requiring changes to the ODS have been deferred to the version 2 release. Meanwhile, you should be able to transport your Firebird 1.0.x databases directly. Take tested backups of your Firebird 1.0.x databases before porting them to 1.5.
If you are planning to “play” with Firebird using an existing InterBase database, with the intention of reverting to InterBase later, please take all precautions to back up your current version using the appropriate InterBase version of gbak. For beginning to work with your database in Firebird 1.5, use the Firebird 1.5 version of gbak to restore your backup.
The Operations Guide (OpGuide.pdf) from the InterBase® 6.0 beta documentation set contains the command syntax for the gbak backup and restore program.
IB 7.x and probably IB 6.5 databases may work incorrectly after migration to FB 1.5 via backup/restore, if new IB-specific features were used in those databases.
In this release, a substantial number of software files have new names, as part of a gradual replacement of names inherited from InterBase® 6. Please read the section Renamed Files and Modules for descriptions and recommendations.
Changes done to some system object names enable Fb 1.5 to be installed and used on a computer which already has InterBase or Firebird 1.0.x installed. On Windows, FB 1.5 also uses another Registry key--and use of the Registry entry is optional. If you set up the servers to use different network ports, it is possible run a few server instances concurrently, or run Fb 1.5 while IB or Fb 1.0.x is running.
Because of a large number of bug-fixes, the behaviour of databases might change if you downgrade a v.1.5 database to v.1.0.x. Especially, if you create primary, unique and foreign keys as named constraints, the default index names will be incompatible with v.1.0.x Watch out for a future README detailing any such issues as might appear.
Because of a history of problems with the GNU C++ compiler, Firebird 1.5 Linux versions need higher versions of the glibc runtimes than previously. This means, unfortunately, that we are in a period where the capability of a particular distro to install and run the 1.5 binaries is somewhat hard to predict.
The following matrix may help. However, we welcome further information. Please share your experiences with these and other distros in the firebird-devel forum.
 |
Known Firebird 1.5-compatible Linux Distibutions
Table of Contents
A large number of additions and enhancements were made to the various subsets of Firebird's SQL language.
Single-line comments can be in any position in the line, not just the first. For use in scripts, DSQL, stored procedures and triggers.
So, in 1.5, the "--" marker can be used for a comment at the end of a line statement in a script, stored procedure, trigger or DSQL statement. It can thus be used to "comment out" unwanted parts of statements. All characters from the "--" marker until the next carriage return or line feed will be ignored.
...
WHERE COL1 = 9 OR COL2 = 99 -- OR COL3 = 999
Previous implementation (v.1.0, Claudio Valderrama)
-- This is a comment
This new marker can be used for "commenting out" a single line of code in a script, DDL/DML statement, stored procedure or trigger. The logic is to ignore characters is as follows:
Skip '--' if it is found as the first character pair following an end-of-line marker (LF on Linux/Unix, CRLF on Windows)
Continue skipping characters until the next end-of-line marker
This logic is NOT intended for mixing with the block comment logic ( /* a comment */ ). In other words, don't use the '--' style of commenting within a block comment and don't use the block-style of commenting within a '--' line.
Interactive isql sessions
Keep this in mind when working in an interactive isql session. isql will accept pieces of a statement in separate continuation segments, displaying the 'CON>' prompt until it receives the terminator symbol (normally ';'). If you type a '--' pair at the start of a continuation line, the ignoring logic will finish at the end-of-line marker that is printed to the screen or your OUTPUT file when you press Enter.
There is potential for errors if you subsequently add a continuation, expecting it to be ignored.
The problem with isql arises because it has its own special commands that should be parsed only by isql. If they are not recognized due to tricky placement of "--", then they are passed to the engine. Obviously, the engine doesn't understand isql's SET and SHOW commands and rejects them.
These two new context variables have been added to reference the USER and (if implemented1) the ROLE of the current connection context.
Examples
CREATE GENERATOR GEN_USER_LOG;
CREATE DOMAIN INT_64 AS NUMERIC(18,0);
COMMIT;
CREATE TABLE USER_LOG(
LOG_ID INT_64 PRIMARY KEY NOT NULL,
OP_TIMESTAMP TIMESTAMP,
LOG_TABLE VARCHAR(31),
LOG_TABLE_ID INT_64,
LOG_OP CHAR(1),
LOG_USER VARCHAR(8),
LOG_ROLE VARCHAR(31));
COMMIT;
CREATE TRIGGER ATABLE_AI FOR ATABLE
ACTIVE AFTER INSERT POSITION O AS
BEGIN
INSERT INTO USER_LOG VALUES(
GEN_ID(GEN_USER_LOG, 1),
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
'ATABLE',
NEW.ID,
'I',
CURRENT_USER,
CURRENT_ROLE);
END
CURRENT_USER is a DSQL synonym for USER that appears in the SQL standard. They are identical. There is no advantage of CURRENT_USER over USER.
If you insist on using an InterBase v.4.x or 5.1 database with Firebird, ROLE is not supported, so current_role will be NONE (as mandated by the SQL standard in absence of an explicit role) even if the user passed a role name.
If you use IB 5.5, IB 6 or Firebird, the ROLE passed is verified. If the role does not exist, it is reset to NONE without returning an error.
This means that in FB you can never get an invalid ROLE returned by CURRENT_ROLE, because it will be reset to NONE. This is in contrast with IB, where the bogus value is carried internally, although it is not visible to SQL.
DDL is the language subset that is used for creating, altering and dropping metadata. The following changes have been implemented:
Indexes that enforce named constraints may now be named with user-defined identifiers.
Previously, although it was possible to created named PRIMARY, FOREIGN KEY and UNIQUE constraints, the identifier of the automatically-generated enforcing index was calculated by the system, e.g., RDB$FOREIGN13, and could not be altered. This remains the default behaviour when named constraints are not used.
However, language extensions have been added to enable
a system-generated index to receive automatically the same identifier as the named constraint it enforces
an index which enforces a named or unnamed constraint to be explicitly assigned a custom identifier and to be optionally constructed in DESCENDING order.
It is not currently possible to use a pre-existing index.
...
[ADD] CONSTRAINT [<constraint-identifier>]
<constraint-type> <constraint-definition>
[USING [ASC[ENDING] | DESC[ENDING]] INDEX <index_name>]
Make sure that foreign key and primary key indexes use the same sort order (DESC | ASC ).
Examples
i) Named constraint and explicitly-named index:
CREATE TABLE ATEST (
ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
DATA VARCHAR(10));
COMMIT;
The following statement will create a primary key constraint named PK_ATEST and an enforcing, descending index named IDX_PK_ATEST:
ALTER TABLE ATEST
ADD CONSTRAINT PK_ATEST PRIMARY KEY(ID)
USING DESC INDEX IDX_PK_ATEST;
COMMIT;
ii) Alternative to i) above:
CREATE TABLE ATEST (
ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
DATA VARCHAR(10),
CONSTRAINT PK_ATEST PRIMARY KEY(ID)
USING DESC INDEX IDX_PK_ATEST;
iii) This statement creates the table ATEST with the primary key PK_ATEST. The enforcing index is also named PK_ATEST.:
CREATE TABLE ATEST (
ID BIGINT NOT NULL,
DATA VARCHAR(10),
CONSTRAINT PK_ATEST PRIMARY KEY(ID));
Triggers are enhanced to enable them to handle multiple row-level operations conditionally.
Syntax Pattern
CREATE TRIGGER name FOR table
[ACTIVE | INACTIVE]
{BEFORE | AFTER} <multiple_action>
[POSITION number]
AS trigger_body
<multiple_action> ::= <single_action> [OR <single_action> [OR <single_action>]]
<single_action> ::= {INSERT | UPDATE | DELETE}
Examples
i)
CREATE TRIGGER TRIGGER1 FOR TABLE1
ACTIVE BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE AS
...;
ii)
CREATE TRIGGER TRIGGER2 FOR TABLE2
ACTIVE AFTER INSERT OR UPDATE OR DELETE AS
...;
ODS Change
Encoding of field RDB$TRIGGER_TYPE (relation RDB$TRIGGERS) has been extended to allow complex
trigger actions. For details, refer to the document readme.universal_triggers.txt in
the /doc/sql.extensions branch of the Firebird CVS tree.
Notes
One-action triggers are fully compatible at ODS level with FB 1.0.
RDB$TRIGGER_TYPE encoding is order-dependant, i.e., BEFORE INSERT OR UPDATE and BEFORE UPDATE OR INSERT will be coded differently, although they have the same semantics and will be executed exactly the same way.
Both OLD and NEW context variables are available in multiple-action triggers. If the trigger invocation forbids one of them (e.g. OLD context for INSERT operation), then all fields of that context will evaluate to NULL. If they are assigned to an improper context, a runtime exception will be thrown.
The new Boolean context variables INSERTING/UPDATING/DELETING can be used to check the operation type at runtime. (See below.)
Exactly the same as CREATE VIEW if the view does not already exist. If it does exist, RECREATE VIEW will try to drop it and create a completely new object. RECREATE VIEW will fail if the object is in use.
Uses the same syntax as CREATE VIEW.
Statement that will either create a new trigger or procedure (if it does not already exist) or alter it (if it already exists) and recompile it. The CREATE OR ALTER syntax preserves existing dependencies and permissions.
Syntax is as for CREATE TRIGGER | CREATE PROCEDURE, respectively, except for the additional keywords "OR ALTER".
When the count of metadata changes on any single table reaches the maximum of 255, the database becomes unavailable. Backup and restore are required in order to reset the change count and make the database once again available. The intention of this feature is to enforce a database cleanup when table structures have undergone a lot of changes, not to inhibit useful capabilities in the engine.
Previously, each time a trigger was set ACTIVE|INACTIVE by an ALTER TRIGGER statement, the change count for the associated table would be incremented. This affected the usefulness of disabling and re-enabling trigger code for regular operations, since it would cause the change count to rise quickly. Now, it is not treated as a metadata change for table versioning purposes.
It is now possible to apply a UNIQUE constraint or a unique index to a column that does not have the NOT NULL constraint, in compliance with SQL-99. Be cautious about using this if you plan to revert your database to Firebird 1.0.x or any InterBase version, since those older servers will see the index as corrupt.
Syntax Details
<unique constraint or index definition> ::=
<unique specification> ( <unique column list UCL> )
<unique specification> ::=
{{[constraint-name]UNIQUE | UNIQUE INDEX index-name]} |
[constraint-name] PRIMARY KEY}
where <unique column list> can contain one or more columns without the NOT NULL attribute, if <unique specification> is UNIQUE or UNIQUE INDEX index-name.
All columns in PRIMARY KEY still must be declared NOT NULL.
The constraint allows existence of only those rows for which search condition (i) or (ii) evaluates as True, according to the following logic:
If the <unique specification> specifies PRIMARY KEY, then the search condition shall be:
UNIQUE ( SELECT UCL FROM TN ) AND ( UCL ) IS NOT NULL
Otherwise, the <search condition> shall be:
UNIQUE ( SELECT UCL FROM TN )
In this case, the condition UNIQUE can not be True if ( SELECT UCL FROM TN ) could output two rows where all of the corresponding non-null segment pairs match.
The constraint allows existence of only those rows for which the aforementioned <search condition> evaluates to True. In a unique index or under a UNIQUE constraint, two sets of column values will be considered distinct and thus allowed if:
both sets contain only nulls, or
there is at least one pair of corresponding values of which one is non-null, and the other either null or a different non-null value.
Examples
UNIQUE constraint:
CREATE TABLE t (
a INTEGER,
b INTEGER,
CONSTRAINT pk UNIQUE (a, b));
or UNIQUE index:
CREATE TABLE t (a INTEGER, b INTEGER);
COMMIT;
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX uqx ON t(a, b);
COMMIT;
INSERT INTO t
VALUES (NULL, NULL); /* ok, nulls allowed */
INSERT INTO t
VALUES (1, 2); /* as are non-nulls */
INSERT INTO t
VALUES (1, NULL); /* and combinations */
INSERT INTO t
VALUES (NULL, NULL); /* ok, all pairs of nulls are distinct */
but not:
INSERT INTO t
VALUES (1, NULL);
/* fails because all corresponding non-null segments match */
It means that the PRIMARY KEY constraint doesn't allow NULLs whilst the UNIQUE constraint and unique indexes allow an arbitrary number of NULLs. For multi-column result sets of ( SELECT UCL FROM TN ), the common rules for NULLs are applied, i.e. (1, NULL) is distinct from (NULL, 1) and one (NULL, NULL) is distinct from any other (NULL, NULL).
Enables unused generators to be removed from the database. Storage will be freed for re-use upon the next RESTORE. Available in SQL and DSQL.
Syntax Pattern
DROP GENERATOR <generator name>;
The following were implemented in Firebird 1.0. They are described again here for the convenience of the reader.
This new DDL command lets you create a new stored procedure with the same name as an existing procedure, replacing the old procedure, without needing to drop the old procedure first. The syntax is identical to CREATE PROCEDURE.
Available in SQL and DSQL.
Data manipulation language, or DML is the language of query statements, the commands we use to manipulate data, that is, to SELECT FROM, INSERT, UPDATE and DELETE from tables and to EXECUTE PROCEDUREs.
Calls to EXECUTE PROCEDURE ProcName(<Argument-list>) and SELECT <Output-list> FROM ProcName(<Argument-list>) can now accept local variables (in PSQL) and expressions (in DSQL and PSQL) as arguments.
Allow the result of a column to be determined by the outcome of a group of exclusive conditions.
Syntax Pattern
<case expression> ::=
<case abbreviation> | <case specification>
<case abbreviation> ::=
NULLIF <left paren> <value expression> <comma> <value expression> <right paren>
| COALESCE <left paren> <value expression> { <comma> <value expression> }... <right paren>
<case specification> ::=
<simple case> | <searched case>
<simple case> ::=
CASE <value expression> <simple when clause>...
[ <else clause> ]
END
<searched case> ::=
CASE <searched when clause>...
[ <else clause> ]
END
<simple when clause> ::= WHEN <when operand> THEN <result>
<searched when clause> ::= WHEN <search condition> THEN <result>
<when operand> ::= <value expression>
<else clause> ::= ELSE <result>
<result> ::= <result expression> | NULL
<result expression> ::= <value expression>
Examples
i) simple
SELECT
o.ID,
o.Description,
CASE o.Status
WHEN 1 THEN 'confirmed'
WHEN 2 THEN 'in production'
WHEN 3 THEN 'ready'
WHEN 4 THEN 'shipped'
ELSE 'unknown status ''' || o.Status || ''''
END
FROM Orders o;
ii) searched
SELECT
o.ID,
o.Description,
CASE
WHEN (o.Status IS NULL) THEN 'new'
WHEN (o.Status = 1) THEN 'confirmed'
WHEN (o.Status = 3) THEN 'in production'
WHEN (o.Status = 4) THEN 'ready'
WHEN (o.Status = 5) THEN 'shipped'
ELSE 'unknown status ''' || o.Status || ''''
END
FROM Orders o;
Allows a column value to be calculated by a number of expressions, from which the first expression to return a non-NULL value is returned as the output value.
Syntax Pattern
<case abbreviation> ::=
| COALESCE <left paren> <value expression>
{ <comma> <value expression> }... <right paren>
COALESCE (V1, V2) is equivalent to the following <case specification>:
CASE WHEN V1 IS NOT NULL THEN V1 ELSE V2 END
COALESCE (V1, V2,..., Vn), for n >= 3, is equivalent to the following <case specification>:
CASE WHEN V1 IS NOT NULL THEN V1
ELSE COALESCE (V2,...,Vn) END
Examples
SELECT
PROJ_NAME AS Projectname,
COALESCE(e.FULL_NAME,'[< not assigned >]') AS Employeename
FROM
PROJECT p
LEFT JOIN EMPLOYEE e
ON (e.EMP_NO = p.TEAM_LEADER);
SELECT
COALESCE(Phone,MobilePhone,'Unknown') AS "Phonenumber"
FROM
Relations;
Returns NULL for a sub-expression if it has a specific value, otherwise returns the value of the sub-expression.
Syntax Pattern
<case abbreviation> ::=
NULLIF <left paren> <value expression> <comma> <value expression> <right paren>
Syntax Rules
NULLIF (V1, V2) is equivalent to the following <case specification>:
CASE WHEN V1 = V2 THEN NULL ELSE V1 END
Example
UPDATE PRODUCTS
SET STOCK = NULLIF(STOCK,0)
User savepoints (alternative name nested transactions) provide a convenient method to handle business logic errors without needing to roll back the transaction. Available only in DSQL.
Use the SAVEPOINT statement to identify a point in a transaction to which you can later roll back.
Syntax Patterns
SAVEPOINT <identifier>;
<identifier> specifies the name of a savepoint to be created. After a savepoint has been created, you can either continue processing, commit your work, roll back the entire transaction, or roll back to the savepoint.
Savepoint names must be distinct within a given transaction. If you create a second savepoint with the same identifer as an earlier savepoint, the earlier savepoint is erased.
ROLLBACK [WORK] TO [SAVEPOINT] <identifier>;
This statement performs the following operations:
Rolls back changes performed in the transaction after the savepoint
Erases all savepoints created after that savepoint. The named savepoint is retained, so you can roll back to the same savepoint multiple times. Prior savepoints are also retained.
Releases all implicit and explicit record locks acquired since the savepoint. Other transactions that have requested access to rows locked after the savepoint must continue to wait until the transaction is committed or rolled back. Other transactions that have not already requested the rows can request and access the rows immediately.
This behaviour may change in future product versions.
The Savepoint undo log may consume significant amounts of server memory, especially if you update the same records in the same transaction multiple times. Use the RELEASE SAVEPOINT statement to release system resources consumed by savepoint maintenance.
RELEASE SAVEPOINT <identifier> [ONLY];
RELEASE SAVEPOINT statement erases the savepoint <identifer> from the transaction context. Unless you specify the ONLY keyword, all savepoints established since the savepoint <identifier> are erased too.
Example using Savepoints
create table test (id integer);
commit;
insert into test values (1);
commit;
insert into test values (2);
savepoint y;
delete from test;
select * from test; -- returns no rows
rollback to y;
select * from test; -- returns two rows
rollback;
select * from test; -- returns one row
By default, the engine uses an automatic transaction-level system savepoint to perform transaction rollback. When you issue a ROLLBACK statement, all changes performed in this transaction are backed out via a transaction-level savepoint and the transaction is then committed. This logic reduces the amount of garbage collection caused by rolled back transactions.
When the volume of changes performed under a transaction-level savepoint is getting large (10^4-10^6 records affected) the engine releases the transaction-level savepoint and uses the TIP mechanism to roll back the transaction if needed.
If you expect the volume of changes in your transaction to be large, you can use the
TPB flag isc_tpb_no_auto_undo to avoid the transaction-level savepoint being
created.
Implementing user savepoints in PSQL layer would break the atomicity rule for statements, including procedure call statements. Firebird provides exception handling in PSQL to undo changes performed in stored procedures and triggers. Each SQL/PSQL statement is executed under a system of automatic, internal savepoints, whereby either the entire statement will complete successfully or ALL its changes are rolled back and an exception is raised.
Each PSQL exception handling block is also bounded by automatic system savepoints.
The addition of the optional WITH LOCK clause provides a limited explicit pessimistic locking capability for cautious use in conditions where the affected row set is
extremely small (ideally, a singleton) AND
precisely controlled by the application code.
This is for experts only!
The need for a pessimistic lock in Firebird is very rare indeed and should be well understood before use of this extension is considered.
It is essential to understand the effects of transaction isolation and other transaction attributes before attempting to implement explicit locking in your application.
Syntax Pattern
SELECT ... FROM <sometable>
[WHERE ...]
[FOR UPDATE [OF ...]]
[WITH LOCK]
...;
If the WITH LOCK clause succeeds, it will secure a lock on the selected rows and prevent any other transaction from obtaining write access to any of those rows, or their dependants, until your transaction ends.
If the FOR UPDATE clause is included, the lock will be applied to each row, one by one, as it is fetched into the server-side row cache. It becomes possible, then, that a lock which appeared to succeed when requested will nevertheless fail subsequently, when an attempt is made to fetch a row which becomes locked by another transaction.
The SELECT... WITH LOCK construct is available in DSQL and PSQL.
The SELECT... WITH LOCK construct can succeed only in a top-level, single-table SELECT statement. It is not available
in a subquery specification
for joined sets
with the DISTINCT operator, a GROUP BY clause or any other aggregating operation
with a view
with the output of a selectable stored procedure
with an external table
As the engine considers, in turn, each record falling under an explicit lock statement, it returns either the record version that is the most currently committed, regardless of database state when the statement was submitted, or an exception.
Wait behaviour and conflict reporting depend on the transaction parameters specified in the TPB block:
Table 4.1. How TPB settings affect explicit locking
| TPB mode | Behaviour |
|---|---|
|
isc_tpb_consistency |
Explicit locks are overridden by implicit or explicit table-level locks and are ignored |
|
isc_tpb_concurrency + isc_tpb_nowait |
If a record is modified by any transaction that was committed since the transaction attempting to get explicit lock started, or an active transaction has performed a modification of this record, an update conflict exception is raised immediately |
|
isc_tpb_concurrency + isc_tpb_wait |
If the record is modified by any transaction that has committed since the transaction attempting to get explicit lock started, an update conflict exception is raised immediately. If an active transaction is holding ownership on this record (via explicit locking or by a normal optimistic write-lock) the transaction attempting the explicit lock waits for the outcome of the blocking transaction and, when it finishes, attempts to get the lock on the record again. This means that, if the blocking transaction committed a modified version of this record, an update conflict exception will be raised. |
|
isc_tpb_read_committed + isc_tpb_nowait |
If there is an active transaction holding ownership on this record (via explicit locking or normal update), an update conflict exception is raised immediately. |
|
isc_tpb_read_committed + isc_tpb_wait |
If there is an active transaction holding ownership on this record (via explicit locking or by a normal optimistic write-lock), the transaction attempting the explicit lock waits for the outcome of blocking transation and when it finishes, attempts to get the lock on the record again. Update conflict exceptions can never be raised by an explicit lock statement in this TPB mode. |
When an UPDATE statement tries to access a record that is locked by another transaction, it either raises an update conflict exception or waits for the locking transaction to finish, depending on TPB mode. Engine behaviour here is the same as if this record had already been modified by the locking transaction.
No special gdscodes are returned from conflicts involving pessimistic locks.
The engine guarantees that all records returned by an explicit lock statement are actually locked and DO meet the search conditions specified in WHERE clause, as long as the search conditions do not depend on any other tables, via joins, subqueries, etc. It also guarantees that rows not meeting the search conditions will not be locked by the statement. It can NOT guarantee that there are no rows which, though meeting the search conditions, are not locked.
This situation can arise if other, parallel transactions commit their changes during the course of the locking statement's execution.
The engine locks rows at fetch time. This has important consequences if you lock several rows at once. Many access methods for Firebird databases default to fetching output in packets of a few hundred rows ("buffered fetches"). Most data access components cannot bring you the rows contained in the last-fetched packet, where an error occurred.
The FOR UPDATE clause provides a technique to prevent usage of buffered fetches, optionally with the
OF <column-names> to enable positioned updates.
Alternatively, it may be possible in your access components to set the size of the fetch buffer to 1. This would enable you to process the currently-locked row before the next is fetched and locked, or to handle errors without rolling back your transaction.
Rolling back of an implicit or explicit savepoint releases record locks that were taken under that savepoint, but it doesn't notify waiting transactions. Applications should not depend on this behaviour as it may get changed in the future.
While explicit locks can be used to prevent and/or handle unusual update conflict errors, the volume of deadlock errors will grow unless you design your locking strategy carefully and control it rigorously.
Most applications do not need explicit locks at all. The main purposes of explicit locks are (1) to prevent expensive handling of update conflict errors in heavily loaded applications and (2) to maintain integrity of objects mapped to a relational database in a clustered environment. If your use of explicit locking doesn't fall in one of these two categories, then it's the wrong way to do the task in Firebird.
Explicit locking is an advanced feature, do not misuse it ! While solutions for these kinds of problems may be very important for web sites handling thousands of concurrent writers, or for ERP/CRM systems operating in large corporations, most application programs do not need to work in such conditions.
Originally, grouped sets could be grouped only on named columns. In Firebird 1.0, it became possible to group by a UDF expression. In 1.5, several further extensions to the handling of aggregate functions and the GROUP BY clause now allow groupings to be made by the degree of columns in the output specification (their 1-based "ordinal left-to-right position", as in the ORDER BY clause) or by a variety of expressions.
Not all expressions are currently allowed inside the GROUP BY list. For example, concatenation is not allowed.
Group By syntax
SELECT ... FROM .... [GROUP BY group_by_list]
group_by_list : group_by_item [, group_by_list];
group_by_item : column_name
| degree (ordinal)
| udf
| group_by_function;
group_by_function : numeric_value_function
| string_value_function
| case_expression
;
numeric_value_function : EXTRACT '(' timestamp_part FROM value ')';
string_value_function : SUBSTRING '(' value FROM pos_short_integer ')'
| SUBSTRING '(' value FROM pos_short_integer FOR nonneg_short_integer ')'
| KW_UPPER '(' value ')'
;
The group_by_item cannot be a reference to any aggregate-function (including any that are buried inside an expression) from the same context.
The having clause only allows aggregate functions or valid expressions that are part of the GROUP BY clause. Previously it was allowed to use columns that were not part of the GROUP BY clause and to use non-valid expressions.
When the context is an aggregate statement, the ORDER BY clause only allows valid expressions that are aggregate functions or expression parts of the GROUP BY clause.
Previously it was allowed to use non-valid expressions.
It is now possible to use an aggregate function or expression contained in the GROUP BY clause inside a subquery.
Examples
SELECT
r.RDB$RELATION_NAME,
MAX(r.RDB$FIELD_POSITION),
(SELECT
r2.RDB$FIELD_NAME
FROM
RDB$RELATION_FIELDS r2
WHERE
r2.RDB$RELATION_NAME = r.RDB$RELATION_NAME and
r2.RDB$FIELD_POSITION = MAX(r.RDB$FIELD_POSITION))
FROM
RDB$RELATION_FIELDS r
GROUP BY
1
/* ************ */
SELECT
rf.RDB$RELATION_NAME AS "Relationname",
(SELECT
r.RDB$RELATION_ID
FROM
RDB$RELATIONS r
WHERE
r.RDB$RELATION_NAME = rf.RDB$RELATION_NAME)
AS "ID",
COUNT(*) AS "Fields"
FROM
RDB$RELATION_FIELDS rf
GROUP BY
rf.RDB$RELATION_NAME
Aggregate functions from different contexts can be used inside an expression.
Examples
SELECT
r.RDB$RELATION_NAME,
MAX(i.RDB$STATISTICS) AS "Max1",
(SELECT
COUNT(*) || ' - ' || MAX(i.RDB$STATISTICS)
FROM RDB$RELATION_FIELDS rf
WHERE
rf.RDB$RELATION_NAME = r.RDB$RELATION_NAME) AS "Max2"
FROM
RDB$RELATIONS r
JOIN RDB$INDICES i on (i.RDB$RELATION_NAME = r.RDB$RELATION_NAME)
GROUP BY
r.RDB$RELATION_NAME
HAVING
MIN(i.RDB$STATISTICS) <> MAX(i.RDB$STATISTICS)
Note! This query gives results in FB1.0, but they are WRONG!
Using a singleton SELECT expression inside an aggregate function is supported.
Example
SELECT
r.RDB$RELATION_NAME,
SUM((SELECT
COUNT(*)
FROM
RDB$RELATION_FIELDS rf
WHERE
rf.RDB$RELATION_NAME = r.RDB$RELATION_NAME))
FROM
RDB$RELATIONS r
JOIN RDB$INDICES i
on (i.RDB$RELATION_NAME = r.RDB$RELATION_NAME)
GROUP BY
r.RDB$RELATION_NAME
Using an aggregate function inside another aggregate function is possible if the inner aggregate function is from a lower context (see example above).
The ORDER BY clause lets you specify any valid expressions to sort query results. If the expression consists of a single number, it is interpreted as column (degree) number, as previously.
The ordering of nulls in the result set can be controlled using a nulls placement clause.
Results can be sorted so that nulls are placed either above (NULLS FIRST) or below (NULLS LAST) the sorted non-nulls.
Behaviour when nulls placement is unspecified is NULLS LAST.
Syntax Pattern
SELECT ... FROM .... [ORDER BY order_list]....;
order_list : order_item [, order_list];
order_item : <expression> [order_direction] [nulls_placement]
order_direction : ASC | DESC;
nulls_placement : NULLS FIRST | NULLS LAST;
Restrictions
If NULLS FIRST is specified, no index will be used for sorting.
The results of a sort based on values returned from a UDF or a stored procedure will be unpredictable if the values returned cannot be used to determine a logical sorting sequence.
The number of procedure invocations from specifying a sort based on a UDF or stored procedure will be unpredictable, regardless of whether the ordering is specified by the expression itself or by an ordinal number representing an expression in the column-list specification.
An ordering clause for sorting the output of a union query may use only ordinal (degree) numbers to refer to the ordering columns.
i)
SELECT * FROM MSG
ORDER BY PROCESS_TIME DESC NULLS FIRST
ii)
SELECT FIRST 10 * FROM DOCUMENT
ORDER BY STRLEN(DESCRIPTION) DESC
iii)
SELECT DOC_NUMBER, DOC_DATE FROM PAYORDER
UNION ALL
SELECT DOC_NUMBER, DOC_DATA FROM BUDGORDER
ORDER BY 2 DESC NULLS LAST, 1 ASC NULLS FIRST
In Firebird 1.5, zero can be accepted as an argument for FIRST in the SELECT FIRST m ..
SKIP n construction. An empty result set will be returned.
(from the v.1.0 release notes)
Syntax Pattern
SELECT [FIRST (<integer expr m>)] [SKIP (<integer expr n>)]
Retrieves the first m rows of the selected output set. The optional SKIP clause will cause the first n rows to be discarded and return an output set of m rows starting at n + 1. In the simplest form, m and n are integers but any Firebird expression that evaluates to an integer is valid.
Available in SQL and DSQL except where otherwise indicated.
Parentheses are required for expression arguments and are optional otherwise.
The arguments can also bind variables, e.g.
SKIP ? * FROM ATABLEreturns the remaining dataset after discarding the n rows at the top, where n is passed in the "?" variable.
SELECT FIRST ? COLUMNA, COLUMNB FROM ATABLEreturns the first m rows and discards the rest.
An identifier that evaluates to an integer may also be used in GDML, although not in SQL or DSQL.
The FIRST clause is also optional, i.e. you can include SKIP in a statement without FIRST to get an output set that simply excludes the rows appointed to SKIP.
Example
SELECT SKIP (5+3*5) * FROM MYTABLE;
SELECT FIRST (4-2) SKIP ? * FROM MYTABLE;
SELECT FIRST 5 DISTINCT FIELD FROM MYTABLE;
1. This:
delete from TAB1
where PK1 in (select first 10 PK1 from TAB1);
will delete all of the rows in the table. Ouch! the sub-select is evaluating each 10 candidate rows for deletion, deleting them, slipping forward 10 more...ad infinitum, until there are no rows left. Beware!
2. Queries like:
...
WHERE F1 IN ( SELECT FIRST 5 F2 FROM TABLE2
ORDER BY 1 DESC )
won't work as expected, because the optimization performed by the engine transforms the correlated
WHERE...IN (SELECT...) predicate to a correlated EXISTS predicate. It's obvious
that in this case FIRST N doesn't make any sense:
...
WHERE EXISTS (
SELECT FIRST 5 TABLE2.F2 FROM TABLE2
WHERE TABLE2.F2 = TABLE1.F1
ORDER BY 1 DESC )
The remaining items in this section are DML enhancements that were introduced in Firebird 1.0.x, described again for the reader's convenience.
It is now possible to aggregate a SELECT by grouping on the output of a UDF. e.g.
select
strlen(rtrim(rdb$relation_name)),
count(*) from rdb$relations
group by strlen(rtrim(rdb$relation_name))
order by 2
A side-effect of the changes enabling grouping by UDFs is that, whereas previously you could not call built-in Firebird functions in GROUP BY, now, by creating a dummy UDF wrapper, you can do:
select count(*)
from rdb$relations r
group by bin_or((select count(rdb$field_name)
from rdb$relation_fields f
where f.rdb$relation_name = r.rdb$relation_name),1)
Internal function, available in SQL and DSQL, implementing the ANSI SQL SUBSTRING() function. It
will return a stream consisting of the byte at <pos> and all subsequent bytes up to the end of the
string. If the optional FOR <length> is specified, it will return the lesser
of <length> bytes or the number of bytes up to the end of the input stream.
The first argument can be any expression, constant or identifier that evaluates to a string.
<pos> must evaluate to an integer. <pos> in the string starts at 1, like other SQL positional elements.
Neither <pos> nor <length> can be query parameters: they must evaluate to constants.
Because <pos> and <length> are byte positions, the identifier of the input string can be a binary blob, or a sub_type 1 text blob with an underlying one-byte-per-character charset. The function currently does not handle text blobs with Chinese (2 byte/char maximum) or Unicode (3 byte/char maximum) character sets.
For a string argument (as opposed to a blob), the function will tackle ANY charset.
Example
UPDATE ATABLE
SET COLUMNB = SUBSTRING(COLUMNB FROM 4 FOR 99)
WHERE ...
Please refer also to the later section on External Functions (UDFs) for details of changes and additions to external substring functions in the standard UDF library.
The following enhancements have been made to PSQL, the set of language extensions available for writing stored procedures and triggers.
EXECUTE STATEMENT "string" is a PSQL extension which takes a string that is a valid dynamic SQL statement and executes it as if it had been submitted to DSQL.
Available in triggers and stored procedures.
Syntax Patterns
The syntax may have three forms.-
Executes "string> as an SQL operation that does not return any data rows, viz. INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, EXECUTE PROCEDURE or any DDL statement except CREATE/DROP DATABASE.
EXECUTE STATEMENT <string>;
Example
CREATE PROCEDURE DynamicSampleOne (Pname VARCHAR(100))
AS
DECLARE VARIABLE Sql VARCHAR(1024);
DECLARE VARIABLE Par INT;
BEGIN
SELECT MIN(SomeField) FROM SomeTable INTO :Par;
Sql = 'EXECUTE PROCEDURE ' || Pname || '(';
Sql = Sql || CAST(Par AS VARCHAR(20)) || ')';
EXECUTE STATEMENT Sql;
END
Executes "string" as an SQL operation, returning single data row. Only singleton SELECT operators may be executed with this form of EXECUTE STATEMENT.
EXECUTE STATEMENT <string> INTO :var1, [&, :varn] ;
CREATE PROCEDURE DynamicSampleTwo (TableName VARCHAR(100))
AS
DECLARE VARIABLE Par INT;
BEGIN
EXECUTE STATEMENT
'SELECT MAX(CheckField) FROM ' || TableName INTO :Par;
IF (Par > 100) THEN
EXCEPTION Ex_Overflow 'Overflow in ' || TableName;
END
Executes "string" as SQL operation, returning multiple data rows. Any SELECT operator may be executed with this form of EXECUTE STATEMENT.
FOR EXECUTE STATEMENT <string> INTO :var1, &, :varn
DO
<compound-statement>;
Example
CREATE PROCEDURE DynamicSampleThree (
TextField VARCHAR(100),
TableName VARCHAR(100))
RETURNS (Line VARCHAR(32000))
AS
DECLARE VARIABLE OneLine VARCHAR(100);
BEGIN
Line = '';
FOR EXECUTE STATEMENT
'SELECT ' || TextField || ' FROM ' || TableName
INTO :OneLine
DO
IF (OneLine IS NOT NULL) THEN
Line = Line || OneLine || ' ';
SUSPEND;
END
The 'EXECUTE STATEMENT' DSQL string cannot contain any parameters in any syntax variation. All variable substitution into the static part of the SQL statement should be performed before the execution of EXECUTE STATEMENT.
This feature is intended only for very cautious use and should be used with all factors taken into account. It should be a rule of thumb to use EXECUTE STATEMENT only when other methods are impossible, or perform even worse than EXECUTE STATEMENT.
EXECUTE STATEMENT is potentially unsafe in several ways:
There is no way to validate the syntax of the enclosed statement.
There are no dependency checks to discover whether tables or columns have been dropped.
Operations will be slow because the embedded statement has to be prepared every time it is executed.
Return values are strictly checked for data type in order to avoid unpredictable type-casting exceptions. For example, the string '1234' would convert to an integer, 1234, but 'abc' would give a conversion error.
If the stored procedure has special privileges on some objects, the dynamic statement submitted in the EXECUTE STATEMENT string does not inherit them. Privileges are restricted to those granted to the user who is executing the procedure.
A number of new context variables for PSQL have been implemented.
These context variables return the system identifier of the active connection or the current transaction context, respectively. Return type is INTEGER. Available in DSQL and PSQL.
Because these values are stored on the database header page, they will be reset after a database restore.
Syntax Patterns
CURRENT_CONNECTION
CURRENT_TRANSACTION
Examples
SELECT CURRENT_CONNECTION FROM RDB$DATABASE;
NEW.TXN_ID = CURRENT_TRANSACTION;
EXECUTE PROCEDURE P_LOGIN(CURRENT_CONNECTION);
Returns an integer, the number of rows affected by the last DML statement. Available in PSQL, in the context of the procedure or trigger module.
Currently returns zero from a SELECT statement.
Syntax Pattern
ROW_COUNT
Examples
UPDATE TABLE1 SET FIELD1 = 0 WHERE ID = :ID;
IF (ROW_COUNT = 0) THEN
INSERT INTO TABLE1 (ID, FIELD1) VALUES (:ID, 0);
ROW_COUNT cannot be used for checking the rows affected by an EXECUTE STATEMENT command.
Each context variable returns an integer which is the numeric error code for the active exception. Available in PSQL, within the scope of the particular exception handling block. Both will evaluate to zero outside the block.
The GDSCODE variable returns a numeric representation of the GDS (ISC) error code, e.g. '335544349L' will return 335544349.
A 'WHEN SQLCODE' or 'WHEN ANY' exception block will catch a non-zero value for the SQLCODE variable and return zero for GDSCODE. Only a 'WHEN GDSCODE' block can catch a non-zero GDSCODE variable (and will return zero in SQLCODE).
If a user-defined exception is thrown, both SQLCODE and GDSCODE variables contain zero, regardless of the exception handling block type.
Syntax Pattern
SQLCODE
GDSCODE
Example
BEGIN
...
WHEN SQLCODE -802 DO
EXCEPTION E_EXCEPTION_1;
WHEN SQLCODE -803 DO
EXCEPTION E_EXCEPTION_2;
WHEN ANY DO
EXECUTE PROCEDURE P_ANY_EXCEPTION(SQLCODE);
END
See also the EXCEPTION HANDLING ENHANCEMENTS, below, and the document README.exception_handling in the firebird2/doc/sql.extensions branch of the Firebird CVS tree.
Three pseudo-Boolean expressions that can be tested to determine the type of DML operation being executed. Available in PSQL, only in triggers. Intended for use with multi-action triggers (see the DML section, above).
Syntax Pattern
INSERTING
UPDATING
DELETING
Example
IF (INSERTING OR UPDATING) THEN
BEGIN
IF(NEW.SERIAL_NUM IS NULL) THEN
NEW.SERIAL_NUM = GEN_ID(G_GENERATOR_1, 1);
The common syntax for an EXCEPTION statement in PSQL is:
EXCEPTION [name [value]];
The enhancements in 1.5 allow you to
define a run-time message for a named exception
re-initiate (re-raise) a caught exception within the scope of the exception block
Obtain a numeric error code for a caught exception
Syntax Pattern
EXCEPTION <exception_name> <message_value>;
Examples
a)
EXCEPTION E_EXCEPTION_1 'Error!';
b)
EXCEPTION
E_EXCEPTION_2 'Wrong type for record with ID=' || new.ID;
This has no effect outside an exception block.
Syntax Pattern
EXCEPTION;
Examples
a)
BEGIN
...
WHEN SQLCODE -802 DO
EXCEPTION E_ARITH_EXCEPT;
WHEN SQLCODE -802 DO
EXCEPTION E_KEY_VIOLATION;
WHEN ANY THEN
EXCEPTION;
END
b)
WHEN ANY DO
BEGIN
INSERT INTO ERROR_LOG (...) VALUES (SQLCODE, ...);
EXCEPTION;
END
Terminates the flow in a loop, causing flow of control to move to the statement following the END statement that completes that loop. Available for WHILE, FOR SELECT and FOR EXECUTE language constructs only, otherwise a parser error will be thrown. Available in triggers as well as stored procedures.
The SQL-99 standard keyword LEAVE deprecates the existing use of BREAK.
Syntax Pattern
LEAVE;
Examples
i)
BEGIN
<statements>;
IF (<conditions>) THEN
LEAVE;
<statements>;
END
ii)
WHILE (<condition>) DO
BEGIN
<statements>;
WHEN ... DO
LEAVE;
END
The condition that branches to a LEAVE statement must be inside a block that is controlled by a looping construct (i.e., WHILE or FOR SELECT...INTO...DO).
It is emphasised that LEAVE will not terminate other types of BEGIN...END block.
LEAVE | BREAK and EXIT statements can now be used in triggers.
Until now, a trigger containing a PLAN statement would be rejected by the compiler. Now, a valid plan can be included and will be used.
Empty BEGIN..END blocks in PSQL modules are now legal. For example, you can now write "stub" modules like
CREATE TRIGGER BI_ATABLE FOR ATABLE
ACTIVE BEFORE INSERT POSITION 0
AS
BEGIN
END ^
The following new Firebird keywords should be added to the list of reserved words published for InterBase 6.0.1.
BIGINT (1.5) CASE (1.5) CURRENT_CONNECTION (1.5)
CURRENT_ROLE CURRENT_TRANSACTION (1.5) CURRENT_USER
RECREATE ROW_COUNT (1.5) RELEASE
SAVEPOINT
The following keywords are reserved for future planned use:
ABS BOOLEAN BOTH
CHAR_LENGTH CHARACTER_LENGTH FALSE
LEADING OCTET_LENGTH TRIM
TRAILING TRUE UNKNOWN
The following keywords were reserved words in Firebird 1.0 and are no longer reserved in Firebird 1.5:
BREAK DESCRIPTOR FIRST
IIF SKIP SUBSTRING
The following non-reserved words are recognised in 1.5 as keywords when used in their respective structural contexts:
COALESCE DELETING INSERTING
LAST LEAVE LOCK
NULLIF NULLS STATEMENT
UPDATING USING
The following new InterBase 6.5 and 7 keywords (not reserved in Firebird) should also be treated as if they were reserved, for compatibility:
BOOLEAN FALSE GLOBAL
PERCENT PRESERVE ROWS
TEMPORARY TIES TRUE
Table of Contents
This chapter contains a number of enhancements to utilities, character sets and external functions (UDFs).
New character sets, collations and changes in this release are listed below. V. 1.0 additions are included for the reader's convenience.
Added WIN1251_UA collation (for both Russian and Ukrainian languages) for WIN1251 character set.
Corrected default uppercasing for WIN1251
Added ISO_HUN (for Hungarian language) for ISO8859_2 character set
Greek
Baltic
Variant of Cp850 with Euro character (€)
PC Hebrew
PC Arabic
MS-DOS Russian
IBM Modern Greek
Windows Hebrew
Windows Arabic
Windows Baltic
Latin 3 (Esperanto, Maltese, Pinyi, Sami, Croatian and others)
Latin 4 (Baltic, Greenlandic, Lappish)
Cyrillic
Arabic
Greek
Hebrew
Turkish
Baltic
New in ISQL:
User-defined functions.-
rpad (instring, length, padcharacter)
Right-pads the supplied string instring by appending padcharacters until the
result string has the given length.
The input string can be any length less than 32766 bytes. Length must not exceed 32765 bytes.
Declaration
DECLARE EXTERNAL FUNCTION rpad
CSTRING(80), INTEGER, CSTRING(1)
RETURNS CSTRING(80) FREE_IT
ENTRY_POINT 'IB_UDF_rpad' MODULE_NAME 'ib_udf';
lpad (instring, length, padcharacter)
Left-pads the supplied string instring by prepending padcharacters until the result string has the
given length.
The input string can be any length less than 32766 bytes. Length must not exceed 32765 bytes.
Declaration
DECLARE EXTERNAL FUNCTION lpad
CSTRING(80), INTEGER, CSTRING(1)
RETURNS CSTRING(80) FREE_IT
ENTRY_POINT 'IB_UDF_lpad' MODULE_NAME 'ib_udf';
log (x, y)
This function had an old bug, whereby the arguments x and y were erroneously reversed. It should return the logarithm base x of y but in fact it returned the log base y of x. It has been corrected.
If it was used in your applications previously, PLEASE CHECK YOUR APPLICATION CODE! it either returned the wrong results; or someone, at some point, did a workaround and reversed the arguments deliberately in order to get the right calculation.
Changes in Firebird 1.5 affect functions in the fbudf external function library, as follows.-
The *NVL and *NULLIF functions remain for backward compatibility, but are deprecated by the introduction of the new internal functions CASE, COALESCE and NULLIF.
If you are porting a database that was created in Firebird 1.0.x and you declared the fbudf functions truncate and round, those declarations will no longer work with Firebird 1.5 because the entry_point names were changed. You will need to drop the functions and redeclare them, using the declarations from the fbudf.sql script in the 1.5 /UDF directory.
Note that fbudf cannot handle string fields bigger than (32Kb - 1) bytes in length. This limit may have ill effects where strings are concatenated before being passed to UDFs taking string arguments. If the sum of field is beyond the limit, the behavior is undefined. The function may return a nonsense result or the fbudf code may perform an illegal operation.
Table of Contents
In Firebird 1.5 there are two configuration files: firebird.conf and aliases.conf. The firebird.conf file replaces ibconfig (Windows) and isc_config (POSIX) that were in the Firebird 1.0.x distributions. Aliases.conf is new: it ties in with some database access parameters in firebird.conf to enable connection to databases without passing filesystem paths across the wire.
The root directory of your Firebird installation is used in many ways, both during installation and as an attribute that server routines, configuration parameters and clients depend on. Because several ways exist to tell the server where to find a value for this attribute, developers and system administrators should be aware of the precedence trail that the server follows at startup, to determine it correctly.
Win32 Superserver and Classic builds (both server and client):
FIREBIRD environment variable
RootDirectory parameter in firebird.conf
Registry:
HKLM\ SOFTWARE\Firebird Project\Firebird Server\Instances\DefaultInstance and
looks for the field DefaultInstance.
The directory one level above the one where the server binary is located
Win32 Embedded:
FIREBIRD environment variable
RootDirectory parameter in firebird.conf
The directory where fbembed.dll (renamed fbclient.dll) is located
Linux Classic:
FIREBIRD environment variable
RootDirectory parameter in firebird.conf
Default installation path (/opt/firebird)
Linux Superserver:
FIREBIRD environment variable
RootDirectory parameter in firebird.conf
The directory one level above the one where the server binary is located (retrieved via symlink "/proc/self/exe", if supported)
Default installation path (/opt/firebird)
Default values are applicable to most parameters. Parameter names and values are case-sensitive on Linux but not on Windows. To set any parameter to a non-default setting, delete the comment (#) marker and edit the value. You can edit the configuration file while the server is running. To activate configuration changes, it is necessary to stop and restart the service.
Entries are in the form:
parameter_name value
parameter_name is a string that contains no whitespace and names a property of the server being configured.
value is a number, Boolean (1=True, 0=False) or string that specifies the value for the parameter
String, the absolute path to a directory root on the local filesystem. It should remain commented unless you want to force the startup procedure to override the path to the root directory of the Firebird server installation, that it would otherwise detect for itself.
Supports the database-aliasing feature. In previous versions, the server could attach to any database in its local filesystem and was accessed by applications passing the file's absolute filesystem path. This parameter provides options to restrict the server's access to aliased databases only, or to only databases located in specific filesystem trees.
DatabaseAccess may be None, Restrict or Full.
Full (the default) permits database files to be accessed anywhere on the local filesystem.
None permits the server to attach only databases that are listed in aliases.conf.
Restrict allows you to configure the locations of attachable database files to a specified list of filesystem tree-roots. Supply a list of one or more tree-roots, separated by semi-colons, to define one or more permissible locations.
For example,
Unix: /db/databases;/userdir/data Windows: D:\data
Relative paths are treated as relative to the path that the running server recognizes as the root directory. For example, on Windows, if the root directory is C:\Program Files\Firebird, then the following value will restrict the server to accessing database files only if they are located under C:\Program Files\Firebird\userdata:
DatabaseAccess = Restrict userdata
Database shadowing - the current DatabaseAccess handling has a bug that means you must use the Restrict option if you are shadowing any database on the server.
Was external_file_directory in isc_config/ibconfig but syntax has changed.
Provides three levels of security regarding EXTERNAL FILES (fixed format text files that are to be accessed as database tables). The value is a string, which may be None, Full or Restrict.
None (the default value) disables any use of external files on your server.
Restrict provides the ability to restrict the location of external files for database access to specific path-trees. Supply a list of one or more tree-roots, separated by semi-colons (;), within and beneath which external files may be stored.
For example,
Unix: /db/extern;/mnt/extern Windows: C:\ExternalTablesRelative paths are treated as relative to the path that the running server recognizes as the root directory of the Firebird installation. For example, on Windows, if the root that the running server recognizes as the root directory of the Firebird installation is C:\Program Files\Firebird, then the following value will restrict the server to accessing external files only if they are located in C:\Program Files\Firebird\userdata\ExternalTables:
ExternalFileAccess = Restrict userdata\ExternalTablesFull permits external files to be accessed anywhere on the system.
See the CAUTION below the next entry, UdfAccess.
Was as external_function_directory in isc_config/ibconfig but syntax has changed. It replaces not just the name of the earlier parameter, but also the form in which the values are presented. The purpose of the changes was to enable optional levels of protection for external user-defined library modules, a recognized target for malicious intruder attacks. UdfAccess may be None, Restrict or Full.
Restrict (the default setting) retains the functionality provided by the external_function_directory parameter in Firebird 1.0, to restrict the location of callable external libraries to specific filesystem locations. Supply a list of one or more tree-roots, separated by semi-colons (;), within and beneath which UDF, BLOB filter and character set definitions may be stored.
For example,
Unix: /db/extern;/mnt/extern Windows: C:\ExternalModulesRelative paths are treated as relative to the path that the running server recognizes as the root directory of the Firebird installation. For example, on Windows, if the root of the Firebird installation is C:\Program Files\Firebird, then the following value will restrict the server to accessing external libraries only if they are located in C:\Program Files\Firebird\userdata\ExternalModules:
UDFAccess = Restrict userdata\ExternalModulesNone disallows all use of user-defined external libraries.
Full permits external libraries to be accessed anywhere on the system.
Avoid setting up custom directory trees for UdfAccess and ExternalFileAccess such that they share a parent tree-root. The default settings are safe. If you are setting up your own and you don't make separated directory trees for them, the server can be easily hacked to execute unauthorised code. An example of what to avoid:
UdfAccess = UDF; /bad_dir
ExternalFileAccess = /external; /bad_dir/files
UdfAccess & ExternalFileAccess here have a common sub-tree, /bad_dir/files, where someone could place his external file /bad_dir/files/hackudf.so and execute his own code on the compromised system.
(was cpu_affinity in isc_config/ibconfig). With Firebird SuperServer on Windows, there is a problem with the operating system continually swapping the entire SuperServer process back and forth between processors on SMP machines. This ruins performance. This parameter can be used on SMP systems on Windows to set Firebird SuperServer's processor affinity to a single CPU.
Firebird Superservers, up to and including Release 1.5, may not support the Hyperthreading feature of some later-model motherboards on Windows. To avoid balancing problems, you may need to disable hyperthreading at system BIOS level.
CpuAffinityMask takes one integer, the CPU mask.
Example
CpuAffinityMask = 1
only runs on the first CPU (CPU 0).
CpuAffinityMask = 2
only runs on the second CPU (CPU 1).
CpuAffinityMask = 3
runs on both first and second CPU.
Calculating the affinity mask value
You can use this flag to set Firebird's affinity to any single processor or (on Classic server) any combination of the CPUs installed in the system.
Consider the CPUs as an array numbered from 0 to n-1, where n is the number of processors installed and i is the array number of a CPU. M is another array, containing the MaskValue of each selected CPU. The value A is the sum of the values in M.
Use the following formula to arrive at M and calculate the MaskValue A:
Mi = 2I
A = M1 + M2 + M3. . .
For example, to select the first and fourth processors (processor 0 and processor 3) calculate as follows:
A = 20 + 23 = 1 + 8 = 9
(was deadlock_timeout in isc_config/ibconfig). Number of seconds (integer) that the lock manager will wait after a conflict has been encountered, before purging locks from dead processes and doing a further deadlock scan cycle. Normally, the engine detects deadlocks instantly. The deadlock timeout kicks in only if something goes wrong.
The default of 10 seconds is about right for most conditions. Setting it lower does not necessarily improve the speed with which problem deadlocks return a conflict exception. If it is too low, the effect may be unnecessary extra scans which degrade system performance.
(was database_cache_pages in isc_config/ibconfig). Server-wide default (integer) number of database pages to allocate in memory, per database. The configured value can be overridden at database level.
The default value for SuperServer is 2048 pages. For Classic, it is 75.
SuperServer and Classic use the cache differently. SS pools its cache for use by all connections; Classic allocates a static cache to each connection.
Integer, representing number of bytes of memory reserved for the event manager. Default is 65536 (64 Kb).
(was lock_acquire_spins). Relevant only on SMP machines running Classic server. In Classic server, only one client process may access the lock table at any time. A mutex governs access to the lock table. Client processes may request the mutex conditionally or unconditionally. If it is conditional, the request fails and must be retried. If it is unconditional, the request will wait until it is satisfied. LockAcquireSpins establishes the number of attempts that will be made if the mutex request is conditional.
Integer. The default is 0 (unconditional). There is no recommended minimum or maximum.
(was lock_hash_slots in isc_config/ibconfig). Use this parameter for tuning the lock hash list. Under heavy load, throughput might be improved by raising the number of hash slots to disperse the list in shorter hash chains.
Integer-prime number values are recommended. The default is 101.
(was lock_grant_order in isc_config/ibconfig). When a connection wants to lock an object, it gets a lock request block which specifies the object and the lock level requested. Each locked object has a lock block. Request blocks are connected to those lock blocks either as requests that have been granted, or as pending requests.
The LockGrantOrder parameter is a Boolean. The default (1=True) indicates that locks are to be granted on a first-come-first-served basis. The False setting (0), emulating InterBase v3.3 behavior, grants the lock as soon as it becomes available. It can result in lock requests being "starved".
This integer parameter represents the number of bytes of shared memory allocated for the lock manager. For a Classic server, the LockMemSize gives the initial allocation, which will grow dynamically until memory is exhausted ("Lock manager is out of room"). If there are a lot of connections or big page caches, increase this parameter to avoid these errors.
In SuperServer, the memory allocated for the lock manager does not grow.
The default size on Linux and Solaris is 98304 bytes (96 Kb). On Windows, it is 262144 (256 Kb).
Integer parameter, specifying the number of semaphores available for interprocess communication (IPC). The default is 32. Set this parameter in non-threading environments to raise or lower the number of available semaphores.
This parameter allows you to configure, in bytes, the size of each memory block used by the in-memory sorting module. The installation default is 1 Mb; you can reconfigure it to any size up to the currently configured maximum value set by the SortMemUpperLimit parameter (see below).
The maximum amount of memory, in bytes, to be allocated by the in-memory sorting module. The installation default is 67108864 bytes (64 Mb) for SuperServer and 8388608 (8 Mb) for the Classic server.
For Classic, bear in mind that increasing either the block size or the maximum limit affects each client connection/server instance and will ramp up the server's memory consumption accordingly.
(was connection_timeout in isc_config/ibconfig). Number of seconds to wait before abandoning an attempt to connect. Default 180.
(was dummy_packet_interval in isc_config/ibconfig). This is the number of seconds (integer) the server should wait on a silent client connection before sending dummy packets to request acknowledgment.
DO NOT USE THIS OPTION on a Win32 server running TCP/IP clients. It causes a persistent increase in usage of kernel non-paged memory which may hang or crash Windows on the client side as explained at http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=296265.
Win32-with-TCP/IP apart, it's the only way to detect and disconnect inactive clients when either NamedPipes (NetBEUI), XNET or IPC protocols are used. There are no known issues on POSIX systems.
Normally, Firebird uses the SO_KEEPALIVE socket option to keep track of active connections. If you do not like the default two-hour keepalive timeout, adjust your server OS settings appropriately:
On UNIX-like OS's, modify the contents of /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_keepalive_*.
On Windows, follow instructions in this article.
Default should be 0 - not 60 which was the old default in Firebird 1.0 and most of the 1.5 release candidates. A setting of 60 should be treated as the default on systems where you need to make use of this dummy packet polling.
Default = gds_db. See RemoteServicePort, next.
These two parameters provide the ability to override either the TCP/IP service name or the TCP/IP port number used to listen for client database connection requests, if one of them differs from the installed defaults (gds_db/tcp 3050).
Change one of the entries, not both. The RemoteServiceName is checked first for a matching entry in the services file. If there is a match, the port number configured for RemoteServicePort is used. If there is not a match, then the installation default, port 3050, is used.
If a port number is provided in the TCP/IP connection string, it will always take precedence over RemoteServicePort.
The inherited InterBase behavior, of passing event notification messages back to the network layer through randomly selected TCP/IP ports, has been a persistent source of network errors and conflicts with firewalls, sometimes to the extent of causing the server to crash under some conditions. This parameter allows you to configure a single TCP Port for all event notification traffic.
The installation default (0) retains the traditional random port behaviour. To dedicate one specific port for event notifications, use an integer which is an available port number.
By default, clients may connect from any network interface through which the host server accepts traffic. This parameter allows you to bind the Firebird service to incoming requests through one NIC and to reject connection requests from any other network interfaces. This should help to overcome problems in some subnetworks where the server is handling traffic through multiple NICs.
String, in a valid dotted IP format. Default value (not bound) is no value.
The engine reads ahead of the client and can send several rows of data in a single packet. The larger the packet size, the more rows are sent per transfer. Use this parameter-with caution and complete comprehension of its effects on network performance!-if you need to enlarge or reduce the TCP/IP packet size for send and receive buffers. It affects both the client and server.
Value is an integer (size of packet in bytes) in the range 1448 to 32768. The installation default is 8192.
Integer parameter, UNIX signal to use for interprocess communication. Default: 16
USE ONLY WITH EXTREME CAUTION
Boolean parameter which, if set True, allows the engine to open database files which reside on a networked filesystem (NFS) mounted partition. Because the filesystem is beyond the control of the local system, this is a very risky feature that should not be enabled for the purpose of opening any read/write database whose survival matters to you.
The default is 0 (False, disabled) and you should leave it that way unless you are very clear about its effects.
(was tcp_no_nagle in isc_config/ibconfig). On Linux, by default, the socket library will minimize physical writes by buffering writes before actually sending the data, using an internal algorithm (implemented as the TCP_NODELAY option of the socket connection) known as Nagle's Algorithm. It was designed to avoid problems with small packets, called tinygrams, on slow networks.
By default, TCP_NODELAY is enabled (value 0) when Firebird Superserver is installed on Linux. On slow networks, disabling it can actually improve speed.
Watch out for the double negative--set the parameter True to disable TCP_NODELAY and False to enable it.
In releases up to and including v.1.5, this feature is active only for Superserver.
The "Windows local" protocol uses a hidden window for inter-process communication between the local client and the server. This IPC window is created at server startup when CreateInternalWindow is true (1, the default). Set it to 0 (off) to run the server without a window and thus to disable local protocol.
With local protocol disabled, it is possible to run multiple instances of the server simultaneously.
A setting for the thread scheduler on Windows, this integer parameter establishes the number of priority switching cycles (see PrioritySwitchDelay, below) that the scheduler is to execute before a thread is destroyed (or closed).
Immediate destruction (or closure) of worker threads would require a semaphore and blocking call, generating significant overhead. Instead, a thread scheduler maintains threads in a pool. When a thread has completed its task, it is marked as idle. The idle thread is destroyed (or closed) after n iterations of the scheduler loop, where n is the value of the DeadThreadsCollection parameter.
For a server handling a very large number of connections--in the high hundreds or more--the parameter value will need to be raised from its default setting of 50.
Boolean parameter used on Windows servers to determine whether the Guardian should restart the server every time it terminates abnormally. The installation default is to do so (1=True). To disable the restart behavior, set this parameter off (0=False).
(was server_client_mapping in ibconfig). Size in bytes of one client's portion of the memory-mapped file used for interprocess communication (IPC) in the connection model used for "Windows local" connection. It has no equivalent on other platforms.
Integer, from 1024 to 8192. The default is 4096.
Increasing the map size may improve performance when retrieving very wide or large data row sets, such as those returning graphics BLOBs.
NOTE This can no longer be modified in the Guardian's system tray icon dialog.
Default value: FirebirdIPI
The name of the shared memory area used as a transport channel in local protocol.
The Release 1.5 default value--FirebirdIPI--is not compatible with older releases of Firebird nor with InterBase®. Use the value InterBaseIPI to restore compatibility, if necessary.
This parameter was introduced in Version 1.5 to handle a bug in the Windows server operating systems, whereby asynchronous writes were never flushed to disk except when the Firebird server underwent a controlled shutdown. (Asynchronous writes are not supported in Windows 9x or ME.) Hence, on 24/7 systems, asynchronous writes were never flushed at all.
This parameter determines how frequently the withheld pages are flushed to disk when Forced Writes are disabled (asynchronous writing is enabled). Its value is an integer which sets the number of pages to be withheld before a flush is flagged to be done next time a transaction commits.
Default is 100 in Windows installations and -1 (disabled) in installations for all other platforms.
If the end of the MaxUnflushedWriteTime cycle (see below) is reached before the count of withheld pages reaches the MaxUnflushedWrites count, the flush is flagged immediately and the count of withheld pages is reset to zero.
This parameter determines the maximum length of time that pages withheld for asynchronous writing are flushed to disk when Forced Writes are disabled (asynchronous writing is enabled). Its value is an integer which sets the interval, in seconds, between the last flush to disk and the setting of a flag to perform a flush next time a transaction commits. Default is 5 seconds in Windows installations and -1 (disabled) in installations for all other platforms.
A setting for the thread scheduler on Windows, this integer establishes the time, in milliseconds, which is to elapse before the priority of an inactive thread is reduced to LOW or the priority of an active thread is advanced to HIGH. One iteration of this switching sequence represents one thread scheduler cycle.
The default value is 100 ms, chosen on the basis of experiments on Intel PIII/P4 processors. For processors with lower clock speeds, a longer delay will be required.
Integer, sets the number of extra cycles given to a thread when its priority is switched to HIGH. The installation default is 5.
(was server_priority_class in ibconfig). Priority level/class for the server process. This parameter replaces the server_priority_class parameter of pre-1.5 releases-see below-with a new implementation.
The values are integer, as follows:
0 - normal priority
positive value - high priority (same as -B[oostPriority] switch on instsvc.exe configure and start options)
negative value - low priority
All changes to this value should be carefully tested to ensure that they actually cause the engine to be more responsive to requests.
Applicable only for NetBEUI connections.
String parameter, the name of the pipe used as a transport channel in NetBEUI protocol. The named pipe is equivalent to a port number for TCP/IP. The default value--interbas-- is compatible with older releases of Firebird and with InterBase®.
When the size of the internal sort buffer is too small to accommodate the rows involved in a sort operation, Firebird needs to create temporary sort files on the server's filesystem. By default, it will look for the path specified in the environment variable FIREBIRD_TMP . If that variable is not present, it will try to use the root of the /tmp filesystem on Linux/UNIX, or C:\temp on Windows NT/2000/XP.
None of these locations can be configured for size.
Firebird provides a parameter for configuring the disk space that will be used for storing these temporary files. It is prudent to use it, to ensure that sufficient sort space will be available under all conditions.
All CONNECT or CREATE DATABASE requests share the same list of temporary file directories and each creates its own temporary files. Sort files are released when the sort is finished or the request is released.
In Release 1.5, the name of the parameter changed from tmp_directory to TempDirectories and the syntax of the parameter value also changed.
(replaces tmp_directory entries in isc_config/ibconfig). Supply a list of one or more directories, separated by semi-colons (;), under which sort files may be stored. Each item may include an optional size argument, in bytes, to limit its storage. If the argument is omitted, or is invalid, Firebird will use the space in that directory until it is exhausted, before moving on to the next listed directory.
For example,
Unix: /db/sortfiles1 100000000;/firebird/sortfiles2
Windows: E:\sortfiles 500000000
Relative paths are treated as relative to the path that the running server recognizes as the root directory of the Firebird installation. For example, on Windows, if the root directory is C:\Program Files\Firebird, then the following value will tell the server to store temporary files in C:\Program Files\Firebird\userdata\sortfiles, up to a limit of 500 Mb:
TempDirectories = userdata\sortfiles 500000000
No quoted paths (as was required in Firebird 1.0).
Establishes the Boolean evaluation method (complete or shortcut). The default (0=False) is to "short-cut" a Boolean evaluation expression involving the AND or OR predicates by returning as soon as a result of True or False is obtained that cannot be affected by the results of any further evaluation.
Under very rare (usually avoidable) conditions, it might happen that an operation inside an OR or an AND condition that remains unevaluated due to the shortcut behavior has the potential to affect the outcome of the original result. If you have the misfortune to inherit an application that has such characteristics in its SQL logic, you might wish to use this parameter to force complete evaluation until you have the opportunity to perform surgery on it.
Parameter type is Boolean.
Don't overlook the fact that this flag affects all Boolean evaluations performed in any databases on the server.
Version 1.5 addressed and fixed an old InterBase bug that caused output parameters to be returned to the client with an idiosyncratic ordering in the XSQLDA structure. The bug was of such longevity that many existing applications, drivers and interface components have built-in workarounds to correct the problem on the client side.
Releases 1.5 and later reflect the corrected condition in the API and are installed with OldParameterOrdering=0 (False). Set this Boolean parameter True if you need to revert to the old condition for compatibility with existing code.
Don't overlook the fact that this setting affects all databases on the server and will potentially produce exceptions or wrong results if set on in an environment where applications are not compensating for the expected bug.
New parameter added at v.1.5.3
This parameter allow users to revert to pre-V1.5 column naming behaviour in SELECT expressions. If
this parameter changed from its default 0 setting, the engine will not attempt to supply run-time
identifiers, e.g. CONCATENATION for derived fields where the developer has neglected
to provide identifiers.
This setting affects all databases on the server and will potentially produce exceptions or unpredicted results where mixed applications are implemented.
Firebird release 1.5 introduced database file aliasing to improve the portability of applications and to tighten up control of both internal and external database file access.
Configure database file aliases in the text file aliases.conf, located in the root directory of your Firebird server installation. The installed aliases.conf looks similar to this:
#
# List of known database aliases
# ------------------------------
#
# Examples:
#
# dummy = c:\data\dummy.fdb
#
As in all of Firebird's configuration files, the '#' symbols are comment markers. To configure an alias, simply delete the '#' and change the dummy line to the appropriate database path:
# fbdb1 is on a Windows server:
fbdb1 = c:\Firebird\sample\Employee.fdb
# fbdb2 is on a Linux server
fbdb2 = /opt/databases/killergames.fdb
#
You can edit aliases.conf whilst the server is running. There is no need to stop and restart the server in order for new aliases.conf entries to be recognised.
The modified connection string in your client application looks like this:
Server_name:aliasname
With the example above, the following connection string will ask the Firebird server running on a Linux box named "myserver" to find and connect the client to the database at the path identified in aliases.conf as "fbdb2":
myserver:fbdb2
Because the gstat tool does not use a database connection to read the database file, a full path is still required for using gstat. (This may change).
Table of Contents
Table 7.1. Firebird Development Teams
| Developer | Country | Major Tasks |
|---|---|---|
|
Dmitry Yemanov |
Russian Federation |
Release coordinator; DSQL and PSQL enhancements; implementor of Embedded Server, numerous metadata enhancements, database aliasing, multi-action triggers, BigInt data type, new context variables, Windows Classic server; numerous bug-fixes |
|
Nickolay Samofatov |
Russian Federation |
SQL feature designer/implementor (Savepoints, pessimistic locking); metadata enhancements; major engine re-implementations; bug-finder and fixer; architectural troubleshooter; enabled Services API on Linux Classic; performance enhancements; Linux Classic builds |
|
Arno Brinkman |
The Netherlands |
Optimizer enhancements; many new DSQL features |
|
Claudio Valderrama |
Chile |
Code scrutineer; bug-finder and fixer; PSQL enhancements; UDF fixer, designer and implementor |
|
Alex Peshkoff |
Russian Federation |
New PSQL and DSQL features; security features coordinator and author; code fixer; Linux Superserver builds |
|
Mike Nordell |
Sweden |
Translated Firebird codebase to C++; performance enhancements; feature porting; bug-finder and fixer |
|
Blas Rodriguez Somoza |
Spain |
Developer of new character sets; major code cleaner and tree surgeon; MinGW builds |
|
Roman Rokytskyy |
Germany |
Jaybird implementor and co-coordinator |
|
David Jencks |
U.S.A. |
JayBird designer and co-coordinator; designer of Firebird documentation tools |
|
Carlos Guzman Alvarez |
Spain |
Developer and coordinator of .NET provider for Firebird |
|
John Bellardo |
U.S.A. |
Implemented plug-in interface for character sets; coordinator, Darwin builds; initial implementor of new memory model |
|
Erik Kunze |
Germany |
Bug-finder and fixer; code-cleaner; SINIX-Z builds |
|
Dmitry Sibiryakov |
Russian Federation |
Code cleanup; MinGW builds |
|
Pavel Cisar |
Czech Republic |
Linux builds (Release 1.0); QA tools designer/coordinator |
|
Ann Harrison |
U.S.A. |
Bug-fixer; technical advisor; increased maximum indexes allowed |
|
Mark O'Donohue |
Australia |
readline feature in isql; bug-fixing; boot builds (Release 1.0); code-fixing (Release 1.0) |
|
Paul Reeves |
France |
QA; Win32 installers; standard Win32 control panel applet |
|
Ignacio J. Ortega |
Spain |
Added PLAN feature to triggers; code cleanup |
|
Konstantin Kuznetsov |
Russian Federation |
Solaris Intel builds |
|
Olivier Mascia |
Belgium |
Re-implementor of Win32 installation services |
|
Peter Jacobi |
Germany |
Improvements, updating of character sets |
|
Tilo Muetze |
Germany |
Firebird documentation project coordinator |
|
Paul Vinkenoog |
The Netherlands |
Coordinator, Firebird documentation project; UDF fixes |
|
Artur Anjos |
Portugal |
Enhanced Win32 control panel applets; Firebird Configuration Manager developer; internationalization of same |
|
Achim Kalwa |
Germany |
Enhanced Win32 control panel applets |
|
Sean Leyne |
Canada |
Bugtracker organizer; code cleaner |
|
Ryan Baldwin |
U.K. |
Jaybird Type 2 driver developer |
|
Sandor Szollosi |
Hungary |
Implementor of character set collations |
|
Dmitry Kuzmenko |
Russian Federation |
Bugfixed GSTAT |
|
Artem Petkevych |
Ukraine |
Bug-fixed ARRAY type |
|
Vlad Horsun |
Ukraine |
Speed-boosted sweep; fixed 2-phase commit bug |
|
Tomas Skoda |
Slovakia |
Bug-fixer |
|
Evgeny Kilin |
Russian Federation |
Bug-fixer |
|
Oleg Loa |
Russian Federation |
Bug-fixer |
|
Erik S. La Bianca |
U.S.A. |
Bug-fixer |
|
Tony Caduto |
U.S.A. |
Unofficial Win32 installers |
|
Juan Guerrero |
Spain |
New UDFs |
|
Chris Knight |
Australia |
FreeBSD builds |
|
Neil McCalden |
U.K. |
Solaris builds |
|
Grzegorz Prokopsi |
Hungary |
Debian builds |
|
Paul Beach |
U.K. |
HP-UX builds |
|
Geoffrey Speicher |
U.S.A. |
FreeBSD builds |
|
Helen Borrie |
Australia |
Release notes author; field-tester and Thought Police |
Table of Contents
For Users of Windows Vista
On the Windows Vista platform, the Explorer crashes when the Firebird 1.5 control panel applet is installed. This crash does NOT occur with Firebird 2.n, but attempts to backport the changes to Firebird 1.5.5 did not work.
The installer now disables installation of the 1.5 applet if Vista is detected as the host operating system.
If you intend to install v.1.5.5 manually from the zip kit, do not copy the Firebird control panel applet to the Windows/System32 folder.
The service can still be controlled, like any other, through the Services administration applet.
With the introduction of two new server models on Win32 the choices for installing Firebird have proliferated.
Make sure you are logged in as Administrator (doesn't apply on Win9x or ME)
All models except the Embedded Server--Superserver, Classic, server tools-only and client-only--can be installed using the Windows installer application. For a full-release install, it is highly recommended to use the installer if there is one available.
Use gbak to back up your old isc4.gdb security database. You can restore it later as security.fdb
If you have special settings in ibconfig there may be some values which you want to transfer to equivalent parameters in firebird.conf. Study the notes about firebird.conf to work out what can be copied directly and what parameters require new syntax.
If certain configuration files exist in the installation directory they will preserved if you run the installer and OVERWRITTEN if you decompress a zip kit into the default location. The files are
security.fdb
firebird.log
firebird.conf
aliases.conf
Each model can be installed from a zipfile. This method will be faster than the installer if you have plenty of experience installing Firebird 1.5 from zipfiles. It will be highly exasperating if you are a Firebird newbie.
It is assumed that.-
you understand how your network works
you understand why a client/server system needs both a server and clients
you have read the rest of these release notes-or at least realise that you need to read them if something seems to have gone wrong
you know to go to the firebird-support list if you get stuck. Join at http://www.yahoogroups.com/groups/firebird-support
If you already have an earlier version of Firebird or InterBase® on your server and you think you might want to go back to it, set up your fall-back position before you begin.
Use the existing version of GBAK to back up your database files in transportable format
Go to your System directory and make a backup copy of gds32.dll. You might want to name the backup "gds32.dll.ib5" or "gds32.dll.fb103" or something similarly informative; or hide it in another directory
It might be a good idea to make a backup of the Microsoft C++ runtime, msvcp60.dll, too. The installer shouldn't overwrite your version of this file, but strange things have been known to happen.
STOP ANY FIREBIRD OR INTERBASE SERVER THAT IS RUNNING
The installer will try to detect if an existing version of Firebird or InterBase is installed and/or running. In a non-installer install, you are on your own!
The default root location of Firebird 1.5 will be C:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5. If your old version is already in a directory of that name and you want to use the 1.5 defaults, rename the existing directory
For installing Firebird as a service: if you want to make use of the new secure login feature, create a "firebird service user" on the system-any name and password you like-as an ordinary user with appropriate privileges.
You should read the document named README.instsvc.txt first. If you have a zip kit, you will find it in the /doc directory of the zipfile's root. If you don't have a zip kit available, the file won't be available until after the installation. You can read the same document at this URL: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/firebird/firebird2/doc/README.instsvc
Note that now the recommended extension for database files on Windows ME and XP is ".fdb" to avoid possible conflicts with "System Restore" feature of Windows. Failure to address this issue on these platforms will give rise to the known problem of delay on first connection to a database whose primary file and/or secondary files are named using the conventional ".gdb" extension.
The issue is described in more detail in Other Win32 Issues at the end of the Windows installation notes.
One of the design goals of Firebird 1.5 is to prepare the way for multiple installs of the server. This will allow users to run different versions side by side. Firebird 1.5 does support this, although it is not well documented and very much requires intervention from a skilled user. Future versions of Firebird will make this process far less complicated. In the meantime Firebird 1.5 needs to prepare the ground. This forces us to confront the issue of library installation.
At the same time, Microsoft have taken their own steps to manage installation of different library versions. Taken together these two separate issues mean a new approach to library installation for Firebird 1.5 and beyond.
The problems associated with installing different versions of Microsoft system libraries are so notorious that it has acquired the name 'DLL Hell'. From the release of Windows 2000 onwards Microsoft have made it almost impossible to upgrade system dll's. To resolve this Microsoft now recommends that each application installs local copies of any system libraries that are required.
Firebird 1.5 follows this practice and places the required libraries in the \bin directory along with the server.
Firebird 1.5 and beyond no longer use gds32.dll as the client library. It is now called fbclient.dll. Given the problems that Microsoft have had with DLL hell it wouldn't make much sense if we continued to store the Firebird client library in the system directory. And as we want to allow installation of multiple engines simultaneously we would be creating our own DLL hell if we continued the practice of using the system directory for the client library.
So, from Firebird 1.5 on, the client library resides in the \bin directory along with all the other binaries.
A new registry key has been added and all Firebird 1.5 compliant applications should use this key if they need to read a Registry key to locate the correct version of Firebird that they wish to use. The new key is:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Firebird Project\Firebird Server\Instances
Firebird will guarantee that one entry under this key always exists. It will be known as
"DefaultInstance"
and will store the path to the root directory of (yes, you've guessed it) the default installation. Those that don't care about particular installations can always use the default instance to locate the fbclient.dll.
Future versions of Firebird will see other entries under Instances. Applications will be able to enumerate the registry entries to determine which library instance they wish to load.
Traditionally, applications that use InterBase or Firebird have expected to load the gds32.dll client library from the system directory. Firebird 1.5 ships a tool named 'instclient.exe' that can install a clone of fbclient.dll to the Windows System directory. This clone gets patched on the fly so that its file version information begins with "6.3", to provide compatibility for old applications that check the GDS32.DLL file version and can not make sense of a number string such as "1.5".
During the installation process the installer checks to see if an installation of InterBase or Firebird exists. If nothing is installed it will write gds32.dll into the system directory. If it detects that any possible version of Firebird or InterBase may already be installed it will not install the gds32.dll in the system directory. However, the 'instclient.exe' tool can be used to do it later.
It is intended that future versions of Firebird will not attempt to install gds32.dll into the system directory and ultimately it will be completely removed from the distribution.
This 'instclient.exe' tool can also install the FBCLIENT.DLL itself in the Windows system directory, if required. This will take care of tools or applications that need to load it from there.
The instclient.exe utility should be located in the 'bin' directory of your Firebird installation and must be run from there in a command shell.
Usage of instclient.exe:
instclient i[nstall] [ -f[orce] ] library
q[uery] library
r[emove] library
where library is: fbclient | gds32
'-z' can be used with any other option, prints version.
Version information and shared library counts are handled automatically. You may provide
the -f[orce] option to override version checks.
If you -f[orce] the installation, it could break another Firebird or
InterBase® version already installed. You might have to reboot the machine in order to finalize the
copy.
For more details, see the document README.Win32LibraryInstallation.txt which is located in either the root of your installation path or in ..\doc.
This is the easy one.
Just run the executable and respond to the dialogs. After you have answered about four dialogs, you should see one with a drop-down list box which--when dropped down--looks similar to this. This really is the last chance you'll have to choose the installation you want:
 |
Choose the installation you want and hit "Next" to carry on responding to dialogs.
If you select to install Superserver or Classic, and your OS version supports services, you will be asked to choose whether to run Firebird as a service or as an application. Unless you have a compelling need to run the server as an application, choose service.
With automatic option, Firebird will start up whenever you boot the host machine. With the manual option you can start the server on demand.
Guardian is a utility than can run "over the top" of Superserver and restart it if it crashes for any reason. For development, you might choose not to use it. For deployment, it can avoid the situation where the server stops serving and nobody can find the DBA to restart it.
If you decide not to use the default root location, browse to a location you have pre-created; or just type in a full path. The path you type in doesn't have to exist: the installer will prompt you and create it if it doesn't exist.
Eventually, the dialogs will stop and the server will either silently start the server or prompt you for permission to reboot. Reboot will be needed if the installer overwrote your msvcp60.dll, or an old gds32.dll was already loaded when the installer started up.
The Firebird uninstall routine (run from Add/Remove Programs in the Control Panel) preserves and renames the following key files:
preserves security.gdb or renames it to security.fbnnnn
preserves firebird.log
preserves firebird.conf or renames it to firebird.confnnnn
preserves aliases.conf or renames it to aliases.confnnnn
"nnnn" is the build number of the old installation.
No attempt is made to uninstall files that were not part of the original installation.
Shared files such as fbclient.dll and gds32.dll will be deleted if the share count indicates that no other application is using them.
The Registry keys that were created will be removed.
The installation of FB 1.5 is similiar in principle to previous versions. If you don't have a special setup program (it's distributed separately) the steps are the following:
unzip the archive into the separate directory (since a few file names were changed, it doesn't make sense to unzip v1.5 files into the directory with IB/FB1)
change the current directory to $FIREBIRD\bin (here and below $FIREBIRD is the directory where v1.5 files are located)
run instreg.exe:
instreg.exe install
It causes the installation path of the directory above to be written into the registry (HKLM\Software\Firebird Project\Firebird Server\Instances\DefaultInstance)
if you want to register a service, also run instsvc.exe:
instsvc.exe install
optionally, you may need to copy both fbclient.dll and gds32.dll to the OS system directory
To install the CS engine, the only difference is the additional switch for instsvc.exe:
instsvc.exe install -classic
Notice that this means that you may have only one architecture of the engine--either fbserver.exe (Superserver) or fb_inet_server.exe (the parent process for Classic)--installed as a service.
The Control Panel applet is not installed with Classic--deliberately. Don't try to install and use it. The concept of terminating a service does not apply to the Classic model.
If you don't need a registered service, then you may avoid running both instreg.exe and instsvc.exe. In this case you should just unzip the archive into a separate directory and run the server:
fbserver.exe -a
It should treat its parent directory as the root directory in this case.
The embedded server is a client with a fully functional server linked as a dynamic library (fbembed.dll). It has exactly the same features as the usual Superserver and exports the standard Firebird API entry points.
The Registry entries for Firebird (where the server normally looks for the location of the root directory) are ignored. The root directory of the embedded server is the directory above where its binary file (library) is located.
Only "true local" access is allowed. The embedded server has no support for remote
protocols, so even access via localhost won't work.
The security database (security.fdb) is not used in the embedded server and hence is not required. Any user is able to attach to any database. Since both the server and the client run in the same (local) address space, security becomes a question of physical access.
SQL privileges are checked, as in other server models.
You may run any number of applications with the embedded server without any conflicts. Having a full Firebird or InterBase® server running is not a problem either.
But you should be aware that you cannot access the same database from multiple embedded servers simultaneously, because they have SuperServer architecture and hence exclusively lock attached databases.
Just copy fbembed.dll into the directory where your application resides. Then rename it to either fbclient.dll or gds32.dll, depending on your database connectivity software. Make copies having both names if you will need to use the server tools (isql, gbak, etc.)
You should also copy firebird.msg, firebird.conf (if necessary) and ib_util.dll to the same directory.
If external libraries, are required for your application, e.g. INTL support (fbintl.dll) or UDF libraries, they should be located apart from the application directory. To be able to use them, place them into a directory tree which emulates the Firebird server one, i.e., in subdirectories named /intl and /udf directly beneath the directory where the Firebird root files are.
Don't overlook the need to have the Microsoft® Visual C and Visual C++ runtimes (msvcrt.dll and msvcpp60.dll, respectively) present in the system directory.
Example
D:\my_app\app.exe
D:\my_app\gds32.dll (renamed fbembed.dll)
D:\my_app\fbclient.dll (renamed fbembed.dll)
D:\my_app\firebird.conf
D:\my_app\aliases.conf
D:\my_app\isql.exe
D:\my_app\ib_util.dll
D:\my_app\gbak.exe
D:\my_app\firebird.msg
D:\my_app\intl\fbintl.dll
D:\my_app\udf\fbudf.dll
Then, start your application. It will use the embedded server as a client library and will be able to access local databases.
Provided you set up the directory structure according to these rules, it will not be necessary to
configure the RootDirectory explicitly in firebird.conf. However, if you decide to deploy the embedded
server and your application in some different directory structure, be sure to read the document
README_embedded.txt of the Embedded Server distribution first, for instructions about
additional configuration.
Firebird requires WinSock2. All Win32 platforms should have this, except for Win95. A test for the Winsock2 library is made during install. If it is not found the install will fail. To find out how to go about upgrading, visit this link.
Windows ME and XP (Home and Professional editions) there is a feature called System Restore, that causes auto-updating (backup caching?) of all files on the system having a ".gdb" suffix. The effect is to slow down InterBase/Firebird database access to a virtual standstill as the files are backed up every time an I/O operation occurs. (On XP there is no System Restore on the .NET Servers).
A file in the Windows directory of ME, c:\windows\system\filelist.xml, contains "protected file types". ".gdb" is named there. Charlie Caro originally recommended deleting the GDB extension from the "includes" section of this file. However, since then, it has been demonstrated that WinME might be rebuilding this list. In XP, it is not possible to edit filelist.xml at all.
On ME, the permanent workarounds suggested are one of:
use FDB (Firebird DB) as the extension for your primary database files--RECOMMENDED
move databases to C:\My Documents, which is ignored by System Restore
switch off System Restore entirely (consult Windows doc for instructions).
On Windows XP Home and Professional editions you can move your databases to a separate partition and set System Restore to exclude that volume.
Windows XP uses smart copy, so the overhead seen in Windows ME may be less of an issue on XP, for smaller files at least. For larger files (e.g. Firebird database files, natch!) there doesn't seem to be a better answer as long as you have ".gdb" files located in the general filesystem.
Windows XP shutdown behaviour is a known "dark area". There is a significantly long pause while the server service stops. During that time the display indicates that Firebird is running as an application.
The problem only seems to affect Windows XP and it only appears if the Guardian is not being used to stop the server service. That is the workaround until a fix can be found.
The Firebird server comes in two forms, Classic, which runs as a service, and SuperServer, which runs as a background daemon. Classic is the more traditional UNIX service, while Superserver uses threads, rather than processes. For the user just starting out with Firebird, either will do, although the Classic server is likely to prove a better platform for initially experimenting with Firebird.
You will need to be root user to install Firebird.
Installation on Linuxen requires a glibc package installed that is equal to or greater than glibc-2.2.5 and a libstdc++.so equal to or greater than libstdc++-5.0.
For a rough evaluation of compatible Linuxen, refer to the section Linux Compatibilities, but don't take it as the "last word". Linux binary distros out-of-the-box can vary depending on where and when they were built.
Ensure that the 'ed' and 'vim' editor packages are installed on your system. If the required editor is not present, the package will install but the installation scripts will fail.
This dependency may in future be replaced by 'sed'.
The following instructions describe the Classic installation. For installation of Superserver
the "CS" in the package name is repaced by "SS". For example, the package
FirebirdCS-1.5.0-nnnn.i686.rpm is replaced
by FirebirdSS-1.5.0-nnnn.i686.rpm.
Log in as root, or open a root shell. In the example filenames below, replacy nnnn with the build number of the kit you actually have.
To install the tarball, place the ".tar.gz" file and type:
$tar -xzf FirebirdCS-1.5.0-nnnn.tar.gz
$cd FirebirdCS-1.5.0-nnnn.i686
$./install.sh
What the Linux install scripts will do
The Linux install scripts will
Attempt to stop any currently running server
Add the user 'firebird' and the group 'firebird' if they do not already exist.
Install the software into the directory /opt/firebird and create links for libraries in /usr/lib and header files in /usr/include
Automatically add gds_db for port 3050 to /etc/services if the entry does not already exist
Automatically add localhost.localdomain and HOSTNAME to /etc/hosts.equiv
SuperServer only installs a /etc/rc.d/init.d/firebird server start script.
Classic server installs a /etc/xinetd.d/firebird start script or, for older inetd systems, adds an entry to the /etc/inetd file
Specific to SuSE, a new rcfirebird link is created in /usr/bin for the init.d script and an /etc/rc.config Firebird entry is created.
Starts the server/service. Firebird should start automatically in runlevel 2, 3 or 5
Generates and sets a new random SYSDBA password and stores it in the file /opt/firebird/SYSDBA.password.
Adds an entry to aliases.conf for the sample database, employee.fdb.
In a shell:
$cd /opt/firebird/bin
$./isql -user sysdba -password <password>1
SQL>connect localhost:employee.fdb /* this is an aliased path */
SQL>select * from sales;
SQL>select rdb$relation_name from rdb$relations;
SQL>help;
SQL>quit;
1A password has been generated for you on installation. It can be obtained from the /opt/firebird/SYSDBA.password file, located in the Firebird root directory.
From version 1.5 onward, the Firebird server runs by default as the user 'firebird'. While this has always been the recommended configuration, the previous default was for the server to run as 'root' user. When running as root user, the server had quite wide-ranging ability to read, create and delete database files anywhere on the POSIX filesystem.
For security reasons, the service should have a more limited ability to read/delete and create files.
While the new configuration is better from a security perspective, it requires some special considerations to be taken into account for creating new databases:
the user 'firebird' has to have write permission to the directory in which you want to create the database.
the recommended value of the DatabaseAccess attribute in the /opt/firebird/firebird.conf file should be set to None, to permit access only through entries in the aliases.conf file.
use entries in aliases.conf to abstract users from the physical locations of databases. More notes on aliases are to be found in the topic Database File Aliasing.
Procedures for creating a new database can vary with different configurations but the following configuration and steps are recommended:
If a directory that is owned by the user 'firebird' does not exist, then change to root user and create the directory:
$su - root
$mkdir -p /var/firebird
$chown firebird:firebird /var/firebird
Create a new physical database and set up an alias entry to point to it. As root or firebird user, run the following script:
$cd /opt/firebird/bin
$./createAliasDB.sh test.fdb /var/firebird/test.fdb
(Usage is: createAliasDB.sh <dbname> <pathtodb>)
As an alternative (for step 2) the steps in the createAliasDB.sh script can be performed manually by:
$vi /opt/firebird/aliases.conf
and add the line at the end of the file:
test.fdb /var/firebird/test.fdb
Then create the database:
$/opt/firebird/bin/isql -u sysdba -p <password>
SQL>create database 'localhost:test.fdb';
SQL>quit;
If the DatabaseAccess value in /opt/firebird/firebird.conf is set to Full or a restricted path value (for example: DatabaseAccess=/var/firebird) another alternative to step 2 is to create the physical database file directly, using the absolute path with the filename:
$/opt/firebird/bin/isql -u sysdba -p <password>
SQL>create database '/var/firebird/test.fdb';
SQL>quit;
If you use this configuration, the database file can also be directly accessed without an entry in the aliases file:
$/opt/firebird/bin/isql -u sysdba -p <password>
SQL>connect '/var/firebird/test.fdb';
SQL>quit;
In addition to the standard install files the following scripts are provided in the bin directory of this release.-
changeDBAPassword.shChange the Firebird SYSDBA user password. For Superserver, this script will change the init script /etc/rc.d/init.d/firebird to use the new password as well.
createAliasDB.shUsage: createAliasDB.sh <dbname> <dbpath>
This script creates a new physical database and adds an entry in the aliases.conf file.
fb_configA script that can be used in makefiles to generate the required include paths and lib include
directives for the installed version of Firebird. fb_config -help will give a
complete list of options.
changeGdsLibraryCompatibleLink.shClassic only-Change the client library link for libgds.so between the multithreaded libfbclient.so and the single threaded libfbembed.so library that allows an embedded direct open of the db file. For compatibility with previous installs, libgds.so by default points to libfbembed.so.
The Classic install offers an "embedded" mode of access that allows programs to open database files directly. To operate in this mode, a database-enabled user requires privileged access to some of the Firebird configuration and status files.
Now that it is the 'firebird' user (not root) that is the default user to run the software, you need to know how to get a user into the firebird group to enable direct access to databases. It is documented in the readme notes, but the following steps should get you where you need to be.
To add a user (e.g. skywalker) to the firebird group, the root user needs to do:
$ usermod -G firebird skywalker
Next time 'skywalker' logs on, he can start working with firebird databases.
To list the groups that a user belongs to, type the following at the command line:
$ groups
The new NPTL (Native POSIX Thread Library) in Red Hat 9 (so far) will cause problems for SuperServer and locally compiled programs, including the utilities. Gbak, particularly, will throw a Broken Pipe error. To fix.-
In /etc/init.d/firebird
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
export LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
That takes care of the server instance.
You need to have the LD_ASSUME_KERNEL environment variable set up within
the local environment as well, so add the following to /etc/profile, to ensure every user picks it
up for the command line utilities.
after
HISTSIZE=1000
add
LD_ASSUME_KERNEL=2.2.5
On the following line, export it (this is all in one line):
export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME
HISTSIZE INPUT_RC LD_ASSUME_KERNEL
If you need to uninstall, do it as root user. The following examples use Classic server but the same holds true for SuperServer by replacing the CS with SS.
Install Firebird Classic & SuperServer on Solaris 2.7 Sparc, not currently available. Please refer to v.1 releasenotes as a reference to 1.5 installations.
Install Firebird Classic on MacOS X / Darwin, not currently available. Please refer to v.1 releasenotes as a reference to 1.5 installations.
Not currently available. Please refer to v.1 releasenotes as a reference to 1.5 installations.
Table of Contents
By default a Firebird server listens on port 3050 for connection requests from clients. Its registered port service name is gds_db. The good news is that, if you can go with these defaults, you have to do nothing on either server or clients to configure the port service.
You can use a different port, a different port service name, or both. You might need to do this if port 3050 is required for another service, for example, a concurrently running gds_db configured for a different version of Firebird or for an InterBase® server.
There are several ways to override the defaults. Both the server and the clients must be configured to override the port service name or number, or both, in at least one of these ways:
in the client connection string
in the command used to start the server executable
by activating the RemoteServicePort or RemoteServiceName parameters in firebird.conf (V.1.5 onward)
in the daemon configuration (for Classic on POSIX)
by an entry in the Services file
Before examining each of these techniques, it will helpful to look at the logic used by the server to set the listening port and by the client to set the port that it should poll for requests.
The server executable has an optional command-line switch (-p) by which it can signify either the port number it will be listening on or the name of the port service that will be listening. At this point, if the switch is present, either port number 3050 or the port service name (gds_db) is replaced by the argument supplied with the -p switch.
Next--or first, if there is no -p switch--a v.1.5 server checks firebird.conf to look at the parameters RemoteServiceName and RemoteServicePort:
If both are commented with "#" then the defaults are assumed and no further change occurs. Any -p argument stands and the "missing" argument remains as the default.
If RemoteServiceName has been uncommented, but not RemoteServicePort, then the port service name is substituted only if it has not been overridden already by the -p switch.
If RemoteServicePort has been uncommented, but not RemoteServiceName, then the port number is substituted only if it has not been overridden already by the -p switch.
If both RemoteServicePort and RemoteServiceName are uncommented, then the RemoteServiceName takes precedence if it has not already been overridden by a -p argument. If there is already a port service name override, the RemoteServiceName value is ignored and the RemoteServicePort value overrides 3050.
At this point, if an override of either the port number or the service name has been signaled, both v.1.0 and v.1.5 servers proceed to check the Services file for an entry with the correct combination of service name and port number. If a match is found, all is well. If not, and the port service name is not gds_db, the server will throw an exception and fail to start. If gds_db is the port service name and it cannot be resolved to any other port, it will map to port 3050 automatically.
If the default service name is to be overridden, then you will need to make an entry in the Services file--see the topic below, Configuring the Services File.
Please note that this switch is available in Firebird 1.0.x, too, but was previously undocumented.
Starting the server with the optional -p switch enables you to override either the default port number (3050) or the default port service name (gds_db) that the server uses to listen for connection requests. The switch can override one, but not both.
From Firebird 1.5 onward, you can use the -p switch in combination with a configuration in firebird.conf to enable an override to both the port number and the port service name.
The command-line syntax for starting a server that applications are going to access through TCP/IP is as follows:
server-command <other switches> -p port-number | service-name
For example, to start the Superserver as an application and override the service name gds_db with fb_db:
fbserver -a -p fb_db
Or, to override port 3050 to 3051:
fbserver -a -p 3051
With Firebird Classic server on Linux or UNIX, the inetd or xinetd daemon is configured to listen on the default port and broadcast the default service name. The installation script will write the appropriate entry in the configuration file /etc/inetd.conf or /etc/xinetd.conf.
You can edit the current configuration if necessary. Following is an example of what you should see in xinetd.conf or inetd.conf after installing Firebird Classic on Linux:
# default: on
# description: FirebirdSQL server
#
service gds_db
{
flags = REUSE KEEPALIVE
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
# user = @FBRunUser@
log_on_success += USERID
log_on_failure += USERID
server = /opt/firebird/bin/fb_inet_server
disable = no
}
If you configured the port service to be different to the defaults, you will need to alter xinetd.conf or inetd.conf accordingly. Restart xinetd (or inetd) with kill -HUP to make sure the daemon will use the new configuration.
Connection requests will fail if both xinetd (or inetd) and fbserver (or ibserver) attempt to listen on the same port. If your host machine has this double configuration, it will be necessary to set things up so that each server version has its own service port.
You can configure either RemoteServiceName or RemoteServicePort in firebird.conf to override either the default port number (3050) or the default port service name (gds_db) that the server uses to listen for connection requests.
The engine will use one RemoteService* parameter, but not both. If you configure both, it will ignore RemoteServicePort in all cases, except where the server start command was invoked with the -p switch supplying an override to the port service name. Thus, you can use the -p switch and a RemoteService* parameter, in combination, to override both port number and service name.
If the default service name is to be overridden, then you need to make an entry in the Services file.
GOTCHA! If you uncomment RemoteServiceName or RemoteServicePort, but leave the default values intact, they will be treated as overrides. It will then be necessary to make an explicit entry in the services file for the default port service settings.
If you set up your server with the installation defaults (service gds_db listening on port 3050) then no configuration is required. If the server is listening on a different port or is using a different port service name, the client application and/or its host machine need some enabling configuration to help the Firebird client library to find the listening port.
The connection string used by a client can include information for polling the server's listening port in various ways. Firebird 1.5 clients can optionally use a local copy of firebird.conf. Changes may also be needed in the client's services file.
If only the port number or the service name has been reconfigured, then include the alternative port number or service name in the connection string. This works for all versions of Firebird.
To connect to a database named server named alice that is broadcasting on port 3050 with the service name fb_db, the connection string would be:
For POSIX:
alice/fb_db:/data/teaparty.fdb
Or, if the service name is gds_db and the port number is 3051:
alice/3051:/data/teaparty.fdb
For Windows:
alice/fb_db:D:\data\teaparty.fdb
Or, if the service name is gds_db and the port number is 3051:
alice/3051:D:\data\teaparty.fdb
Notice that the separator between the server name and the port is a slash, not a colon. The colon before the physical path string is still required.
On a WNet network, use UNC-style notation:
\\alice@3051\d:\teaparty.fdb
or
\\alice@fb_db\d:\teaparty.fdb
If the server's configured port number or service name is an override, then you need to make an entry in the Services file.
To connect through a non-default port with a database alias, affix the port number or service name to the server name, not to the alias. For example, suppose the database alias is stored in aliases.conf as
rabbit = /data/teaparty.fdb
Your application's connection string for server 'alice' would be:
alice/fb_db:rabbit
or
alice/3051:rabbit
From Firebird 1.5 onward, you can optionally include a client-side copy of firebird.conf in the firebird root directory and configure RemoteServiceName or RemoteServicePort to help the client to locate the server port.
You can configure one of these two parameters to extend the override provided for the other one through the connection string (above); or to override only the RemoteServiceName or the RemoteServicePort without using the connection string to do it.
If you need to avoid passing the port service name or the port number in the connection string and the server is using non-defaults for both, you can configure both RemoteServiceName and RemoteServicePort. You would use this technique if your client application needed to retain the capability to connect to InterBase or Firebird 1.0 servers.
When you rely on firebird.conf on client machines, it is important that the client library knows where to find it. You will need to set up a Firebird root directory and inform the system of its location. Use the FIREBIRD environment variable to do this. Windows clients can alternatively use the Firebird Registry key. With a correct client setup, you can also make use of a local version of the message file.
You do not need to configure a service port entry for your Firebird server or clients if the server uses the installation defaults, gds_db on port 3050. If gds_db is the port service name and it cannot be resolved to any other port, it will map to port 3050 automatically.
If you are configuring the service port for a different port or service name, both the server and the client must be explicitly updated to reflect the reconfiguration. On both Linux and Windows, this information is stored in the services file.
C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\services
C:\winnt\system32\drivers\etc\services
C:\windows\services
/etc/services
A services entry looks like this:
gds_db 3050/tcp # Firebird Server 1.5
Open the file using a text editor and either add a line or edit the existing gds_db entry, as follows:
for a Firebird 1.0.x server or client, alter either the service name or the port number to reflect how your server will start up.
for a Firebird 1.5 or higher server, edit or add a line, as required. If you have a Firebird 1.0 or InterBase server installed on the same host, retain the entries they require and add a new entry reflecting how the Firebird 1.5 server will start up.
Table of Contents
More information can be found about the Firebird database engine from the Firebird Project website.
If you are interested in being involved in Firebird development, or would like to raise a possible bug for
discussion, please feel welcome to join our Firebird-Devel list. To subscribe, simply send an empty email
message to: <[email protected]?subject=subscribe>.
Please do not use the firebird-devel list for posting support questions, except if your question happens to be about building Firebird from sources.
The core developers (amongst others!) also hang out in the Firebird-Architect list. This is also a non- support list, where architectural features and changes are discussed, often with great vehemence. See the next section for list subscription information.
For technical support, please join the firebird-support list by going to the Lists and Newsgroups index page at the Firebird website and clicking on the link to join the Firebird-support list. The Firebird-support list handles technical problems with Firebird and also InterBase®.
At the Lists and Newsgroups index page you will find links to all of the more specialised lists as well: Firebird-Java for Jaybird support, Firebird-NET-Provider, Firebird-ODBC-devel, Firebird-PHP, Firebird-Python, etc., as well as lists for the various Delphi interface components.
The open source community operates several other discussion lists on various aspects of Firebird development. For details, please refer to the Lists and Newsgroups index page.
The Firebird developers' list and the general community lists, along with some other lists of interest to Firebird and InterBase developers, are mirrored as newsgroups at the news. atkin.com news server. For historical reasons, some of them have weird names, e.g. "egroups.ib- support" is the mirror for the firebird-support list.
If you want to post messages from a news mirror to the list, you must be subscribed to that list.
Paid support worldwide for Firebird can be arranged through IBPhoenix. Contact addresses and numbers are at the IBPhoenix site.
Database recovery services for Firebird or InterBase databases can be handled by IBPhoenix. For analyzing and possibly repairing corrupted databases yourself, try IBSurgeon.com. The IBSurgeon team also provides recovery services.
Requests/offers for sponsored enhancements to Firebird can be taken directly to the
Firebird Foundation Inc.,
a non-profit organisation of Firebird community members that manages sponsorship and donor funding for the Firebird
Project. Send an email to <[email protected]>.
You may prefer to contact the Firebird project admins initially - send an email
to <[email protected]>.
Following is a selection of third-party products, both open source and commercial, that are available and used widely by Firebird developers.
Several excellent choices of GUI admin desktops for Firebird are listed in the Contributed Downloads page at the IBPhoenix site. Some are open source, some are freeware, others are established commercial products.
Borland's IBConsole program is not recommended as a database administration client for Firebird 1.5.
The Jaybird JDBC driver project develops actively as part of the Firebird project. It has a released Type 4 JDBC/JCA driver and a Type 2 driver in beta. Sources and binaries can be downloaded from the Firebird release pages at Sourceforge.
For advice and to participate in development and testing, join up with the Firebird-java forum on Yahoogroups.
Firebird has an ongoing .NET driver project. Sources and binaries can be downloaded from the Firebird release pages at Sourceforge.
For advice and to participate in development and testing, join up with the Firebird .NET provider forum at Sourceforge.
Users have two powerful alternatives for full, direct connectivity with the Firebird 1.5 API, both well supported with developer and peer support:
Jason Wharton's IB Objects at http://www.ibobjects.com
FIBPLus at http://www.devrace.com
the freeware C++ access library 'IBPP' (http://www.ibpp.org), MPL license, hosted on sourceforge.net, fully portable between Win32 and Linux and probably other POSIX platforms. It is useful when you want low-level C-API kind of access, but with a light C++ abstraction level not bound to any particular development environment.
A list of ODBC drivers can be found listed in the Contributed Downloads page at the IBPhoenix site. Lab for ongoing development of the open source Firebird/IBPhoenix ODBC/JDBC driver is in this forum: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/firebird-odbc-devel
A group is continually working on bringing the old InterBase PHP extension up to standard for Firebird. To ask about this project, join up with the Firebird-PHP forum at http://www.yahoogroups.com/community/firebird-php
KInterbasDB is a Python extension package that implements Python Database API 2.0-compliant support for Firebird. Full native API support for the Firebird client; in stable release and under active development. BSD open source licence. Downloads and news at http://kinterbasdb.sourceforge.net/
The documentation for InterBase v 6.0 applies also to the current FireBird release. A beta version of InterBase(tm) 6 manuals is available in Adobe Acrobat format from various sources on the web. They used to be available from the Borland archives but the links have been removed. The easiest way to find a download site is to Google search for "opguide.pdf". That is the name of just one of the six manuals but, where you find one, you will generally find them all.
RELEASE NOTES (such as this document) provide the incremental documentation for the Firebird releases and sub-releases. It is important to keep them on hand as the supplement to the old InterBase® beta manuals.
A structured Documentation Index is
maintained on the Firebird community site. This is work-in-progress and all additions are welcome - send a
message to <[email protected]>
Several installation guidelines and other HowTos may be found in the documentation area which can be linked to from the Resources menu at the top of the main Firebird website pages. Keep watching these links as documentation is continually under development.
The authoritative bookshop title for Firebird, in English, is "The Firebird Book: A Reference for Database Developers" by Helen Borrie (publ. Apress, August 2004, ISBN 1590592794). It is easily obtainable from bookstores, from IBPhoenix and from a large number of web-based book outlets including Amazon.
The main repository for documentation and white paperss on user and technical issues is the IBPhoenix site. IB Phoenix also publishes a comprehensive subscription CD on a regular basis (single issues also available) which contains manuals published by them - Using Firebird and The Firebird Reference Guide.
Some additional documentation may be discovered by visiting the Borland techpubs area.
Table of Contents
The figure in brackets, e.g. (1.5) indicates the first release or sub-release in which the described improvement or bug-fix was distributed.
By O. Mascia
(1.5) Enhanced Win32 install tools instsvc.exe and instreg.exe
By A. Harrison, ported to 1.5 by N.Samofatov
(1.5) Maximum number of indices per table increased from 64 to (DB_PAGE_SIZE/16)-2
By D. Yemanov, A. Brinkman, A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Added new (more specific) error messages for some of v1.5 changes.
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Added -login switch to instsvc allowing FB service to be installed as non-localsystem account.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Re-introduced trimming of VARCHAR fields in the remote protocols.
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Made path management in firebird.conf conform to the OS requirements.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Allow easy adjustment of LockSemCount on POSIX platforms, without need to use gds_drop or reboot machine to make new setting take effect
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Make FIRST/SKIP keywords non-reserved.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) BREAK/LEAVE and EXIT statements are now available for usage in triggers.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Enabled aggregate functions from different parent context to be used inside another aggregate function.
Example:
SELECT MAX((SELECT COUNT(*) FROM RDB$RELATIONS))
FROM RDB$RELATIONS
By N. Samofatov, D. Yemanov
(1.5) Make UPPER function work for WIN1251 charset without explicit collations.
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Now the server will exit from encountering a missing or wrong firebird.conf by sending an error report to the system log.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Changed parser.-
ROWS_AFFECTED is renamed to ROW_COUNT
CONNECTION_ID/TRANSACTION_ID are renamed to CURRENT_CONNECTION/CURRENT_TRANSACTION
Some of the newly introduced tokens are made non-reserved
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Deadlocks are now detected and reported as soon all blocking processes received notifications, i.e. instantly in all normal cases.
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Implemented configurable access for databases, external tables and UDF libraries.
By D. Yemanov, N. Samofatov
(1.5) Allow NULLs in unique constraints and indices (SQL-99 spec).
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) VIO undo log now uses B+ tree to store savepoint record data. It improves performance when doing multiple updates of record in a single transaction just a little (usually 2-3 orders of magnitude for 100000 records).
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Now it's possible to return values from the dynamic SQL using the INTO <variables> syntax.
Syntax:
EXECUTE STATEMENT <value> INTO <var_list>; (singleton form)
or
FOR EXECUTE STATEMENT <value>
INTO <var_list>
DO <stmt_list>;
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Subselects in SET clause of UPDATE now can use indices.
(1.5)When an equal-node and other nodes (geq, leq, between...) are available for an index retrieval, then prefer the equal node.
(1.5) Better optimizations of "complex" JOIN queries (LEFT JOIN, views, SPs, etc).
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) List of currently active transactions is now available via isc_database_info call.
By Mike Nordell
(1.5) Implemented shortcut boolean evaluation. Behaviour is controlled by "CompleteBooleanEvaluation" option of firebird.conf. Default is 0 (shortcut evaluation).
By Mike Nordell
(1.5) Speed-up for index operations on IA32 CPU architecture.
By Blas Rodriguez Somoza, Erik Kunze
(1.5) Removed a lot of unused code.
By Blas Rodriguez Somoza
(1.5) Changed behaviour of the forced writes mode: now, if FW=off (disabled), you can control how often dirty pages are flushed on disk (allows better reliability when FW is disabled on Win32 platforms).
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) The security database has been renamed to security.fdb and this version of Firebird has a new configuration file (firebird.conf).
By Juan Guerrero
(1.5) New user-defined functions LPAD and RPAD added to IB_UDF library.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Connection to the security database is now cached, thus allowing to decrease time of subsequent database attachments.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) 1. Reduce memory usage by the server.
(1.5) 2. Direct external I/O when the memory is not available for the sorting.
(1.5) 3. Increased number of streams and predicates supported by the optimizer.
By Blas Rodriguez Somoza
(1.5) New character sets: DOS737, DOS775, DOS858, DOS862, DOS864, DOS866, DOS869, WIN1255, WIN1256, WIN1257, ISO8859_3, ISO8859_4, ISO8859_5, ISO8859_6, ISO8859_7, ISO8859_8, ISO8859_9, ISO8859_13. No collations are available yet for these charsets.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Disallowed PLAN subclause.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Introduced backwards compatibility within aggregates. Deepest field inside aggregate determines where an aggregate-context should belong.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) IB7-compliant functions to return version of the client library--isc_get_client_version(), isc_get_client_major_version(), isc_get_client_minor_version()
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Merging (SORT MERGE plans) is now done via in-memory sorting module.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) New memory manager's internals have been changed to give us better performance.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Changes.-
Changed names of USER32 objects to allow the server to run simultaneously with IB/FB1.
Map name for local (IPC) protocol is changed, so v1.5 client library is no longer compatible with the previous versions via IPC.
All transport protocol names (INET port and service, WNET pipe, IPC map) are now configurable via firebird.conf.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Added runtime action checks (INSERTING/UPDATING/DELETING predicates).
Example
if (INSERTING) then
new.OPER_TYPE = 'I';
else
new.OPER_TYPE = 'U';
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Allowed arbitrary expressions in the ORDER BY clause.
By A. Peshkoff, N. Samofatov
(1.5) Cleaned up structures within Y-valve.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Single-line comments (--) are now allowed in any position of the SQL statement.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Changes --
Implemented ORDER BY clause in subqueries.
Disallowed FIRST/SKIP for views.
Allowed zero as valid argument for FIRST.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Improvement: let subqueries also use indices when their parent is a stored procedure.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Removed request size limitation.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Nulls first/last options for indexes.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Collation handling in "order by" clause of unions.
By Erik Kunze, Ignacio J. Ortega, D. Sibiryakov
(1.5) Renamings, new safe macros, support for mingw.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Explicit record locking implementation finalized. Should be stable and consistent now.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Improvement: better handling of AND nodes inside an OR node.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) If a few indices with much different selectivity could be used for index retrieval, only better of them are used while others are ignored.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) CS architecture is now supported on Win32, but it still cannot be considered stable, so any feedback is welcome.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Stored procedures are no longer recompiled before deletion.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New collation for WIN1251 charset: WIN1251_UA for both Ukrainian and Russian languages.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) API routines are no longer exported by ordinals.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Enable the same plain file based configuration for all supported platforms.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Added better support for using indices with "OR". Pick the best available compound index from all "AND" nodes.
Added support for detecting use of index with sub-selects in aggregate select.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Added support for explicit savepoint management in DSQL.
By Sean Leyne
(1.5) IPX/SPX network protocol is no longer supported.
By Sean Leyne
(1.5) Some platform are no longer supported by the current source code. DELTA, IMP, DG_X86, M88K, UNIXWARE, Ultrix, NeXT, ALPHA_NT, DGUX, MPE/XL, DecOSF, SGI, HP700, Netware, MSDOS, SUN3_3.
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) : now the server should be more responsive under heavy load.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Added support for explicit locking. Wait behavior in isc_tpb_wait transaction modes is not stable yet.
Syntax
SELECT <...>
[FOR UPDATE [OF col [, col ...]]
[WITH LOCK]]
By Erik Kunze
(1.5) ISC_STATUS_LENGTH and MAXPATHLEN macros.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) PSQL: enabled support for empty BEGIN...END blocks.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Implemented execute procedure and string concat, allowing any expression to be used as a SP parameter.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Aggregate concatenated empty char.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New ROWS_AFFECTED system variable in PSQL: return number of rows affected by the last INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE statement. For any other statement than INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE, result is always zero.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Dynamic exception messages: allow to throw an exception with a message different to the one the exception was created with.
Syntax
EXCEPTION name [value];
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New SQLCODE and GDSCODE system variables providing access to the code of the caught error within the WHEN-block in PSQL. Outside WHEN-block, returns 0 (success).
Exception re-initiate semantics: allows an already caught exception in PSQL to be re-thrown from the WHEN-block.
Syntax
EXCEPTION;
No effect outside WHEN-block.
By N. Samofatov
(1.5) Allow user-defined ordering of NULLs.
(1.5) SOFTWARE\FirebirdSQL\Firebird
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) User-defined constraint index names: allows name of an index enforcing a constraint to be either the same as the constraint name or any user-defined name.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New RECREATE VIEW statement, shorthand for DROP VIEW / CREATE VIEW coupling of statements.
Syntax
RECREATE VIEW name <view_definition>;
By various authors
(1.5) Renamed distribution files to make sure we're Firebird. Now they're fbserver, fbclient, firebird.msg etc. The client library is fbclient now and it should be used in all new FB-based projects.
By D. Yemanov, N. Samofatov
(1.5) Added new system indices (RDB$INDEX_41, RDB$INDEX_42, RDB$INDEX_43), now ODS version is 10.1.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New CREATE OR ALTER statement for triggers and stored procedures, allows creating or altering a database object according to whether it exists or not.
Syntax
CREATE OR ALTER name <object_definition>;
By Claudio Valderrama
(1.5) Simplify syntax and allow declaring and defining variable at the same time.
Syntax
DECLARE [VARIABLE] name <variable_type> [{'=' | DEFAULT} value];
Example
DECLARE my_var INTEGER = 123;
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) Enhanced grouping: allow to GROUP BY internal functions and subqueries. Also allow to GROUP BY ordinal (i.e. column position, a.k.a degree of column in output set).
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) New COALESCE internal function allowing a column value to be calculated by a number of expressions, the first expression returning a non NULL value is returned as the column value.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) New NULLIF internal function returns NULL for a sub-expression if it has a specific value, otherwise returns the value of the sub-expression.
By A. Brinkman
(1.5) New CASE internal function allows the result of a column to be determined by a the results of a case expression.
By M. O'Donohue
(1.5) Command history retrieval (like Unix readline) added to ISQL.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New BIGINT datatype allowing native SQL usage of 64-bit exact numerics (Dialect 3 only).
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Universal triggers allowing one trigger to be fired for a number of action types.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) New CONNECTION_ID and TRANSACTION_ID system available in PSQL. Return appropriate internal identifier stored on the database header page.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) Server-side database aliases: attach to any database using an "alias" name instead of its physical pathname. The list of known database aliases is stored in aliases.conf file under the server installation root.
Example
Alias entry in the configuration file:
my_database = c:\dbs\my\database.gdb
Connection string in application:
localhost:my_database
By John Bellardo
(1.5) New plugin manager and INTL interface.
By D. Yemanov
(1.5) If SORT plan is used for a SQL statement, the sorting is done in memory. If there's not enough memory for this operation, reverts to old method using temporary file.
By A. Peshkoff
(1.5) New EXECUTE STATEMENT PSQL extension statement allows execution of dynamic SQL statements in SPs/triggers.
By Sean Leyne, Erik Kunze
(1.5) Major code cleanup.
By John Bellardo
(1.5) New memory manager.
By Mike Nordell, John Bellardo
(1.5) New exception handling logic.
By John Bellardo, M. O'Donohue, Erik Kunze
(1.5) New autoconf-based build configuration.
By
(1.5) The code port from C to C++.
fixed by D. Yemanov
It was possible to shut down the Superserver's main port (3050 by default) by sending a malformed packet of some special format, that would lead to a Denial of Service condition for new incoming connections. This exploit could be used by an unauthenticated client.
Reported 15-Jul-2009 by Core Security Technologies.
fixed by V. Khorsun
An isc_cancel_events() call would be succeeded by an access violation if the event was not found.
fixed by C. Valderrama
*truncate UDFs were broken for numbers smaller than -1.
fixed by C. Valderrama
*round UDFs were broken for negative numbers.
fixed by A. Peshkov
The gfix utility had a legacy bug that exhibited itself during the database validation/repair routines on large databases. The privilege level of the user running these routines was being checked too late in the operation, thus allowing a non-privileged user (i.e., not SYSDBA or Owner) to start a validation operation. Once the privilege check occurred, the database validation could halt in mid-operation and thus be left unfinished, resulting in logical corruption that might not have been there otherwise.
fixed by A. Peshkov
gbak was encountering several bugs when operating on the access control lists (ACLs) that store SQL privileges.
fixed by A. Peshkov
Backported a fix for a known buffer overflow in the Firebird client library.
fixed by A. Peshkov
A non-SYSDBA user was able to change the Forced Writes mode of any database, along with several other database characteristics that should be restricted to the SYSDBA. This long-standing, legacy loophole in the handling of DPB parameters could lead to database corruptions or give ordinary users access to SYSDBA-only operations. The changes could affect several existing applications, database tools and connectivity layers (drivers, components).
For details, see the This Edition notes in the Introduction.
fixed by A. Peshkov
Because of a change done in the conversion to C++ at v.1.5.0, ACLs (Access Control Lists) longer than about 20 characters were being truncated. This has caused particular problems for applications that construct access privileges in run-time and has also given rise to privileges “going missing” when there are more than about 2000 privileges (for a report of the latter, see Tracker issue CORE-216).
fixed by V. Khorsun
Index corruption was possible when multiple updates of the same record were performed in the same transaction with savepoints in use.
fixed by A. Peshkov
There was an issue with user names containing the '.' character.
fixed by D. Yemanov
Garbage data in the incoming remote packet could crash the server.
fixed by A. Peshkov
A long user name was a potential source of buffer overflow.
fixed by A. Peshkov, D. Yemanov
The server would crash if an application tried to connect to it via an InterBase version of gds32.dll.
fixed by N. Samofatov, A. Peshkov
Superserver could crash under load.
fixed by P. Reeves
Partial fix for Windows Vista platform, whereby the Explorer crashes when the Firebird 1.5 control panel applet is installed. This crash does NOT occur with Firebird 2.n, but backporting the changes did not work. The installer now disables installation of the 1.5 applet if Vista is detected as the host operating system.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
Services Manager and gsec would truncate First/Middle/Last Name fields to 17 characters instead of the 31 characters defined for the field definitions.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
Supplying an empty Database Parameter Block (DPB) or Services Parameter Block (SPB) would crash the server.
fixed by A. Peshkoff, C. Valderrama
A number of vulnerabilities found and reported by RISE Security were closed.
Fixes back-ported from Firebird 2.0.3
fixed by C. Valderrama
Supplying a name of more than 127 characters for a secondary file would cause the server to crash.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.3
fixed by C. Valderrama
Querying for database info on a very long path through an API call to isc_database_info() could cause a buffer overrun.
fixed by P. Beach
QLI could cause a crash when processing the following statement:
insert into relationx select * from relationy
fixed by P. Beach
An alignment issue could cause a core dump on HPUX when using SQL Dialect 1 and the following statement:
select distinct(1.0/1) from rdb$database
fixed by A. Peshkoff
A bug was causing a core dump in stored procedures using EXECUTE STATEMENT.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by A. Brinkman
Compound index key mangling exhibited a bug. Now fixed.
fixed by A. Brinkman
Unnecessary evaluation was being performed on the last argument of the COALESCE function.
fixed by A. Brinkman
Using search parameters in a SUM() operation would return incorrect results
fixed by A. Brinkman
UPDATE with a CASE expression involving parameters would throw an SQLCode -804 exception ("Data type unknown").
fixed by A. Brinkman
COALESCE/CASE displayed a bug regarding BLOB sub-type.
fixed by V. Horsun
The wrong error was being detected when a write failure occurred. (v.1.5 Regression.) Fix was back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
An access violation could occur in fcblient.dll v1.5.2 on disconnecting. (v.1.5.2 Regression.) Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
Generators were being initialized with garbage values on restoring from a metadata-only backup. (v.1.5.1 regression.) Fix backported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
User savepoints were not being released when commit retaining was issued. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by C. Valderrama
Back-ported some isql fixes from Firebird 2 HEAD:
Another fix for the -b (Bail On Error) option when SQL commands are issued and no database connection yet existed.
Applied Miroslav Penchev's patch for a bug discovered by Ivan Prenosil, where the -Q switch would always return 1 to the operating system.
Fixed a conflict between single-line and block comments.
fixed by D. Yemanov
If a table contained a computed column of BLOB or ARRAY type, the first column of the table could be zeroed during a restore. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by C. Valderrama, D. Yemanov
The server would lock up if a request to attach to security.fdb was unsuccessful. (v.1.5 regression.) Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by C. Valderrama
The fbudf function AddMonth() exhibited wrong behaviour when facing January. Fix
back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
The FOR EXECUTE STATEMENT ... DO SUSPEND construct in PSQL was exhibiting
problems. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by N. Samofatov
Bugchecks were being exhibited on AMD64 (and possibly other platforms) when a database was copied, rather than migrated using backup/restore. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
There were issues with descending indices used in referential constraints. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by A. Brinkman
An equality search on the first segment of a compound index, if it was an integer type, would result in redundant additional scans on specific values (2^n, e.g. 131072). Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
Comparisons between strings in character set NONE and another character set would cause an error. (V. 1.5.2 regression.)
fixed by V. Horsun
When a SEGV error (or other asyncronous exception) is thrown from a badly written UDF, the server should log its name. This feature was broken in FB 1.5. Restored in v.1.5.2
fixed by V. Horsun, N. Samofatov
In v.1.5.0, exit(3) was called on critical errors on Windows, precluding the use of the JIT debugger to analyse problems in UDF routines. A fix in v.1.5.1 caused the debugger to be called always, introducing a problem with automatic restarts of the server.
V.1.5.2 now calls the debugger only if you set the BugcheckAbort configuration file option to 1. The main goal of the v1.5.2 fix is to avoid Dr.Watson showing its close-or-debug message box.
fixed by C. Valderrama
Support for multi-dimensional array fields was broken v1.5.1. Restored in v.1.5.2
fixed by V. Horsun, N. Samofatov
Plans for selectable stored procedures containing multiple FOR loops were being reported in reverse order, compared with v.1.5.0. Restored in v.1.5.2
fixed by A. Brinkman
In v.1.5.1, a bug in the optimiser caused unnecessary fetches in joined relations when "OR" was used on the base relation. Now fixed
fixed by N. Samofatov
There was a problem with deadlock detection when pessimistic locking (WITH LOCK syntax) was used.
create table test (id integer);
insert into test values(1);
insert into test values(2);
Commit;
Transaction 1 (READ COMMITTED, WAIT):
select * from test
where id = 1 with lock;
Transaction 2 (READ COMMITTED, WAIT):
select * from test
where id = 2 with lock;
select * from test
where id = 1 with lock;
Transaction 1:
select * from test
where id = 2 with lock;
This set of conditions would result in a permanent deadlock. V.1.5.2 detects and reports such a deadlock as an error.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
The server would crash when NULL was passed to EXECUTE STATEMENT ... INTO. For example,
...
VAR = NULL;
EXECUTE STATEMENT :VAR;
...
caused the server to die. Now fixed
fixed by H. Borrie, D. Yemanov
Documentation for Windows Embedded Server, README.user.embedded in the /doc subdir of the Windows installation, section 2.2 "Database Access" was "corrected" wrongly in v.1.5.1. This section was unclear in v.1.5.0. In v.1.5.1 it was plain wrong. It is now correct.
fixed by Alex Peshkoff
(1.5.1) Modification of /etc/init.d/firebird during Linux installation now works properly.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) The wrong soname for libib_util.so caused warnings in ldconfig and also meant that it could not be loaded automatically by external function libraries using calls to ib_util_malloc(). That made such libraries unusable, unless a PRELOAD environment setting was added for fbserver/fb_inet_server.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) Memory corruptions in the embedded DSQL API implementation were corrected.
fixed by Arno Brinkman
(1.5.1) The following two optimizer bugs were fixed:
IS NULL is now handled correctly when a view is used in an outer join.
MERGE is used instead of JOIN when indices are not applicable for a join.
fixed by Dmitry Sibiryakov
(1.5.1) 'Extract' bug in ISQL was fixed: previously, procedure parameters would be extracted incorrectly.
fixed by Arno Brinkman
(1.5.1) Mapping of COUNT(*) in a HAVING clause when used with IN, ANY/SOME, ALL has been corrected.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) NULLS FIRST ordering parameter now works in union queries ().
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) The algorithm for dependency tracking that was introduced into gbak in v.1.5, made restoring a database with many interdependent procedures too slow. It has been replaced by a faster algorithm.
fixed by Alex Peshkoff
(1.5.1) Fixed a memory leak in EXECUTE STATEMENT...INTO.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) A fresh implementation of the editline facility in isql was done to resolve a problem with isql crashing on some platforms.
fixed by Paul Reeves
(1.5.1) A serious memory leak was fixed in the Windows control panel applet. If the applet window was left open for several hours it would eventually trigger a low memory condition on the server.
fixed by Paul Reeves
(1.5.1) Switching the server status via the control panel applet from certain configurations would lead to inconsistencies on Win XP and Win 2003. There were timing issues that were only apparent on these platforms. The problem was fixed.
fixed by Alex Peshkoff
(1.5.1) On Windows, server startup was failing to look for the FIREBIRD environment variable when trying to locate the root directory. Fixed.
fixed by Helen Borrie
(1.5.1) DOC for Embedded Server (README_embedded.txt) was updated slightly to reduce confusion about the client connection string format.
The following list consists of bugfixes that have been done since the release of Firebird 1.0.
"SF" bug items refer to the old Firebird bugtracker on SourceForge. "QC" bugs refer to the InterBase section of the bug tracker on Borland's Quality Central; “CORE-nnn” bugs refer to the more recent Tracker (http://tracker.firebirdsql.org).
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.4) Transaction numbers could overflow the 32-bit signed integer and corrupt the database.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.1.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.4) Possible stack corruption in the deferred work handler.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by P. Beach, D. Yemanov
Socket binding for events exhibited a bug where 10048 network errors were being reported in the log when clients attempted to bind to events.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by P. Beach, A. Peshkoff
(1.5.4) In previous versions of Superserver, if the server could not establish a socket for events, e.g. a firewall prevented the event port from being opened at the server side, the server would hang when a client attempted to register for an event. Connected clients would stop responding and new connections would be blocked.
Now, under these conditions, the client will hang until the socket call times out (by default, 10 seconds) and then the server will respond to the isc_que_events() call by throwing the exception isc_net_event_connect_err, “Failed to establish a secondary connection for event processing” and will continue to serve user requests normally.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.4) Access violations (segfaults) could occur in the Classic server when clients woke up after leaving read committed read-only transaction active but idle for long periods.
fixed by P. Beach, D. Sibiryakov
(1.5.4) When the buffer overflowed in isql, the error was not detected.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by P. Beach, D. Sibiryakov
(1.5.4) Isql had some problems handling quoted strings.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by C. Valderrama
(1.5.4) On Windows, GSTAT would print “unknown Windows NT error” instead of a proper Win32 error message.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by A. Harrison
(1.5.4) A condition was causing BUGCHECK(183) when attempting to back out a record version after a crash.
Fix back-ported from Firebird 2.0.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.3) An error in the thread scheduler would cause the server to lock up if an I/O error occurred at database attachment.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
The isc_user_* (add/modify/delete) functions worked wrongly under Administrator account on Win32.
(1.5.3) At some point during InterBase development, the intention was to make the Win32 implementation work so that Superuser privileges on Unix were emulated for Administrator on Win32 (SuperUser/root on Unix/Linux can log into the security database without entering any username and password). It worked, up to a point.
However, if the Win32 Administrator user tried to call these functions through a SYSDBA login, the connection would hang with some strange path resolution errors.
The code for a root-style login has been disabled in the Win32 clients (fbclient.dll and fbembed.dll). Now any Windows user, including Administrator, must supply the SYSDBA user name and password.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5.3) Denial-of-Service vulnerability: an extra-long database file name could crash the server. Endemic security bug. One of many overflow vulnerabilities fixed in the Firebird 2 code, this fix has been backported to v.1.5.3.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5.3) The server would crash during some DDL operations. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by C. Valderrama
(1.5.3) In some cases, a BLOB filter declaration would cause the server to crash. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by A. Peshkov
(1.5.3) A locally exploitable stack overflow vulnerability was detected and fixed.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.3) The server could crash while performing a metadata scan for a complex table. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.3) Database corruption could occur due to allowing certain pre-trigger actions, such as deleting a record in a BEFORE UPDATE trigger. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.3) CPU load would rise to 100% when a write failure occurred. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.3) A source of possible corruption was exhibiting in the Classic server as a page type exception "page 0 is of wrong type (expected 6, found 1)". Identified, fixed and back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.3) When the gfix service code tried to reattach to a database that had become unavailable, the server would crash. An endless loop would occur due to the inability of the service to interact with the end user, causing the service buffer to overflow eventually and result in the crash. Fixed and back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.3) Character set and/or collation specified for local variables in PSQL would get lost, potentially causing string conversion errors. Fix backported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.3) If any DDL operations were active during a database shutdown, the server would crash. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.3) Subqueries in in VIEWs were returning character data with the wrong character set. Fix back-ported from Firebird 2 HEAD.
fixed by C. Valderrama
(1.5.3) There was an issue with quoted identifiers in the ISQL command SHOW GENERATORS in Dialect 3.
fixed by A. Harrison
(1.5.3) No more than 32767 identifiers were being generated by GPRE.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5.3) Wrong permissions were installed for the QLI help database.
fixed by D.Yemanov
(1.5.2) An old legacy bug that has continued to bug us is that, when a client had some events registered
and its network connection had been terminated abnormally (hardware failure, reset button or task manager),
then the server would start using 100% of the CPU time until the "parent" port (client
connection which called isc_que_events() API routine) reported on its failure.
This bug affected all FB versions (more or less, depending on the DummyPacketInterval configuration option) and only TCP/IP connections.
Further work has been done to rectify the problem in v.1.5.2. It now appears to be solved.
fixed by C. Valderrama
(1.5.2) UDF with NULL input parameter, problem fixed.
fixed by C. Valderrama
(1.5.2) Left join would defeat a UDF by mangling a null descriptor. Fixed.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.2) Error trying to delete from a naturally updatable view containing computed expressions. If you had a view like this:
create view v_test (f, s)
as
select f1, f2 + f3
from t
then the server returned the "attempted update of read-only column" error when you tried to perform a DELETE operation. This is fixed in FB 1.5.2 and above.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5.2) Numeric data types represented by floating-point variables were being processed incorrectly in an EXECUTE STATEMENT with dialect 1 databases--numerics were being scaled incorrectly:
create table a (b numeric(18,3));
commit;
insert into a values(12345.678);
commit;
set term ^;
create procedure c
returns(d numeric(18,3))
as
begin
for execute statement 'select b from a'
into :d
do suspend;
end ^
commit^
set term ;^
select * from c;
returned 12.346 instead of 12345.678. Now fixed.
fixed by V. Horsun
If DISTINCT was used in an aggregate function and the record set being processed (aggregated) was empty, then we had a small memory leak. This memory was not returned until disconnect.
This routine would eat 120MB on FB 1.5.1 and previous:
CREATE PROCEDURE MEM_LEAK
AS
DECLARE I INT = 1000;
DECLARE T INT;
DECLARE C INT;
BEGIN
WHILE (I > 0) DO
BEGIN
SELECT RDB$INDEX_TYPE,
COUNT(DISTINCT RDB$RELATION_NAME)
FROM RDB$INDICES
WHERE 0=1
GROUP BY 1
INTO :T, :C;
I = I - 1;
END
END
It is fixed in v.1.5.2.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.2) The server leaked resources when an exception was thrown from a selectable stored procedure. The procedural request wasn't freed properly and caused errors like "too many concurrent executions of the same request" after 750-1000 iterations.
CREATE PROCEDURE P (INP INTEGER)
RETURNS (OUTP INTEGER)
AS
BEGIN
OUTP = INP / 0;
SUSPEND;
END
UPDATE T SET ID = 1
WHERE (SELECT OUTP FROM P(1)) = 1
The leaking request blocks were returned on disconnect. Now fixed.
fixed by P. Reeves
(1.5.2) The server log was polluted with SIGPIPE errors when running SuperServer on UNIX. The legacy InterBase code was logging sigpipe errors for SS running on *nix. Unfortunately sigpipe errors come in their thousands (when they come at all) with the result that the log filled up rather quickly. In extreme cases this led to filling up the entire partition.
Logging of SIGPIPE errors has thus been disabled.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.2) 100% CPU usage was exhibited by the cache_writer thread in some rare cases (reported by Adrianos dos Santos Fernandes).
To reproduce in v.1.5.1 or lower, open two command prompts.
Prompt 1:
isql
CREATE DATABASE 'test.fdb';
CREATE TABLE T (N INTEGER);
EXIT;
gbak -B test.fdb test.fbk
del test.fdb
gbak -C test.fbk test.fdb
Prompt 2:
gbak -B test.fdb test.fbk
The server would consume 99% of CPU until the isql prompt 2 was disconnected. The bug didn't occur
when passing -GARBAGE_COLLECT in the last command.
fixed by A. Karyakin, D. Yemanov
(1.5.2) A possible source of server crash was discovered in the op_connect handler.
When a TCP/IP packet lacking user information was received on the server port, the server could crash.
Because it was the first packet (op_connect) in the client-server protocol, it exposed the server to any
kind of DoS attack. Anyone could kill the server with just one TCP packet. Now fixed.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5.2) The server could crash with complex queries where lots of streams were used in a sort/merge. A complex union with many aggregations and merge joins could crash the server because of a streams buffer overflow. Although the current limit is 255 streams per request, the temporary buffer could accommodate only 128 items. Now fixed
fixed by C. Waters, D. Yemanov
(1.5.2) The server was blocking when events were used with Network Access Transaction (NAT) gateways. Auxiliary connections (for events) were established by the client library using the server-reported TCP/IP address. But the address returned by the server may be incorrect if it is behind a NAT box.
The fix was to use the address that was used to connect the main socket, not the address reported by the server.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.2) Sweeper would not release its lock when database shutdown was executed. A server crash could occur when a database shutdown was initiated while the sweep is being in progress. Now fixed.
fixed by V. Horsun
(1.5.2) The least significant bits of a floating-point value would be lost when rounding the value to an integer or int64 value.
Dialect 3 database:
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.005E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.015E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.025E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.035E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.045E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.055E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.065E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.075E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.085E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
UNION ALL
SELECT CAST(CAST( 1.095E0 AS NUMERIC(15,2))
AS VARCHAR(30)) FROM RDB$DATABASE
FB 1.5.1 returns
F_1
----
1.00
1.01
1.03
1.04
1.05
1.05
1.06
1.08
1.09
1.10
The problem is fixed. FB 1.5.2 returns
F_1
----
1.01
1.02
1.03
1.04
1.05
1.06
1.07
1.08
1.09
1.10
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5.2) A few memory access problems were detected when testing HEAD under Valgrind. Fixed in HEAD and back-ported to v.1.5.2
Experimental 64-bit builds by N. Samofatov
(1.5.2) 64-bit SuperServer builds on platforms such as Linux/AMD64/NPTL, which use the high-order bits of a 64-bit thread ID, were exhibiting run-time errors.
CURRENT_TIMESTAMP was yielding unpredictable results on 64-bit platforms.
The v.1.5.2 64-bit builds were subsequently withdrawn, due to database corruptions caused by data alignment bugs and possibly others.
fixed by Dmitry Yemanov
(1.5.1) Fixed a persistent issue with events, where a client using events would cause the server's CPU usage to go up to 100 percent when it terminated its connection. The problem existed in all Firebird versions, but became more acute in v. 1.5 because it has the default dummy packet interval at 0 and relies instead on TCP/IP keepalive packets.
Now, the client library tries to wake up the server's port when detaching, allowing the server to scan for broken connections and close them sooner.
fixed by Vladimir Tsvigun
(1.5.1) Fixed a bug in the QLI utility, whereby assigning a variable would generate an access violation.
fixed by Claudio Valderrama
(1.5.1) The -n[o_validity], that should make gbak restore a database without restoring validity constraints, was ignoring NOT NULL constraints and restoring them regardless. Now it works as it ought to.
fixed by Claudio Valderrama
(1.5.1) When a fresh database needs to be created by metadata-backup/restore, the user-defined generators should be set to zero. However, during a metadata-only backup, gbak would preserve the values of all generators, including non-system ones. Now, they are correctly reset.
fixed by Arno Brinkman
(1.5.1) Corrected a bug that prevented proper restoration of inter-dependent views.
fixed by Dmitry Yemanov
(1.5.1) A memory leak in the Services API.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) A memory leak in isc_database_info().
fixed by Oleg Loa
(1.5.1) Memory leaks occurred in PSQL modules when aggregation errors were handled in a WHEN block.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) A stability problem with usage of previously freed memory in the client library was found and eliminated. It was present in InterBase and earlier Firebird versions but it re-surfaced in Firebird 1.5, due to the memory manager actively returning memory to the system. When using TCP/IP with Windows clients, application programs would hang because of an access violation in fbclient.dll, or fbclient.dll itself would hang. In some cases, further connections to the same database would be rejected.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) Attempting to update a generator in a read-only database would cause database detach to be prolonged and such a situation would leave the database locked to other connections. Fixed the broken CCH finalization sequence and a page lock leak.
fixed by Oleg Loa, Vlad Horsun, Dmitry Yemanov
(1.5.1) Generator pages were not flushed properly, causing generator value changes to be lost after a server failure, even in Forced Writes mode
fixed by ?
(1.5.1) A nested query that contained a variable in the WHERE clause would be erroneously flagged as invariant (), e.g.
select max(d2.id) from demo d2
where d2.id < :id
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) Request cloning logic was broken. Clones of procedures/triggers were not accounting for invariants and the requests opened by them at all. Thus, they were inheriting invariant values from previous executions and were not freeing resources (highly limited! - you can have only 1000 copies of a request open). This is why most recursive procedures didn't work at all and using procedures from multiple Superserver connections produced results that were inconsistent or timing-dependent.
Invariant dependency tracking was not working properly. The engine now keeps account of which variables an invariant depends on and clears the cached invariant value when values are being assigned to these variables.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) A number of problems with the win32 lock manager, that manifested themselves as low performance when several operations were waiting on locks simultaneously, were solved.
fixed by Claudio Valderrama
(1.5.1) Expression evaluation was not supported in LEFT JOIN.
fixed by Dmitry Yemanov
(1.5.1) Server would crash when views and selectable procedures were intermixed.
fixed by Nickolay Samofatov
(1.5.1) Fixed an obscure bug where the server would crash if LIKE ESCAPE <symbol> was asked to operate on NULL. LIKE syntax is:
<string> LIKE <string> [ESCAPE <one-char-string>]
A request such as
select * from rdb$database
where 'a' like 'a' escape cast(null as char(1))
would crash the engine. It now complies with the SQL standard and returns an empty result set from such a query.
fixed by Fred Polizo Jr
(1.5.1) Length of string types containing binary data (OCTETS) was being determined incorrectly in UDFs.
fixed by P. Jacobi
(1.5) Fixed minor inconsistencies in charsets naming.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) GSTAT crashed in some switch combinations.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Fixed broken savepoint handling in BREAK|LEAVE/EXIT.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Fixed optimizer to prefer single indices to composite ones and to prefer full-match unique indices.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Long runnning connection caused mem leak in OS kernel device
fixed by P. Vinkenoog, N. Samofatov
(1.5) UDF log(x, y) in fact returned log(y, x)
fixed by P. Vinkenoog, N. Samofatov
(1.5) UDFs ltrim('') and rtrim('') returned NULL; rtrim forgot first char
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Fixed server crash caused by lost transaction context.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Fixed server crash caused by any combination of a subquery and BETWEEN.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) "<value> STARTING WITH <field>" would fail when using indices.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Non-existent deadlock is raised after execution of pre-(update/delete) triggers.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Preparing some big queries could crash the server randomly.
fixed by Oleg Loa
(1.5) UDF arguments of types DATE/TIME were wrong in dialect 3.
fixed by Vlad Horsun, D. Yemanov
(1.5) Possible referential integrity violation.
fixed by Erik S. LaBianca, N. Samofatov
(1.5) Permissions problem for firebird.conf. Also generate aliases.conf on install; use rpmbuild to create Linux packages
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Wrong attachment reference after exception in PSQL.
fixed by Vlad Horsun, D. Yemanov
(1.5) Potential index corruptions during garbage collection.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Solved problems with temporary files management:
Security hole on all POSIX platforms except FREEBSD/OPENBSD related to mktemp usage (possible DoS attacks or privileges elevation)
Only 27 unique filenames generated on win32 (which could cause unpredictable behavior in SS builds)
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Disabled usage of specifically-configured auxiliary port in CS builds due to known issues.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Potential crashes on disconnect when event notification was used.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Enabled statistics Services API for POSIX CS builds.
Appropriate changes in Win32 CS are not ready yet
Backup/restore service was fixed, tested and should work
Database validation was partially fixed and may work
Other services are probably non-functional in CS builds yet
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Partly enabled Services API for win32 CS builds.
Change done by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Features of GSTAT/GSEC are not available via Services API in win32 CS (until a later sub-release).
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Wrong record statistics were reported when an operation failed for some reason.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) stdin/stdout could not be used to redirect console I/O in the Win32 build of GBAK.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Lock table resizing in CS was broken. No more "lock manager out of room" or crashes (possible in all previous CS builds of Interbase/Firebird).
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) BUGCHECK(291): Possible database corruption when you modified/deleted the same record in pre-trigger for which this trigger was called.
fixed by Oleg Loa
(1.5) Buffer overrun in isc_database_info() call.
fixed by Jim Starkey, Paul Reeves
(1.5) Wrong type of event delivery (unnecessary usage of OOB packets).
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Server would crash in some Services API operations.
fixed by Mike Nordell, A. Peshkoff, N. Samofatov, D. Yemanov
(1.5) Fixed resource/memory leaks.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Buffer overrun with multidimensional arrays.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Various issues with events used on multihomed hosts.
Now it's also possible to setup a definite port for event processing.
fixed by Mike Nordell, A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Fixed some resource leaks.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Potential for database corruption when backing out the savepoint after large number of DML operations (so transaction-level savepoint is dropped) and record was updated not under the savepoint and the deleted under the savepoint.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Server would hang during disconnect after mass updates.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) "Context already in use" error was exhibited in the case of DISTINCT with subqueries.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Long delays during connecting/disconnecting on WinXP.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) View was affecting the result of a query. Comment: Problem was that RSE's (inside a view) were not flagged as variant.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Sometimes GFIX didn't allow to specify "-user" and "-password" switches ("incompatible swiches" error).
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) LEFT JOIN with VIEWs: simple LEFT JOIN on a VIEW with only an ON clause didn't use an index even if it was possible.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Trashed RDB$FIELD_LENGTH for views that contain concatenation of long CHAR/VARCHAR fields.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Cursors (WHERE CURRENT OF clause) could not be used in triggers.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Case reported where ORDER BY had no effect.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Bug case where subquery was used in connection with IN() clause.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Engine crashed when UNIONS were used in a VIEW and that VIEW was used in the WHERE clause inside a subquery.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) "Request sycnhronization error" with BREAK statement.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) No current record for fetch operation.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) QLI didn't understand BIGINT datatype.
fixed by A. Brinkman
(1.5) Length of text variables inside procs/triggers wasn't copied to descriptor structure.
fixed by Erik Kunze
(1.5) Buffer overflow (MAXPATHLEN) and rewritten local function dirname.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Make SQLDA parameter mapping consistent with order and number of parameters in source SQL string.
You can enable older mapping behavior (for backward compatibility) using the "OldParameterOrdering" configuration manager parameter.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Exceptions inside for/while loops in triggers were not handled correctly.
fixed by Paul Reeves, Mark O'Donohue
(1.5) Double forward slash in connection string gave problems.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Deadlock occurred unexpectedly during some database operations.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Quoted identifiers problem in plan expressions.
fixed by Ignacio J. Ortega
(1.5) Triggers fail to compile if PLAN used.
fixed by Vlad Horsun, Erik Kunze
(1.5) Distributed (2PC) transaction could not be properly rolled back due to network errors.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) When the optimizer finds indexes for LEFT JOIN, they work like INNER JOIN. Fixed problem which caused complex outer joins to produce wrong results.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) BLOB subtype was ignored in system domains generated for expression fields in views.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Fixed a Windows installation bug: instreg.exe wasn't creating the "GuardianOptions" registry value.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Resource leaks in DDL recursive procedure handling which caused some DDL to fail.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) CHECK constraint which uses only one table field is now dropped automatically when this field is dropped.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) The server could crash during garbage collection under heavy load.
fixed by D. Kuzmenko
(1.5) gstat showed wrong value for maxdup element.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Trigger whose name starts with 'RDB$' can not be altered or dropped at all.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Broken dependencies (like DB$34) would appear in the database after metadata changes.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) Disabled BREAK statement for triggers (like EXIT) due to known internal limitations.
fixed by A. Peshkoff
(1.5) Automatic/background sweep could hang.
fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) The server would crash when XSQLDA structures were not prepared for all statement parameters.
Partly fixed by D. Yemanov
(1.5) A metadata security hole.
fixed by Artem Petkevych
(1.5) BigInt arrays didn't work.
fixed by Claudio Valderrama
(1.5) Crash with extract from null as date.
fixed by N. Samofatov
(1.5) Deferred metadata compilation: solved a lot of causes of the well-known "object in use" error.
The following outstanding issues were known at sub-release 1.5.1.
Note added at v.1.5.4 release:
In the v.1.0 release notes, a new, optional numeric argument for gbak's -v[erbose] switch was announced, supposedly to track commands as a restore proceeded. This feature was withdrawn during Firebird 1.0 beta development due to regression effects and never appeared in any Firebird release.
PLANs for selectable procedures having multiple FOR loops are reported in the wrong order.
Example (from QMDB test):
create procedure proc1
returns (a integer)
as
begin
for select a from table1 into :a do
suspend;
for select b from table2 into :a do
suspend;
end ^^
...
select * from proc1^^
1.5.1 produces the PLAN:
PLAN (TABLE2 NATURAL) (TABLE1 NATURAL)
instead of
PLAN (TABLE1 NATURAL) (TABLE2 NATURAL)
UPDATE :: This issue was fixed in release v.1.5.2.
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