Call For Papers
Conference to be held at the Barcelo Praha Hotel, Prague, Czech Republic, on the 7th and 8th of October 2016.

The Firebird Foundation is seeking submissions from Firebird users and developers on the theme of "Firebird in the Enterprise". A session submission should have a title and at least 200 words outlining the main points of your talk.

A session will last for 50 minutes plus 10 minutes for turnaround and questions. If your talk takes more than a single session, then it should span multiple sessions. If your session is especially popular you may be asked to repeat it.

You can submit a session draft directly to [email protected]
If you have any questions also please contact [email protected]

Submissions must be made by the deadline of Midnight July 1st, 2016. Once received there will be a review of the submitted papers and authors will then be informed which papers have been accepted or rejected.

Publication of Papers (after the conference)

Each selected speaker will be expected to turn in a technical paper in electronic format for each abstract topic originally approved.

All illustrations and graphics pertaining to each paper must also be submitted. The papers should contain enough detail to enable a reader to fully understand the topic without benefit of a physical presentation. Speakers may also submit samples of code and/or presentation slides.

All accepted papers will be published electronically after the conference. By submitting materials to the Firebird conference, you grant the Firebird Foundation permission to use, reproduce, audio/video record and distribute your materials.

It is with great sorrow that we note the passing this week of Aage Johansen, in Oslo, Norway. A Firebird stalwart since its very first days in 1999, Aage was a founding member of the Firebird Foundation and has constantly maintained his membership and his faith in what the Firebird team could achieve.
Over the years he has contributed generously, but quietly, to the Foundation, to the support lists, to reviews of documentation and to testing international character set issues. Aage's colleague at his workplace, Kreftregisteret Norway, Svein Erling Tysvaer, commented, "He will be greatly missed, both as a friend and as an employee - he was the only one with the combination of medical, programming and historical skills, and some of the work he's done, no-one else can do."
Those of us in the Firebird Project who have been privileged to work with Aage feel the same.
A wine buff and a lover of opera and classical music, Aage is survived by his father and one sister.  The funeral service will take place next Tuesday, 31 May, at Manglerud Kirche, Oslo, at 11 a.m. Rest in peace, Aage Johansen.

Jiri Cincura announces the 5.0.5.0 Release of ADO.NET provider for Firebird.

As with every major release the changes of something going wrong are high. No exception here. Big thanks to people testing the provider and reporting bugs.

Overview of changes can be found in tracker.

You can download them in the ".NET Provider" section of Downloads. Enjoy!

The Firebird Conference 2016 will take place on October 7-8, 2016, in Prague, Czech Republic, at the Barcelo Praha Hotel.

Early Bird Registration is open! Book your attendance here.

More details are at Firebird Conference 2016 page.

Jiri Cincura announces the 5.0.0.0 Release of ADO.NET provider for Firebird.

As you can see the major version number changed. This release contains two new big features, both focused on Firebird 3. The BOOLEAN datatype is now supported (except Entity Framework mapping, currently). And SRP authentication is supported on Firebird 3. Also internals of the protocol handling were refactored and slightly cleaned up (and more to do). Hopefully that will enable easier improvements and fixes in the future.

Overview of changes can be found in tracker.

You can download them in the ".NET Provider" section of Downloads. Enjoy!

45 Ways To Speed Up Firebird is the list of performance tips for Firebird database in different areas — from hardware/OS and Firebird configuration tuning to SQL optimization recommendations. 

The 13th Firebird Developers' Day (FDD) will be held in Piracicaba - SP, Brazil on July 9th. This is the biggest conference in the world devoted to the Firebird RDBMS, with an average of 400 attendees. During all the day long, attendees can participate in several sessions presenting subjects of extreme interest for Firebird users. With the recent release of Firebird 3, this year we will have several talks about some of its new features, especially focusing on performance and security. The attendees also have the chance to buy Firebird tools with huge discounts, thanks to our sponsors.

FDD is mostly a Portuguese speakers conference, although there is always the presence of some international speaker (with translation). This year, we have confirmed the presence of Alexey Kovyazin, CEO of IBSurgeon.

Registration is already open — the price rises with the conference proximity, so registering now is a good idea to save money. During the registration process, subscribers have the chance to donate any amount to the Firebird Foundation.

This article, by Claudio Valderrama, one of the Firebird core developers, shows the possibilities available in Firebird to write general purpose external functions, a.k.a. User Defined Functions (UDFs):

Writing External Functions — A General Guide (pdf)