Firebird Project is happy to announce general availability of Firebird 3.0.1 — the first point release in the Firebird 3.0 series.

This sub-release offers many bug fixes and also adds a few improvements, please refer to the Release Notes for the full list of changes. Binary kits for Windows and Linux on both 32-bit and 64-bit platforms are immediately available for download.

Only 2 weeks left till the start of Firebird Conference 2016! This year the conference has the strong focus on Firebird in enterprises, and one of the key things for enterprises is high availability.  The talks below will be devoted to high availability solutions based on Firebird and practical examples with 24/7 failover solutions.

Recovery and high availability solutions for Firebird, Alexey Kovyazin, IBSurgeon
The session will be devoted to high availability and failover solutions for Firebird: Firebird failover cluster, warm standby, distributed replication and backup to the cloud, etc. We will consider various scenarios of high availability and recovery: typical setups for enterprises, distributed web cluster, central backup server, etc. 

HA cluster based on RedDatabase engine-level replication, by Dmitry Starodubov, RedSoft
Master-slave engine-level replication allows customers to build HA clusters as well as run read-only queries on a slave to reduce load on master.
This session talks about:
– Main features of engine-level replication
– How to configure it
– Synchronous and asynchronous replication
– Practical usage of HA cluster based on replication and pacemaker agent.

Jiri Cincura announces the 5.1.1.0 Release of ADO.NET provider for Firebird.

It’s a regular bugfix release. Overview of changes can be found in tracker.

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

The full schedule for Firebird Conference 2016 is available! 2 full days of in-depth Firebird learning and networking with true Firebird experts and core Firebird developers! Book your attendance now - registration fee is EUR 179, and only EUR 489 for group of 3!

Featured speaker: Jason Wharton, IBObjects
Optimizing queries and transactions
This session will demonstrate how to make effective use of queries and transactions so that your application has reliable record locking as well as smooth performance. There are some potential traps developers can fall into that I will identify and help you avoid.

This session will provide a good overview of the various approaches to interacting with your database. Direct transaction control, cached updates and multi-tier approaches will be discussed. I will also address proper use of generators/sequences and show how to provide an auditable sequence that is multi-user friendly.

How to integrate Firebird into the corporate security infrastructure, how to make data in Firebird databases more secure - the sessions from Alex Peshkoff, Firebird Core developer, will be devoted to these (always hot) topics at Firebird Conference 2016.

Encrypting Firebird databases, by Alex Peshkoff, Firebird Core Development
The session describes the problems and solutions for database encryption inside the enterprise and for distributed applications. 
What should be protected on the plugin level, what should be protected at the operating system level (parameters to be set/tuned), where security keys should be stored, etc.

Implementing safe authorisation infrastructure for Firebird, by Alex Peshkoff, Firebird Core Development
How to use different authorization plugins, several security databases, how to define and implement data transfer between databases governed by different security databases, and how to use the TraceAPI and the Services API in such an environment.