Bekende databases om grote hoeveelheden gegevens in op te slaan zijn natuurlijk Oracle met zijn 11g-database, IBM met de DB2-database en Microsoft met SQL Server. Een ander database management system is Firebird, dat de Interbase-database van Inprise als oorsprong heeft. Inprise is tegenwoordig bekend als Borland Software, waarvan de geschiedenis op deze pagina is na te lezen. Deze relationele database kan worden geïnstalleerd op verschillende besturingssystemen, waaronder het Linux- en het Windows-platform, waardoor het breed kan worden ingezet. De ontwikkelaars hebben versie 2.5.1 uitgebracht, voorzien van de volgende beknopte aankondiging en een lijst met veranderingen ten opzichte van versie 2.5.0.
Firebird 2.5.1 (sub-release) is available
Firebird Project is happy to announce general availability of Firebird 2.5.1 - a minor release of the award-winning relational database management system. This sub-release introduces several bug fixes and many important improvements - for example, performance improvements during a database restore, the ability to write to global temporary tables in read-only databases, etc.
For the full list of changes please refer to the Release Notes, Chapter 2 "New in Firebird 2.5". Firebird 2.5.1 has 100% compatible on-disk structure with Firebird 2.5.0, so it is recommended to migrate to 2.5.1 as soon as possible. To download Firebird 2.5.1, please visit the download section at the official web-site: www.firebirdsql.org.
The months that have passed since the initial release have seen numerous Tracker issues tackled to address things that have been reported broken, bent or compromised in v.2.5. As well as a long list of bug fixes, a few minor improvements have been made. In summary:
- The SQLSTATE code has been made available as a PSQL context variable, for use in WHEN .. exception blocks, in the same manner as GDSCODE and SQLCODE
- Now it is possible to write to global temporary tables in a read-only database
- Diagnostics for internal trace errors were improved
- The fbtracemgr utility will now do a periodic flush to output
- Performance of gbak restore at the data insertion stages has improved
- Conversions between BLOBs and other data types can now be effected in the API functions
- The Services API now supports the “metadata-only” restore
- A “silent install” switch has been implemented for make install on POSIX
- The unused bytes of VARCHAR values in the message buffer are now set to zero
- The actual record compression ratio is now estimated in the optimizer
- The MON$STATEMENT_ID value now stays constant among monitoring snapshots
- The SO_KEEPALIVE option on the client TCP socket will now be set, as a measure to guard against aggressive timing out of sockets by newer Windows systems
- Lock Manager can now cancel waits that become interminable
- A platform port of v.2.5.1 for HPPA has been done for both Linux and Alpha