- •Firebird 1.5.5 Release Notes
- •Table of Contents
- •Firebird 1.5.5 Release Notes
- •This Edition
- •Previous Editions
- •General Notes
- •The Firebird 1.5 Binaries
- •Version Strings for Firebird 1.5 Releases
- •Documentation
- •New Features in Firebird 1.5
- •New Codebase, Better Optimization
- •Architecture
- •SQL Language
- •Installed Modules and Security
- •More Improvements
- •Trimming of Varchar fields for Remote Protocols
- •Multi-action Trigger Semantics
- •Enhancement to Named Constraints
- •Maximum Indexes per Table Increased
- •Pessimistic Locking
- •Security Database Connection Caching
- •Error-reporting Improvements
- •Services API on Classic for Linux
- •Changes in the Client Libraries
- •Windows clients
- •“Compatibility” Client
- •Linux clients
- •Renamed Files and Modules
- •All Platforms
- •All POSIX Platforms
- •32-bit Windows Platforms
- •Firebird 1.5.3 Point Release Additions
- •(1.5.3) Two ISQL Improvements
- •(1.5.3) Make Old Column Naming Convention available
- •(1.5.3) Security diagnostics added
- •(1.5.3) Closed an Endemic Security Hole
- •Firebird 1.5.2 Point Release Additions
- •(1.5.2) Performance improvement for permissions checking
- •(1.5.2) POSIX build and packaging changes
- •(1.5.2) POSIX improvements, FR # 1027636
- •(1.5.2) Changes to the standard ib_udf library declaration script
- •Firebird 1.5.1 Point Release Additions
- •(1.5.1) Introducing NPTL Builds for Higher Linuxen
- •(1.5.1) Services API is now fully supported on Classic
- •(1.5.1) GSTAT can now connect to localhost
- •(1.5.1) Character set NONE data now accepted "as is"
- •(1.5.1) Optional core dump on exceptions
- •(1.5.1) New collation added for Lithuanian language
- •(1.5.1) Small Win32 installation utility enhancement
- •On-disk Structure (ODS)
- •Firebird 1.0.n
- •InterBase® databases
- •File-names and Locations
- •Concurrently-running Servers
- •Reverting to Firebird 1.0.x
- •Linux Compatibilities
- •SQL Language Enhancements
- •Changes affecting All SQL
- •(1.5) Enhancement to single-line comment marker
- •(1.0) CURRENT_USER and CURRENT_ROLE
- •Data Definition Language (DDL)
- •New Data Types
- •(1.5) BIGINT
- •(1.5) Enhancements to named constraints
- •(1.5) Multi-action triggers
- •(1.5) RECREATE VIEW
- •(1.5) CREATE OR ALTER {TRIGGER | PROCEDURE }
- •(1.5) (1.0) Alter Trigger no longer increments the change count on tables
- •(1.5) NULLs in unique constraints and indices
- •(1.0) DROP GENERATOR
- •From Firebird v.1.0.x
- •(1.0) RECREATE PROCEDURE
- •(1.0) RECREATE TABLE
- •Data Manipulation Language (DML)
- •(1.5) Expressions and variables as procedure arguments
- •(1.5) New constructs for CASE expressions
- •a) CASE
- •b) COALESCE
- •c) NULLIF
- •(1.5) SQL99-compliant Savepoints
- •Internal savepoints
- •Savepoints and PSQL
- •(1.5) Explicit locking
- •Understanding the WITH LOCK clause
- •How the engine deals with WITH LOCK
- •The optional OF <column-names> sub-clause
- •Caveats using WITH LOCK
- •Examples using Explicit Locking
- •(1.5) Improved Aggregate Handling
- •Aggregate functions inside subqueries
- •Mixing aggregate functions from different contexts
- •Subqueries are supported inside an aggregate function
- •Nested aggregate functions
- •Grouping by degree (ordinal number)
- •(1.5) ORDER BY clause can specify expressions and nulls placement
- •(1.5) SELECT FIRST 0.. is Now Valid
- •(1.0) SELECT FIRST m .. SKIP n
- •Arguments m and n
- •FIRST and SKIP Elements
- •Two Gotchas with SELECT FIRST
- •Other Firebird 1.0.x Features
- •(1.0) GROUP BY UDF
- •(1.0) SUBSTRING( <string expr> FROM <pos> [FOR <length>])
- •Stored Procedure and Trigger Language (PSQL)
- •(1.5) EXECUTE STATEMENT
- •Caveats with EXECUTE STATEMENT
- •(1.5) New Context Variables
- •CURRENT_CONNECTION and CURRENT_TRANSACTION
- •ROW_COUNT
- •SQLCODE and GDSCODE
- •INSERTING, UPDATING and DELETING
- •(1.5) Enhancements to Exception Handling in PSQL
- •1) Run-time exception messaging
- •2) Re-raising an exception
- •3) Run-time error codes
- •(1.5) LEAVE | BREAK statement
- •(1.5) Valid PLAN statements can now be included in triggers
- •(1.5) Empty BEGIN..END blocks
- •(1.5) Declare and define local variable in single statement
- •New Reserved Words
- •Miscellaneous Enhancements
- •Character Sets
- •V. 1.5 (Binary Collations only)
- •New ISQL Features
- •"readline" Capability in the ISQL Shell
- •External Functions (UDFs)
- •In the ib_udf Library
- •rpad()
- •lpad()
- •In the fbudf library
- •New Configuration Files
- •The Firebird Root Directory
- •Precedence Trail for Locating the Firebird Root
- •Server Configuration File--firebird.conf
- •Parameters
- •Filesystem-related
- •Resource-related
- •Communications-related
- •POSIX-specific
- •Windows-specific
- •Related to Sort space
- •Compatibility
- •Database File Aliasing
- •Aliases.conf
- •Connecting using an aliased path
- •Firebird 1.5 Project Teams
- •"The Field Test Heroes"
- •Windows 32-bit Installs
- •READ THIS FIRST!
- •Naming databases on Windows
- •READ THIS NEXT!
- •Installation of Microsoft system libraries
- •Installation of fbclient.dll
- •New Registry Key
- •Supporting legacy applications and drivers
- •InstClient.exe Tool
- •Cleaning up release candidate installs
- •Using the Win32 Firebird Installer
- •Uninstallation
- •Installing Superserver from a zip kit
- •Installing Classic Server from a zip kit
- •Simplified setup
- •Uninstallation
- •Installing Embedded Server from a Zip Kit
- •File structure for the Embedded Server
- •Other Win32 Issues
- •POSIX Platforms
- •READ THIS FIRST
- •Installing on Linux
- •RPM Installer
- •Installing the Tarball
- •Testing your Linux installation
- •Step 1 - Accessing a database
- •Step 2 - Creating a database
- •Utility Scripts
- •Linux Server Tips
- •"Embedded" or direct access to database files
- •NTPL problems on higher Linuxen
- •Uninstalling on Linux
- •Uninstalling an RPM package
- •Uninstalling a tarball installation
- •Solaris
- •MacOS X
- •FreeBSD
- •Debian
- •How the server sets the listening port
- •Using the -p switch override
- •Syntax for TCP/IP
- •Syntax for WNet redirection
- •Classic on POSIX: the inetd or xinetd daemon
- •Using a configuration file parameter
- •Setting up a client to find the service port
- •Using the connection string
- •Using port syntax with database aliases
- •Using a copy of firebird.conf
- •Location of Firebird artifacts on clients
- •Configuring the Services File
- •Locating the services file
- •Further Information
- •Firebird Development
- •Lists and Newsgroups
- •Newsgroup Mirrors
- •Paid Support
- •Sponsorship
- •Tools and Drivers
- •Database Admin Tools
- •Drivers and Components
- •Documentation
- •Improvements
- •Release 1.5, 1.5.1, 1.5.2, 1.5.3 and 1.5.4 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.5
- •Release 1.5, 1.5.1, 1.5.2 and 1.5.3 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.4
- •Release 1.5, 1.5.1 and 1.5.2 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.3
- •Release 1.5 and 1.5.1 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.2
- •Release 1.5 Bugs Fixed in v.1.5.1
- •Old Bugs Fixed
- •Known Issues
Miscellaneous Enhancements
Warning
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.
In the fbudf library
Changes in Firebird 1.5 affect functions in the fbudf external function library, as follows.-
1.The *NVL and *NULLIF functions remain for backward compatibility, but are deprecated by the introduction of the new internal functions CASE, COALESCE and NULLIF.
2.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.
Caution
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.
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