The Interbase and Firebird Developer Magazine, Issue 4
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
2006 ISSUE 4 Contents THE INTERBASE Contents & FIREBIRD DEVELOPER Editor notes by Alexey Kovyazin MAGAZINE Money for nothing ................................................................. 4 Oldest Active by Helen Borrie RTFM — regarding those free manuals ........................................... 5 Credits Community by Carlos Cantu Alexey Kovyazin, About Dolphins and Birds ......................................................... 6 Chief Editor Dmitri Kuzmenko, Cover Story by Paul Ruizendaal Editor The story of Fyracle ................................................................ 8 Helen Borrie, Development area Editor by Paul Ruizendaal Lev Tashchilin, Common Table Expression in Fyracle ............................................ 12 Designer Products Overview Editorial Office IBSurgeon Products .............................................................. 17 IBase IBDeveloper, office 5, Development area 1-st Novokuznetsky lane, 10 by Paul Ruizendaal zip: 115184 Morfik's WebOS: Innovating beyond LAMP ..................................... 18 Moscow, Russia by Vlad Horsun Phone: +7495 6869763 Global Temporary Tables in Fyracle .............................................. 23 Fax: +7495 9531334 TestBed Email: by Alexey Kovyazin [email protected] TPC-C based tests results ........................................................ 26 www.ibdeveloper.com Bonus by Alexey Kovyazin Copyright 2005-2006 by ........................................ 35 IB© Developer. All rights reserved. Comprehensive Repairing Guide. Part 1 No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form of or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photo- copy or any information storage and retrieval system, without per- mission. For promotional reprints, contact re- print coordinator Alexey Kovyazin, [email protected]. IBDeveloper reserves the right to revise, republish and authorize its readers to use the articles submit- ted for publication. All brand and product names used in on these pages are trade names, service marks or trademarks of their re- spective owners. © Copyright 2005-2006, All right reserved www.ibdeveloper.com www.ibdeveloper.com EDITOR'S NOTE 2006 ISSUE 4 Money for nothing guess some of our readers have be- a «Borland Developer Studio» confer- By Alexey Kovyazin, I come a bit tired of waiting and won- ence and a lot of things got clearer. [email protected] dering when the new issue would be re- In essence, Borland is splitting into two leased. I am really sorry about the long companies: one is solution-targeted delay, but there have been some serious (ALM) and the other is oriented on de- financial and time issues holding up veloper tools. As I understand, the De- production. veloper Company (alias “DevCo”) guys I want to begin with sincere thanks were the initiators of the spin-off be- to people who made donations to our cause they considered the IDE product (rather interesting) point of view. Jim’s magazine. Orlin Chankov and Steve line too different from the ALM busi- departure from active development on Kramer, thank you, guys, for your help. ness. I can even guess that Delphi and Firebird provided an excellent opportu- Your donations were much appreciated. the other IDEs were the financial props nity to promote Firebird. Now everyone We’ve come to realise that producing for ALM! Jason did not say so, of course, knows where successful companies are the magazine with only advertising and but it seems quite obvious to me. looking to headhunt developers and sponsors to support it is impossible. According to their statements, there’s get good ideas :) We’ve decided to change our business no problem with Delphi sales—Delphi Fyracle model slightly. We are going to run 2006 is a bestseller—and no problem This issue is mostly devoted to Fyracle. special proprietary editions of each is- with its development. Jason demon- I’d like to express great thanks to Paul sue with bonus articles. These special strated an impressive roadmap for Del- Ruizendaal, Vlad Horsun and Eugeniy editions will be available in electronic phi up to 2009, with many exciting fea- Putilin for their help with creating this (printable PDF) and paper versions. tures, and things of interest for JBuilder issue. Fyracle is on the cutting edge of From this issue forward, the latest issue and C++ Builder too. new Firebird technologies. Many things will be available only for purchase for According to the team, InterBase sales that are already implemented there are a period—say one or two weeks from are good and its roadmap is interesting, planned for inclusion in Firebird 3.0, so publication—and will be fully released too. There is no indication that DevCo you can download the future right now. afterwards for everyone, minus the bo- intends to drop all these profitable Read on about Fyracle’s exciting fea- nus articles. products and, personally, I feel much tures and give it a try! It’s regrettable to have to move in this better about it all now. We can only Unfortunately, we couldn’t include the direction but it seems the only way to await the completion of the spin-off. article about External Procedures in make the magazine viable. Orlin and Just one other thing—why isn’t there Java and .NET in this issue. We’ll try to Steve, for their generosity, will have any name for “DevCo” yet? One guess is ensure that it makes it in time for the free, unlimited subscriptions to the that the “Borland” brand is one of the next issue. electronic version of IBDeveloper mag- most precious assets of the company azine. and both the IDE and ALM sides want to TPC-C based test Borland have it. Anyway, Delphi and InterBase And yes, we’ve finished the TPC-C series are here to stay, regardless of whether testing. There are some very interesting On February 8, Borland published plans the branding is “Borland” or “DevCo”! results, so don’t miss the article about to spin off the developer product line, it in the TestBed section of our maga- including Delphi and InterBase. It Jim zine! looked so peculiar at the time that Jim Starkey was one of the main news- many developers said “Borland is dead”, makers since the previous issue. Jim is Bonus article and probably several less printable ex- a living legend and becomes more and Our bonus material for this issue is the pressions. It was really strange and, more popular (I think he should start first part of “The Comprehensive Re- for months, all we had were rumors and to sell autographs via eBay!). MySQL pairing Guide for InterBase and Fire- fuzzy press-releases. bought Jim’s company Netfrastructure bird”. This part is “Corruption reasons, Recently, however, the chief Borland and hired Jim to make a proprietary Part 1”. If you are keen to know where executives of the new “DevCo” (David database engine for them. In this is- the pitfalls and traps for your database I, Jason Vokes and others) went on a sue Carlos H. Cantu comments on all are, order the bonus version of “The worldwide tour to clarify events and these events in his article “From Birds InterBase and Firebird Developer Maga- plans for the developer community. I to Dolphins”. As editor I should em- zine”! met with Jason in Moscow on May 23 at phasize that this article is his personal www.ibdeveloper.com 4 © Copyright 2005-2006, All right reserved www.ibdeveloper.com 2006 ISSUE 4 OLDEST ACTIVE RTFM - Regarding Those By Helen Borrie Free Manuals [email protected] quaint side effect of the Firebird discover that full, free-beer documen- A “wanna-be” culture is the oft-sung tation is available and can be at your lament, entitled “Where Are My Free fingertips with minimal effort. Manuals?” I’m undoubtedly a bit over- Besides that, and top of the agenda the original chapters need more work sensitive to the assertion that users currently, Firebird-Docs also has in than others, while some others need of a totally free database engine have hand a large volume of user documen- to be laundered to eliminate content some indisputable right to expect to tation that is work-in-progress, around that seems too Borlandish for peace of pay nothing, ever, for up-to-date user 20 weighty chapters that began life in mind. Paul has a couple of chapters documentation. As the author of a Very 2002, as a Firebird 1.0 ebook manual of “Using Firebird” almost ready to go Fat Book about Firebird, I doubt I will that was distributed to subscribers of now. As the various chapters become ever get happy about those list mes- the IBPhoenix CD service. The Volume ready for use with Firebird 2.0 and 1.5, sages and private emails that criticise I manual, “Using Firebird”, was given to so they will be built and published. Greedy Me for getting it published com- the Firebird Project in 2004 as Frame- mercially instead of just giving it to you maker 6 source code under open docu- That’s where your free manuals are: in as a gift. It took a year and I’m not even ment licensing. Converting the arcane the hands of the willing few. The Docs close to making any profit out of it. I Adobe sources to the Firebird Docs proj- project (see http://www.firebirdsql. never expected I would. But–ouch!–it ect’s custom Docbook XML format took org/index.php?op=devel&sub=doc) ur- hurts. a lot of work for a couple of people. gently needs some reasonably accom- plished writers of English, with Fire- Contrary to popular belief, Borland Since then, updating those chapters bird skills, to pick up the XML sources did not release the IB 6.0 documenta- has fallen largely to Paul Vinkenoog, of these chapters and upgrade them tion set sources in 2000, nor any other the very same guy who picked up the to Firebird 2.0, taking in Firebird 1.5 form of documentation. One of the few unfinished, unusable Docbook system along the way.