Software update: Firebird 2.5.0 rc2

Well-known databases for storing large amounts of data are of course Oracle with its 11g database, IBM with the DB2 database and Microsoft with SQL Server. Another database management system is Firebird, which has its origin in Inprise’s Interbase database, today known as Borland Software, whose history dates back to this page can be read. This relational database can be installed on a variety of operating systems, including the Linux and Windows platforms, making it widely deployable. The developers have released the second release candidate of version 2.5.0 with the following quick announcement and list of changes from version 2.5.0 rc1:

Firebird 2.5 Release Candidate 2 Now Available

The Firebird team is pleased to announce that kits for field-testing the second release candidate for Firebird 2.5 are now available. Both 32-bit and 64-bit kits are available for Linux, Windows and MacOSX/Darwin Intel platforms. Please test well and report any bugs directly to the firebird-devel list. Please do not post questions about this pre-release version to the firebird-support list.

The following bugs were reported as fixed in the second release candidate phase:

Core Engine/DSQL/API:

• (CORE-2842) When ISC_events was replaced with semaphores, some timeouts were replaced with infinite waits, similar to init/shut helper threads. One timeout was inadvertently lost.
• (CORE-2836) The API function fb_cancel_operation() was incorrectly modifying rdb_status_vector.
• (CORE-2824) Every connect/disconnect would leave small memory and handles leaks.
• (CORE-2822) The error “no current row for fetch operation” was being thrown when a subquery included a non-trivial derived table.
• (CORE-2820) Queries with PLAN ORDER were exhibiting small memory leaks as a side effect of an earlier, major fix.
• (CORE-2817) A stored procedure or trigger containing a query with PLAN ORDER could fail if the attachment in which the module had first executed was disconnected.
• (CORE-2815) Tidy-up of a logic condition that could cause the page inventory page to be marked for change after it was already changed.
• (CORE-2811) “Unsuccessful execution” error under some conditions when updating a record.
• (CORE-2806) Views based on procedures could not be created if the procedure’s output fields participated in an expression.
• (CORE-2797) When a default value was defined for a stored procedure parameter, it was being stored with an extraneous character.
• (CORE-2785) An improperly handled BLOB transliteration problem showed up under specific conditions, viz., where an input argument string in single-byte Cyrillic text, for storing as COMMENT with an object definition, overstepped the maximum 64 KB size of a non -initial BLOB segment when transliterated. Its surplus bytes were causing an immediate transliteration error instead of being deferred for inclusion in the subsequent chunk, as they should have been.
• (CORE-2768) A request to alter or drop a procedure that had a TYPE OF parameter declared would lead to an attempt to delete the referenced domain.
• (CORE-2766) Error “page 0 is of wrong type (expected 6, found 1)” was being thrown while accessing a table that was not corrupted.

DSQL:

• (CORE-2783) An access violation would occur when a recursive query was used as a subquery in the SELECT list and its result was specified as an ORDER BY criterion.
• (CORE-2755) The SIMILAR TO predicate was producing wrong results.

Server Crashes:

• (CORE-2840) The engine would crash if a NULL attachment handle was passed from the Y-valve.

Security and Privileges:

• (CORE-2790) Authentication was failing if the “mixed” method was specified in the Authentication parameter of firebird.conf.
• (CORE-2765) Use of the RDB$ADMIN role was failing to provide SYSDBA rights for GRANT and REVOKE.

Service Manager:

• (CORE-2778) Allowing the same service handle to be used in different threads could cause a segmentation fault in services.

International Language Support:

• (CORE-2804) Problems with COMMENT ON and strings using character set introducer syntax.

Command Line Utilities:

• isql:
  • (CORE-2837) Asynchronous query cancellation (via Ctrl+C) in isql was not working on Windows.
  • (CORE-2831) Database and user name should not be in the output when a script is extracted.
  • (CORE-2792) isql was producing bad metadata extraction syntax for a procedure having parameters defined using the TYPE OF syntax. The SHOW PROCEDURE code handled it correctly.
  • (CORE-2741) Metadata extract would misinterpret the DDL of a CHECK constraint if the CHECK keyword was in any character mix other than all lower case or all upper case.
  • (CORE-2735) When trying to show a view based on a procedure, isql would hang.
• gbak:
  • (CORE-2793) The binary representation of a backup file was demonstrated to be not consistent from one backup to another, when tested over multiple backup/restore cycles of the same data. It was reported as applicable to all gbak versions since v.1.5.4. To date, it has been fixed here, in v.2.1.4 and in the v.3.0 alpha.
  • (CORE-2771) The server could crash while backing up a database containing a global temporary table.
• fbsvcmgr:
  • (CORE-2779) Calls to fbsvcmgr that returned data were displaying the user list header at the end of the output.
• fbtracemgr:
  • (CORE-2781) An access violation would occur when fbtracemgr was called with bad command line switches.

POSIX Only Issues:

• (Unregistered regression :: Builds) When configure was missing both the –prefix switch and a complete set of the new –with-somedir switches, NONE was substituted in place of the correct /usr/local/firebird into all scripts generated by configure.
• (CORE-2814) On SPARC, the server was crashing in the routine map_sort_data with a bus error.
• (CORE-2807) A pre-emptive file I/O problem could occur with tracing enabled on Linux.
• (CORE-2775) The fbtrace.conf file was missing from the Linux packages.

Windows-Only Issues:

• (CORE-2769) On heavily loaded Windows systems, local connect (XNET) could fail due to the client timing out while waiting for the server to set the xnet_response_event. To help with this problem, the ConnectionTimeout parameter in firebird.conf has been activated for XNET connections.