[ Thanks to Pavel Cisar
for this release. ]
The Firebird Project
and the principals of the Yaffil project are very pleased to
announce the merging of the Yaffil project with Firebird. Former
Yaffil chief developer Oleg Ivanov is welcomed as the newest member
of the Firebird core developer team.
Yaffil, a Russian, Windows-only version of the Firebird database
engine, was built originally from the open source Firebird code
with a number of additional features. It began life as a private
project, before becoming available as a commercial distribution
from iBase.ru, of Moscow. Separate Yaffil development has since
ceased, product sales have been stopped and all the sources have
been released for merging into the Firebird 2.0 code base by the
Firebird development team.
For Firebird, the homecoming of the little red bird is welcome
news. First, it allows the two closely-related codebases to be
united in a single tree. Both will gain strength by moving forward
in a single direction. Secondly, it brings into the design scheme a
number of significant enhancements, optimizations, architectural
improvements and character sets/collations.
For Yaffil users, the proprietor of iBase.ru, Dmitri Kouzmenko, says
migrating to Firebird 2.0 will benefit them by enabling them to
- work with the cross-platform database server
- use the new features
- have access to full project source code.
He also notes that, as Firebird is being developed by a big team
of developers, partly financed by the FirebirdSQL Foundation, the
combined project will continue to develop and progress.
Coordinated efforts between the Firebird core developers and
Oleg Ivanov will ensure that Yaffil users will be able to migrate
easily to Firebird 2 with only minor changes to their applications
and databases. To Dmitri, this means that users will have Yaffil’s
advantages of better performance and lower CPU load along with the
benefits of the cross-platform server, an open source product and a
number of unique features. He considers that, rather than having
two teams spending energy on implementing conflicting features, it
would be more productive for them to work together on new features
and bugfixes.
The FirebirdSQL
Foundation is discussing a proposal to grant some funds to
assist with an early merger of Yaffil’s most useful special
features into the codebase for a forthcoming post-version 1.5
sub-release of Firebird.