[ Thanks to mariuz for this link.
]
The Firebird Project is
pleased to announce the release of Firebird 2.0 Beta 1 kits for
immediate download
and testing.
This version of Firebird 2 is an beta version, meant for field
testing only and not for use in production.
Bugs, problems, etc. can be posted to the
Field Test bug tracker or to the Firebird Development
List.
Firebird 2 release contains a large number of new features:
- incremental hot backup
- derived tables (subqueries in FROM clause)
- storing databases on raw devices
- new EXECUTE BLOCK allows the client to call an “unnamed stored
procedure” which is sent as a command - IIF(condition, value1, value2) added as a shortcut to CASE WHEN
condition THEN value1 ELSE value2 END - CROSS JOIN is supported (“a CROSS JOIN b” equals “a INNER JOIN
b ON 1 = 1”) - ROWS introduced to replace FIRST/SKIP
- SEQUENCE introduced as a shortcut to GENERATOR
- “NEXT VALUE FOR sequence” introduced as a shortcut to
“GEN_ID(sequence, 1)” - Default values for stored procedure arguments
- Index length limit (252 bytes) is removed
- Expression indexes introduced
- Optimizer improvements
- New string functions: LOWER() and TRIM()
- Security improvements (better password encryption, active
protection agains brute-force attacks, users can change their own
passwords…)
Beta 1 includes fixes for several problems that showed up in the
testing of Alpha kits. Please read the
Release Notes for more details.
Feedback, input and comments related with this release will be
appreciated.