Visual Studio 2017 Version 15.4 Released

You can now use CMake for Linux C++ development in Visual Studio

That could be interesting in cross compiling Firebird from Windows side to Linux/WSL

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2017/10/10/visual-studio-2017-version-15-4-released/

Firebird 3 on Apple IOS

One side effect of new Firebird 3.0.3 builds for Apple Macosx is that now there is a Mach-O dynamically linked shared library for arm_v7 that can be used on IOS.
You can ask for details on Firebird-devel 
ps: For Firebird 2.5.x there is a build on Paul's blog also Egor Pugin created Cmake files for IOS Builds (I didn't tested that route yet)

Firebird 4.0 Alpha 1 release is available for testing

Firebird Project announces the first Alpha release of Firebird 4.0, the next major version of the Firebird relational database, which is now available for testing.

ADO.NET provider 5.11.0.0 for Firebird is ready (with .NET Standard 2.0 support)

New version 5.11.0.0 of ADO.NET provider for Firebird is ready for download. This release is about .NET Standard 2.0. Now the .NET Standard 2.0, with all the new APIs supported, version is available. Another new feature is support for passing key over the wire for encrypted databases (you need to have server side plugin for this feature, i.e. this from IBPhoenix). New connection string property crypt key is available for that. The value is base64 encoded data representing the key.

Jaybird 3 with Firebird 3 embedded example

Mark Rotteveel published a guide and example program using Firebird 3 Embedded with Jaybird 3. The sample you can find it on https://github.com/mrotteveel/jaybird-embedded-example.

Firebird inside Firebird in DotNet External Engine (FbNetExternalEngine)

You can load any .NET code in FbNetExternalEngine also as Proof Of Concept you can also load Firebird Embedded inside that in server (Firebird inside Firebird in DotNet External Engine).

Firebird 3.0.3 for MacOSX (Beta)

A beta version of a 64bit Firebird 3.0.3 for MacOSX is now available as a download for those of you who might be interested in trying it. http://www.ibphoenix.com/download/firebird/30

Changing the HASH function (Firebird CORE-4436)

There is an interesting discussion on firebird-devel about changing and extending the hash function in Firebird (related to CORE-4436)

Firebird support for Decfloat will be enabled in Firebird 4.0

Firebird support for Decfloat will be enabled in Firebird 4.0 (Can be tested with latest snapshots)

Decfloat is a new SQL:2016 standard type introduced by IBM in DB2

Firebird Documentation Funding 2017

Documentation Funding 2017 Reached 5000$ of the 5000$ Goal https://www.firebirdsql.org/en/doc-funding-2017/

The Firebird Project's 2017 project is to translate into English the Firebird Developer Guide, a Russian-language work sponsored by IBSurgeon and Moscow Exchange, edit and review it and publish it in the project's documentation library. For this project, as ever, we need funding. This is your opportunity to make it happen, by contributing whatever you can to our crowdfunding campaign.

HSQLDB binary format import

Tender approved in the budget by the TDF board


In order to remove the legacy Java / HSQLDB database completely, and move fully to Firebird in LibreOffice 5.4 it is necessary to be able to import old document data with high fidelity from the HSQLDB binary file format which we have used (for performance) inside so many of our existing ODB files. This task involves reading the existing (reasonably simple) Java serialization code, and writing an (import only) filter to import this data safely into base.