Why a Migration Guide?
Firebird 3 brings numerous innovations, such as the long-awaited full SuperServer’s SMP support, network and database encryption, local user authentication in the database, improvements in the communication protocol, in addition to several new features in different areas of the DBMS. All this made the migration process from an older Firebird version a bit more complicated than it was in previous versions, where, basically, all you had to do was replace the server with the new Firebird version or, at worst, a backup and restore of the database.
Moving to Firebird 3 can be a tricky process, and this Guide will help you in the process of migrating your existing databases and servers to Firebird 3, avoiding headaches and bad surprises! It also will give you tips regarding the use of Firebird 3 with legacy applications.
Table of Contents
- Index
- Dedication
- Thanks
- About the author
- Preface by Ann Harrison
- Introduction
- Icons used
- Basic but essential concepts!
- SuperServer vs. Classic vs. SuperClassic
- Classic (CS)
- SuperServer (SS)
- SuperClassic (SC)
- Embedded
- What architecture to choose?
- 32 vs. 64 bits
- Installing Firebird 3
- Installing Firebird 3 on Linux
- Installing Firebird on Windows®
- Server architecture
- Service or Application?
- Start automatically
- Client library (fbclient.dll)
- gds32.dll
- Authorization for legacy Firebird clients
- Checking whether Firebird is running
- Installing Firebird using the “Zip Kit”
- INSTSVC
- INSTREG
- INSTCLIENT
- Migrating Existing Databases to Firebird 3
- Why Migration?
- ODS (On Disk Structure)
- Test the database integrity with gbak
- Problems with character encoding
- Validating the metadata
- Recommended steps for migrating a database to Firebird 3
- Migrating 24x7 servers
- Tips to speed up the backup/restore process
- Users in Firebird 3
- Local users
- Passwords
- Initializing the security database
- Managing users using SQL
- Creating users
- Modifying users
- Deleting users
- Sec$users and sec$user_attributes virtual tables
- Preparing a script to insert users into the new server
- Protecting your data
- Creating a secure environment
- Encrypting the database file
- Conclusion
- Wire Protocol Enhancements
- Traffic encryption
- Traffic compression
- Enhancements for usage in high latency networks
- Connection strings
- Legacy syntax
- URL based syntax
- IPv6 support
- Firebird 3 and legacy applications
- .NET applications
- Jaybird applications
- Logical data type (Boolean)
- Connecting to Firebird 3 with an old client library (fbclient)
- Query performance
- Reserved words
- Manipulating the System tables (RDB$...)
- Testing application’s queries
- Using mon$attachments to get the number of active connections
- Default cache size for Classic/SuperClassic
- Mixing implicit and explicit joins
- Count() now returns a BIGINT
- Appendix
- Macros
- Configuration entries
- Glossary
Carlos Henrique Cantu is well-known in the Brazilian Firebird users' community, having launched (in 2001) the first Portuguese speaking portal devoted to Firebird, currently with more than 70,000 subscribed users.
Carlos has published dozens of Firebird articles in several programming magazines in Brazil, was the president of DUG-BR (Delphi Users Group Brazil), editor of the DB FreeMagazine, columnist of the ActiveDelphi magazine and organizer of the Firebird Developers Day conference - the biggest Firebird conference in the world - with an average of 450 attendees each year, and currently in its 13th year. He also published two best selling books about Firebird (Firebird Essencial, and Firebird 2 – both of them available only in Portuguese), spoke at five different International Firebird Conferences, at every Brazilian DDD (Delphi Developers Day) and FDD (Firebird Developers Day), and several other seminars about databases and programming.
