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Author Topic: IBX2 now available on Pre-release  (Read 2660 times)

tonyw

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IBX2 now available on Pre-release
« on: December 07, 2016, 12:00:18 pm »
MWA Software is pleased to announce the release of IBX2 for Lazarus. This is formally a pre-release. Although the software has been put through more extensive testing that any previous release of IBX for Lazarus, there are nevertheless considerable changes to the codebase and a period of in service experience is needed before IBX2 should be considered for production use. User reports, both positive and negative, are encouraged.

IBX2 is available for download from http://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/ibx2

The IBX2 headlines are:

  • Full support for both the Firebird 3 API and the legacy Firebird API.
  • Support for Firebird Arrays including a new Data Aware control derived from a TCustomStringGrid.
  • Reduced RAM footprint.
  • Support for embedded SQL statement execution.
  • Extensive testing has been performed with emphasis on avoiding memory leaks and to ensure that the performance is at least as good as previous versions.
  • Further bug fixes (see changelog).

IBX2 requires a minimum of FPC 3.0.0 and Lazarus 1.6.0.

The original IBX code has been split into two packages: the main IBX package which provides the non-visual components, and a new fbintf package (see separate announcement). The fbintf package provides a common interface for the Firebird 3 API and the legacy Firebird API and is the means by which embedded SQL statement execution is supported. The fbintf package may also be used on its own and has the potential to provide a common Firebird API to all FPC database applications.

IBX2 includes much improved documentation. There is a 108 page user guide for IBX itself and an 89 page user guide to the Firebird Pascal API provide by the fbintf package. There are also 15 example programs included in the package.

IBX2 is intended to be backwards compatible and most user applications should re-compile with no issues. However, there are differences and the user guide includes a section on upgrading to IBX2.

tonyw

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Re: IBX2 now available on Pre-release
« Reply #1 on: January 09, 2017, 05:46:19 pm »
MWA Software is pleased to announce the 2nd pre-release of IBX2 for Lazarus. It may be downloaded from http://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/ibx2

This second pre-release fixes several problems with the first pre-release including an issue with processing large blobs (> 64K) using the FB3 API, and event handling. Issues with Character Set NONE have also been resolved.

This version also sees considerable enhancement to TIBExtract and TIBXScript. TIBExtract has been updated to ensure proper dependency order with the extracted SQL. Data extract now includes generator values, binary blobs and arrays. The latter two data types are extracted as text objects using a simple XML format. TIBXScript has been updated to support the processing of embedded XML values as exported by TIBExtract, as well as interactive use, and support for Create Database, Connect and Drop Database statements.

The changes to TIBExtract and TIBXScript can be seen in the updated example program "fbsql". This now includes the capability to dump an entire database including binary blobs and arrays into a single text file and to recreate the database by reading from such a text file. While less compact than gbak format, this nevertheless is potentially very useful for tasks such as complex DDL changes with multiple dependencies, or removing not null constraints. fbsql can now also be used interactively from the command line.

Although nearing stability, a further period of field testing is believed appropriate before IBX2 is declared suitable for operational use.

 

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