Closed Feature Requests

Category: Client/GDS32

SF ID Description Group/Status  
447396 TCP Port 3050 used by default Feature - Added v1.0
 
The client and server will now use TCP port 3050 if no entry in the Services file is found.

This should solve a common client/server installation problem.

447400 TCP Port in connect string Feature - Added v1.0
 
The TCP port can now be specified in the connection string, thus allowing for easy support for port # other than 3050.

For Win32, the connect string would be: "Server/Port:Drive\Directory\Database.gdb", for other ports it would be "Server/Port:/device/Directory/Database.gdb"

480749 isc_database_info() returns counter values Feature - Added v1.0
 
The isc_database_info() call now returns the counter values for:
- Oldest Transaction
- Oldest Active Transaction
- Oldest Snapshot
- Next Transaction

Category: Core Engine

SF ID Description Group/Status  
446173 64 Bit Database I/O Feature - Added v1.0
 
Enable 64bit file I/O to allow for single database files to exceed 2/4GB in size.

421028 Automatic Affinity in ibserver startup Feature - Added v1.0
 
This is a Windows NT/2000 issue.

At startup the engine will look in the IBConfig file for the new "CPU_AFFINITY_MASK" value to determine the CPU mask to use for the server process. The default setting is CPU 0 (the first CPU).

The value is a bit-mask, accordingly, a mask value of "3" represents CPU 0 and CPU 1 and "8" represents CPU 4.

446181 Enable support for 16kb pages Feature - Added v1.0
 
Modify the engine and GBAK routines to allow for the an increased page size to be specified beyond the current 8kb page size.

This will allow for a greater database size as well as can allow for the developer to tune the database to meet their hardware environment.

447008 Win32 Forced Writes Default = ON Feature - Added v1.0
 
With the introduction of IB 6.0 the default settings for newly created databases, under Win32, was changed to OFF. This change was made to improve database performance but at the expense of database integrity/recovery.

Category: DSQL

SF ID Description Group/Status  
446177 Add TOP/First and LIMIT syntax to SELECT Feature - Added v1.0
 
Add TOP/First and LIMIT syntax to SELECT statements, ala mySQL and PostgreSQL.

447020 Case Insensitive Hungarian Collation Set Feature - Added v1.0
 
The new case insensitive Hungarian collation set, developed and tested by Sandor Szollosi (ssani@freemail.hu).

447009 DROP GENERATOR implemented Feature - Added v1.0
 
The command DROP GENERATOR has been implemented.

447014 Double hyphen (--) as comment Feature - Added v1.0
 
Some tool devs and end users claimed for one-line comment as other servers have. They aren't recognized in other position, so don't count of them being as flexible as C++ double-slash token.

446237 Eliminate "Column not found error" Feature - Added v1.0
 
This has to be one of the most frustrating error messages which the system produces. The system now reports the name of the unknown column as well as the line/column position of the reference.

447405 Group By UDF() Feature - Added v1.0
 
UDFs can now be used when specifying GROUP BY syntax.

447404 Incomplete Alter Domain kills IB Feature - Added v1.0
 
The following incomplete SQL command, kills the engine:
        alter domain dom set;

447380 Recreate Table syntax Feature - Added v1.0
 
The RECREATE TABLE has EXACTLY the same syntax as CREATE TABLE.

The only difference is that the latter will drop the table if it already exists before creating the new one. If there's no previous table, it simply behaves exactly as CREATE. RECREATE will only complain if (of course) there's some dependency on the table being redefined or the table is being used currently.

RECREATE is a workaround for the problem of dropping a table before you can create it again. The problem is that dropping it can produce several errors, for example, table in use, table has dependencies and table doesn't exist.

Category: GBAK

SF ID Description Group/Status  
447391 New option for -V switch Feature - Added v1.0
 
The -V (Verbose) option of GBAK now allows for a 'counter' value to be specified -- i.e. GBAK ... -V 20000

This value will provide additional user feedback, as the data rows are backed-up or restored. Once GBAK has processed the defined number of rows (either backed-up/restored or re-indexed), GBAK will print message indicating the running row count value.

By default, the counter value is 10,000.

Category: ISQL

SF ID Description Group/Status  
451414 New PLANONLY option Feature - Added v1.0
 
Support for PLANONLY setting, allows for a statement/query to be submitted to the engine and the plan retrieved, without executing the statement/query.

Category: Linux ports

SF ID Description Group/Status  
451415 Added -NONAGLE switch Feature - Added v1.0
 
Disabling the TCP/IP Nagle Algorithm typically improves speed on slow networks.

The Nagle TCP/IP algorithm was designed to avoid problems with small packets, called tinygrams, on slow networks. The algorithm says that a TCP/IP connection can have only one outstanding small segment that has not yet been acknowledged. The definition of small varies but usually it is defined as less than the segment size which on ethernet is about 1500 bytes.

By default, the socket library will use an internal algorithm known as Nagle's algorithm for buffering bytes on write before actually sending the data in order to minimise actual physical writes.

The presence of the new switch on Linux allows developers to determine, for themselves, the possible pro's and con's of using this alternate packet handling approach.

Category: UDF/Built-In Functions

SF ID Description Group/Status  
447403 New SubStrLen UDF Feature - Added v1.0
 
The new SubStrLen is to replace the previous SubStr function, which did not handle cases of position references beyond the end of the field data.

The definition of the function is:
substrlen(str, start, length)
where,
str - the string to be parsed
start - the string position to start from
length - the number of characters to return

447004 New UDF Library using Descriptors Feature - Added v1.0
 
The new library FBUDF has been designed to use the new support for descriptors, thus enabling support for detecting null values. The new functions are as follows.

Null testing:
NVL and NULLIF

Date manupulation:
DOW => (Day of Week) Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday ...
SDOW => (Short Day of Week) Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu ....
GetExactTimestamp => Get current time, with milliseconds
AddMillisecond, AddSeconds, AddMinute, AddHour, AddDay, AddWeek, AddMonth and AddYear

String manipulation:
RIGHT => This will work only for 1-byte charsets.
STRING2BLOB => String to BLOB

Numeric manipulation:
TRUNCATE and ROUND

446208 Passing values by descriptor to UDFs Feature - Added v1.0
 
It is sometimes necessary to determine whether a values passed to a UDF is NULL. The current approach which passes parameters by value prohibits this test -- a NULL is passed as an empty value, which can't be distinguish from a 'real' empty/zero value.