FirebirdClient 2.5 Final released
I’m happy to announce, after about 47 000 000 seconds of thinking and development, release of FirebirdClient 2.5. This new shiny release contains couple of very interesting new features:
- Implementation of Firebird 2.1 protocol improvements. These improvements are focused on making the communication more efficient on slow and with high latencies networks like the internet.
- Entity Framework support. Entity Framework is new, rich OR mapping and modeling tool, sitting on the top of ADO.NET. It is store agnostic, using ADO.NET provider to work smoothly, and the FirebirdClient has now build-in support for it.
- Windows integrated auth. Firebird server is now able on Windows to authenticate users using a system (ActiveDirectory, etc.), and when you omit username and password FirebirdClient will try to negotiate with server this kind of authentication.
- Timeout for wait transactions.
Of course, this release contains also lot of bug fixes and performance improvements. You can see the most important on http://tracker.firebirdsql.org/sr/jira.issueviews:searchrequest-printable/temp/SearchRequest.html?&pid=10003&fixfor=10170&fixfor=10340&fixfor=10261&fixfor=10240&fixfor=10230&status=5&status=6&sorter/field=issuekey&sorter/order=DESC&tempMax=1000. I’m also happy to say, that we have again full set of builds available for download. You can download build for .NET 3.5 (and unit tests), .NET 2.0, Compact Framework, Mono (Linux build) and also ASP.NET web providers.
One of the early adopters, SMS-Timing, of Entity Framework support for Firebird comments:
“Thanks to Jiri’s (link) work the Firebird .NET Data Provider made a lot of progress and is now even supporting the Entity Framework. Because of the adaptations we were able to use the newest .NET technologies in a modern programming environment together with a well known Firebird Database. In our industry (entertainment) the customers expect new and exciting software, and therefore the development tools need to be cutting edge. These developments in Firebird have a big impact on our products, and we hope that it brings the same boost to the Firebird Community itself. A preview of our newest software: www.fast4thefuture.com, http://www.sms-timing.com/en/software_kiosk.php.”
You can download the new version on http://www.firebirdsql.org/index.php?op=files&id=netprovider.



There's 10 Comments So Far
May 22nd, 2009 at 15:41
Is there up-to-date documentation available somewhere?
May 22nd, 2009 at 19:20
Sure. As the FirebirdClient is ADO.NET 2+ compliant provider, you just need to check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/e80y5yhx.aspx.
May 25th, 2009 at 12:25
over 6 years of full-time development! sure?
May 25th, 2009 at 12:41
Why? 47 000 000 seconds is roughly 543 days.
May 25th, 2009 at 13:01
some one has posted the same error before. I am wondering if this release fixes the problem. I tried with FireBirdl 2.1 and FBClient 2.5. I continue to get all colums in the model as keys while I have only one.below is the messages from visual studio:Message 1 The relationship ************* has columns that are not part of the key of the table on the primary side of the relationship which is not supported, the relationship was excluded.Error 4 Error 75: Key Part: ***** for type *************. All parts of the key must be non nullable.
May 25th, 2009 at 13:09
RTFM http://tracker.firebirdsql.org/browse/DNET-203 or http://blog.cincura.net/id/228440/ .
May 25th, 2009 at 16:24
Thanks Jiri for efforts in getting this work out. you mentioned SMS-Timing as early adptors. Could you please share their server setup. are they using FireBird 2.1 or the yet to be released 2.5Thanks
May 25th, 2009 at 23:38
They are using 2.5 (and 2.1) for development and 2.1 for production.
June 8th, 2009 at 23:25
Firebird recently announced the RTM of FirebirdClient 2.5. This new release now provides full support
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