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Firebird 5.0 introduces many improvements without any changes in architecture or operation, the most important are:

• Parallel (multi-threaded) operation for backup/restore, sweep and index creation
• Partial indices
• SKIP LOCKED clause for SELECT WITH LOCK, UPDATE and DELETE statements
• Inline minor ODS upgrade
• Compiled statement cache
• PSQL and SQL profiler
• Support for WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE for MERGE statement
• Support multiple rows for DML RETURNING
• New built-in functions and packages
• Denser record-level compression
• Network support for scrollable cursors

The final release does not include any user-visible changes compared to the Release Candidate 2.

All the changes across the Beta and RC stages can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Binary Packages

New features and improvements

• Allow to configure Firebird in POSIX using relative directories with options --with-fb* (#7918)
• Add backward compatibility option that disables joins transformation (#7910)
• Performance issue with time zones (#7854)
• Difficulty returning the product version with the legacy connection (#7819)
• Extend RDB$GET_CONTEXT('SYSTEM', '***') with other info from MON$ATTACHMENTS (#7818)
• Don't update database-level statistics on every page cache operation (#7814)
• Improve SKIP LOCKED implementation (#7810)
• Update Windows distribution with new zlib version 1.3 (released 2023-08-18) (#7755)

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Binary Packages

Improvements

• RDB$GET/SET_CONTEXT(): quoting the missing namespace/variable makes output more readable (#7539)
• Update Windows distribution with new zlib version 1.3 (released 2023-08-18) (#7755 )

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Language Reference | Binary Packages

New features and improvements

• Use ParallelWorkers setting from firebird.conf as default for all parallelised operations (#7682)
• Make Android port (client / embedded) work inside apps (#7469)
• Add support for QUARTER to EXTRACT, FIRST_DAY and LAST_DAY (#5959)
• Better processing and optimization if IN <list> predicates (#7707)
• Make trace config parser resolve symlinks in database file path in trace configuration (#7692)
• Getting the current DECFLOAT ROUND/TRAPS settings (#7642)
• Allow nested parenthesized joined table (#7576)
• Optimize creation of expression and partial indices (#7559)
• Add ability to query current value of parallel workers for an attachment (#7536)
• Add COMPILE trace events for procedures/functions/triggers (#7466)
• Add REPLICA MODE to the output of the isql SHOW DATABASE command (#7425)
• Surface internal optimization modes (all rows vs first rows) at the SQL and configuration levels (#7405)
• Make ability to add comment to mapping (COMMENT ON MAPPING ... IS ...) (#7046)

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Binary Packages

Improvements

• RDB$GET/SET_CONTEXT(): quoting the missing namespace/variable makes output more readable (#7539)
• Avoid non necessary index reads (#7494)
• Add switch to control in guardian timeout before killing Firebird server process (#7468)
• Update zlib to version 1.2.13 (released 2022-10-13) (#7437)
• Add REPLICA MODE to the output of the isql SHOW DATABASE command (#7425)
• Improve reliability of plugin manager (#7418)
• Allow FB-known macros in replication.conf (#7294)
• Remove TcpLoopbackFastPath and use of SIO_LOOPBACK_FAST_PATH (#7259)
• Nbackup RDB$BACKUP_HISTORY cleanup (#7186)

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Language Reference | Binary Packages

What's new

• RDB$GET/SET_CONTEXT(): quoting the missing namespace/variable makes output more readable (#7539)
• Avoid non necessary index reads (#7494)
• Add switch to control in guardian timeout before killing Firebird server process (#7468)
• Update zlib to version 1.2.13 (released 2022-10-13) (#7437)
• Improve reliability of plugin manager (#7418)
• Remove TcpLoopbackFastPath and use of SIO_LOOPBACK_FAST_PATH (#7259)
• 41 bugs fixed

Release Notes | Quick Start Guide | Binary Packages

New features

• Parallel (multi-threaded) operations (#1783, #3374, #7447)
• Support for partial indices (#7257)
• SKIP LOCKED clause (#7350)
• Inline minor ODS upgrade (#7397)
• Compiled statement cache (#7144)
• PSQL and SQL profiler (#7086)
• Support for WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE in the MERGE statement (#6681)
• Built-in functions UNICODE_CHAR and UNICODE_VAL (#6798)
• RDB$BLOB_UTIL new system package (#281)
• Support multiple rows being returned by DML with the RETURNING clause (#6815)
• Optimize the record-level RLE algorithm for a denser compression of shorter-than-declared strings and sets of subsequent NULLs (#4723)
• More cursor-related details in the plan output (#7441)

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Binary Packages

Improvements

• New built-in function BLOB_APPEND (#6983)
• Trace: provide performance statistics for DDL statement (#7208)
• Make it possible to avoid fbclient dependency in Pascal programs using firebird.pas (#7194)
• Ignore missing UDR libraries during restore (#7168)
• Update zlib to version 1.2.12 (#7161)
• Improve indexed lookup speed of strings when the last keys characters are part of collated contractions (#7093)
• Improve performance of CURRENT_TIME (#7092)
• ON DISCONNECT triggers are not executed during forced attachment shutdown (#7042)
• Firebird port for Apple M1 architecture (#7041)
• Improve performance of STARTING WITH with insensitive collations (#7038)
• Trace: provide ability to see STATEMENT RESTART events (or their count) (#6730)

More details can be found in the CHANGELOG.

Release Notes | Language Reference | Binary Packages

What's new

• Make it possible to avoid fbclient dependency in Pascal programs using firebird.pas
• Update zlib to version 1.2.12
• Improve indexed lookup speed of strings when the last keys characters are part of collated contractions
• Faster execution of indexed STARTING WITH with UNICODE collation
• 17 bugs fixed

Release Notes | Quick Start Guide | Binary Packages

What's new

• 14 bugs fixed

Release Notes | Quick Start Guide | Binary Packages