Intercom V02n02, 1998

SUMMER 1998

InterBase Gains Its Own Track at BorCon ’98

Letter from the President

Helen Kruse Larkin

By Jim Weil

BorCon is here! This year InterBase has a new, innovative booth and a more than full track lined up for August 8–12 in Denver. Step by step we’ve been working on all phases of the event to see that everyone gets a worthwhile and memorable look at some new aspect of InterBase and InterBase Software Corporation. Exhibit hall booth In your copious spare time between sessions and talking to old friends, check in at the InterBase booth. We can guarantee you’ll learn something there you didn’t know before and have a good time to boot. More Technical Sessions Our roster of presenters is a good mix of longtime and new InterBase customers and InterBase employees. You’ll be able to meet some of those listserv names or phone voices you know from a distance. Our “Meet the Team” session will feature an extended team with representatives from Marketing and Support as well as Engineering. It’s a prime opportunity for all to bring their perceptions and perspectives to

bear on InterBase, contribute to the focus of the product and the company, and maybe continue the discussion into the evening. See “InterBase Sessions at BorCon” for a detailed schedule of sessions. Note that there are some time periods when more than one talk is scheduled, so you’ll have to miss one or the other. These are marked in the table with an asterisk (*). Product Address The InterBase Product Address will be delivered a second time on Wednesday, August 12, 1– 2:15 P.M. as a vendor/sponsor presentation. If you miss hearing Mike Tossy on Monday, take advantage of his session on Wednesday. Check your program though; the vendor presentations may be in a separate location from the core product sessions. InterBase in a Day tutorial Sunday, August 9 In back-to-back sessions Robert Schieck of MER Systems, Inc. conducts a two-part tutorial on continued on page two

Dear Partner, I wanted to take this opportunity to recap our year at InterBase Software Corporation, and let you know what we’re planning as we move forward. It’s been an exciting year for InterBase! Our first step was to roll out InterBase 5, the latest version of InterBase. We renewed our commitment to Novell with support for NetWare 4.11. We are seeing amazing popularity for the new Linux port with over 6000 downloads of the initial release. We have also been busy with the marketing of InterBase, having launched a new advertising campaign, increased our tradeshow presence, and grown our PR activities. We have doubled our continued on page five CONTENTS

InterBase Gains Its Own Track at BorCon ’98 .......................... 1 Letter from the President ............... 1 InterBase Sessions at BorCon ......... 2 Writing UDFs on Linux .................. 3 InterBase Meets “The Penguin” ...... 3 New Tools ........................................ 5 Using Digital Documentation with Acrobat Reader ............... 6

InterBase at BorCon ’98 continued from page one

InterBase (IB200T and IB201T). Both the morning (8–12 a.m.) and the afternoon (1–5 p.m.) sessions are based on updated InterBase 5 training materials. This is as compact a way as you’ll ever find to introduce a new employee to InterBase or to take the time yourself to focus on InterBase 5 usage. Attendees will receive their own copies of the courseware

manuals—useful references after as well as during the conference. Even more content Also be on the lookout for the following CD-only papers generously contributed by two of our speakers: Dan Ehrmann: • Controlling the InterBase Workgroup Server from Delphi

Matthew Hopkins: • Looking Under the Hood: How InterBase Really Works Helen Kruse Larkin is Product Manager in the InterBase Marketing department. She can be reached at [email protected]

• Up and Running in InterBase

InterBase Sessions at BorCon Sunday, August 9 8:00–12:00 p.m. IB200T 1:00–5:00 p.m. IB201T

A101

InterBase in a Day: Part 1 InterBase in a Day: Part 2

Rob Schieck

MER Systems www.mers.com

Monday, August 10 IB002 8:00–9:15 A.M.

A101

PRODUCT ADDRESS: InterBase

Mike Tossy

InterBase Software Corp

9:30–10:45 A.M.

IB014

A101

InterBase 5.0 on NT Success Story and Setup Guide

Loren French

Colorado Mtn. Express

1:30–2:45 P.M.

IB100

A101

Introducing InterBase Procedure and Trigger Language

Dan Ehrmann

USWeb Corp. www.usweb.com

3:00–4:15 P.M.

IB202

A101

UDFs Updated for InterBase 5

Greg Deatz

InterBase Software Corp.

7:30–8:45 P.M.

IB004

A101

PANEL: Meet the InterBase Team

InterBase Staff

InterBase Software Corp.

9:00–10:15 P.M.

IB200

A101

InterClient: by the InterClient R&D People

Paul Ostler

InterBase Software Corp.

5:45–7:00 P.M.

EXHIBIT HALL

BorCon Reception Sponsored by InterBase

Tuesday, August 11 IB102 8:00–9:15 A.M.

A101

Introduction to InterBase

Markus Kemper

InterBase Software Corp.

9:30–10:45 A.M.

IB206

A101

SQL Roles: Users and Security in InterBase

Brett Bandy

InterBase Software Corp.

1:30–2:45 P.M.

IB300

A101

Database Replication: InterBase with Delphi

Matthew Hopkins

Dunstan Thomas Ltd. www.interbase.dthomas.co.uk

3:00–4:15 P.M.

IB208*

A101

Direct InterBase Access from Delphi

Ravi Kumar

InterBase Software Corp.

3:00–4:15 P.M.

IB006*

A105

Year 2000: InterBase is Ready, are You?

Charles Miedzinski

Inprise Corp.

4:30–5:45 P.M.

IB204

A101

Writing to the InterBase API using Delphi

Greg Deatz

Hoagland, Longo, Moran Dunst & Doukas

Wednesday, August 12 IB010* 8:00–9:15 A.M.

A105

Upsizing from Paradox to InterBase

James Arias-La Rheir

InterBase Software Corp.

8:00–9:15 A.M.

IB008*

A101

Upsizing from dBASE to InterBase

Alan Katz

InterBase Software Corp.

9:30–10:45 A.M.

IB008

A101

InterBase 6 New Feature Preview

Mike Tossy

InterBase Software Corp.

1:00–2:15 P.M.

IB210*

A101

Native Client Server goes RAD with InterBase Objects

Jason Wharton

Computer Programming Solutions www.ibobjects.com

1:00–2:15 P.M.

IB002*

A214

The Vendor Showcase: InterBase is the Database

Mike Tossy

InterBase Software Corp.

2:30–3:45 P.M.

IB012

A101

10 Things You Can Do to Make InterBase Scream Bill Karwin

InterBase Software Corp.

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InterBase Meets “The␣ Penguin” InterBase Goes to LinuxExpo ’98 Amelia Arnett

Interbase Software Corp. attended LinuxExpo ‘98 to officially announce and exhibit its newest port, InterBase 4.0 for Red Hat Linux 4.2. As we provided iced tea and lemonade to ward off the North Carolina heat, the Linux community was keeping us busy with questions and requests for demos. We had many well attended presentations thoughout the day, and we were impressed and gratified by the amount of interest in the product. The LinuxExpo attendees were especially interested to hear that this special release of InterBase 4.2 for Linux is free. The level of interest in the product is illustrated by the number of downloads of InterBase since the software became available on April 29th of this year. To date, there have been over 6000 downloads of InterBase worldwide. Visit the Linux download section on our web site: http://www.interbase.com/ download/linux The commercial release of InterBase 5.1.1 for Linux is well under way, and its release is scheduled for the third quarter of 1998. The commercial release will be priced similarly to the Windows NT, NetWare, and SCO OpenServer versions of InterBase, and it will be sold worldwide by the same Inprise Corp. sales representatives who sell other InterBase products. ■ Amelia Arnett is Associate Marketing Manager for InterBase Software Corp. She can be reached at [email protected]

Product Manager Helen Larkin (far right) chats with developers at LinuxExpo ’98

“Well done on a superb product for Linux – I’m now a convert for future development!” – Allen O’Neill, vorteXtechnologieslimited, Dublin,Ireland

Writing UDFs on Linux Bill Karwin

User-defined functions (UDFs) in InterBase provide a powerful mechanism for extending the database server technology with dynamically-loaded functions. You can compile C or C++ functions, create a shared library, and install the library on the database server. There is a data definition command to make the functions in your library available as part of the SQL language supported by the InterBase server. Compiling shared libraries is highly operating system-dependant, and therefore it is a matter for platform-specific documentation to show how to make UDF libraries. In the case of the free release of InterBase 4.0 for Linux, the instructions for compiling UDF libraries were omitted from the platformspecific release notes. Here are compiling and linking instructions for making a dynamically linkable library of InterBase4.0 UDFs on the Linux platform. 1. Compile your code containing UDFs: cc -c -O -fpic -fwritable-strings udf.c

2. Link your code object file into a dynamically linkable shared library: ld -G udf.o -lm -lc -o udflib.so

3. Declare UDF entry points in your database (see the Language Reference for full syntax of the DECLARE EXTERNAL FUNCTION statement): isql mydatabase.gdb

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New Tools from the InterBase Community Bill Karwin

The InterBase community regularly releases tools and develop-ment components on the Internet. Many of these are available from the InterBase Download area at the Dunstan Thomas Ltd. web site: www.interbase.dthomas.co.uk/ ibdownloads.htm Marathon 1.1 Gimbal Software Services Marathon is a commercial SQL Tool that allows you to create and manage SQL Database metadata. It is a sophisticated replacement for the “Notepad and ISQL” develop-ment methods. This release in-cludes many enhancements over 1.0b, including a script executive, full transaction control, a Visual Query Builder and full perfor-mance statistics gathering and display. Download a free evaluation copy from the Dunstan Thomas site or from: www.gimbal.com.au/marathon.html Stored Procedure Debugger Gimbal Software Services GSS has released an alpha version of a fully interactive client side stored procedure debugger for InterBase. You can download it from: www.gimbal.com.au/ proddown.html UDFlib for InterBase␣ 4.0 for␣ Linux MER Systems Robert Schieck of MER Systems has released a port of his library of over 60 user-defined functions, compiled for the Linux operating system. The Linux version of UDFlib is compatible with UDFlib for other

platforms. Download UDFlib from the following location: www.mers.com/dludfliblinux.html

NT and requires the BDE (32-bit). Download it from the Dunstan Thomas site.

IBPerl Beta 0.5 Bill Karwin This is a Perl 5 module that provides an object-oriented interface to the InterBase API. The latest release (beta 0.5) adds support for Windows and Linux. You can download it for free from: www.interbase.com/download/

InterBase Observer SQL Profiler Fleet River Software A useful tool for InterBase developers, this tool unlocks the info about table hits that is revealed by the isc_database_info( ) call. It does a few other things too, like return a breakdown of timings for prepare, execute and fetch. It is simple to use, building on the WISQL style of application, and allows you to save performance results. Download an evaluation version from the Dunstan Thomas site listed above, or from the following location: www.fleetriver.demon.co.uk

IBObjects Computer Programming Solutions IBObjects, the Delphi component set for direct InterBase programming, has been revised with new features and enhance-ments. Download an evaluation copy or purchase the software at the location: www.ibobjects.com Free IB Components Gregory H. Deatz Free IB Components, a set of Delphi components that conforms to the Delphi3 custom dataset architecture, has been revised with new features and enhancements. Download it from: www.interbase.com/download/ IB*Doc Dunstan Thomas, Ltd. This is a freeware InterBase database documentation tool. The reports from this product include: Domains, Exceptions, Generators, Stored Procedures, Tables, Triggers, Views, UDFs, Users, and privileges IB*Doc runs on Windows 95 and

InterBase Differencing Finder Alex Malinin IB Difference finder contains both a 16-bit and a 32-bit Windows utility for comparing two databases. Download it from the Dunstan Thomas site. SQL ScriptWriter Neil Butterworth SQLScriptWriter is an intelligent SQL editing tool for users of Windows 95/ NT that allows you to edit, test and execute your SQL from within a single, integrated environment. Among its many productivity features are pointand-click access to data and metadata, macros and SQL-92 keyword completion. Download version 2.0b from the Dunstan Thomas site. continued on page five

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Letter from the President continued from page one

revenues year over year and we have made significant strides in establishing ourselves as a standalone company. Moving forward we are working on several new and on-going projects. We are of course already planning new versions of InterBase, and we are continuing to build our Partner Program. Our website is being renovated to make it easier to use and a more useful tool for our developers. We are also working on revamping our infrastructure to better support sales, licensing, customer service and technical support so that we can improve our service to all of you. Look for some

exciting announcements about InterBase 5.5 and 6.0, replication, new VAR support, new marketing activities, and InterClient—all aimed at making InterBase your database of choice! One of our most exciting recent developments is the InterBase presence at BorCon ’98. InterBase will host its own track for developers this year. We will have a booth at the show with exciting demos, and a unique giveaway item. Be sure to come by the booth to find out what it is! We will also host one of the events at the show. We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at BorCon this

New Tools

CREDITS

continued from page four

InterCom is a quarterly publication of InterBase Software Corporation. It is mailed to members of the InterBase VAR Program, and also published on the world-wide web.

MemProof MemProof is a Delphi utility for tracking memory and resource leaks, validating api calls and stressing applications. Includes hooks to over 30 Interbase API calls. Download version 0.9.0.5 from the Dunstan Thomas site.

CON> ENTRY_POINT “myfunction” MODULE_NAME “udflib.so”;

The location of the UDF dynamic shared library is in /usr/lib by default, but may be elsewhere, determined by the colon-separated list of directories in environment variables LD_ELF_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The environment variables must be defined in the process scope of the application that accesses the InterBase engine; for remote connections, this is the InterBase server process gds_inet_server. Refer to the main page for dlopen(3) for details. ■

© 1998 InterBase Software Corporation. All rights reserved.

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CON> RETURNS INTEGER BY VALUE

InterBase® is a registered trademark of InterBase Software Corporation. InterClient™ and InterServer™ are trademarks of InterBase Software Corporation. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

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Writing UDFs on Linux

CON> INTEGER

Contributing authors and editors: Amelia Arnett Bill Karwin Helen Kruse Larkin Jim Weil

Bill Karwin is Manager of Technical Publications for InterBase Software Corp. He can be reached at [email protected]

Best Regards, James B. Weil President

SQL> DECLARE EXTERNAL FUNCTION func

InterBase Software Corp. 100 Enterprise Way, Suite B2 Scotts Valley, CA 95066-3249 Email: [email protected]

IB Logger This utilty can be used to “watch” an interbase database and log activity over a period of time. Monitors number of fetches, marks, reads and writes. Download it from the Dunstan Thomas site. ■

year. For those of you who cannot make it, please feel free to call or drop us an email at [email protected], and let us know what you’re doing with InterBase and how things are going for you. As I said in my letter last year to you all—we cannot and will not achieve any measure of success without you!

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Using Digital Documentation with Acrobat Reader Bill Karwin

You can now download the digital documentation for InterBase 5 from the InterBase Software Corp. web site. This documentation is also available on InterBase 5.1.1 product media. This documentation is in PDF format, and includes a full-text search index. To use it, get Adobe Acrobat Reader with the Search plugin from the following location: www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/ readstep.html The InterBase PDF files are enabled with hypertext links in the following instances. • The table of contents is clickable. • The index at the back of each book is hypertext; click on the page numbers. • Most phrases like “see page n” are hyperlinks.

1 0 0 E N T E R P R I S E WAY S C O T T S V A L L E Y, C A 9 5 0 6 6

Here are some other general Acrobat Reader tips that help you navigate PDF documents. Acrobat Reader can display the document page with a bookmarks window pane on the left. This bookmarks window is a treeview of the table of contents of the book. Clicking on bookmark entries causes a jump to the corresponding page. This helps you to find SQL reference entries more easily. To display the bookmarks, click the second button on the toolbar, press Ctrl-7, or use the menu item ”Bookmarks and Page” under the View menu. Acrobat Reader maintains a navigation history of views, like a web browser or the WinHelp viewer; as you jump from page to page, there is a history, so you can back up or go

forward in your history of views. Use the arrow buttons on the toolbar, or Ctrl-1, Ctrl-2, Ctrl-3, Ctrl-4, or under the View menu choose “First page,” “Previous page,” “Next page,” or “Last page,” respectively. “Go To Page...” is under the View menu, or is Ctrl-5. You can use “Find…” from the toolbar, or by pressing Ctrl-F, or under the Tools menu; repeat the last search with Ctrl-G. In future releases of InterBase, we will increase the quality and quantity of hypertext features in our online documentation, to make it an effective reference tool for database development. ■