[Firebird-devel] Firebird version and Interbase/third-party tools compatibility for v1.0 and beyond

[Mark O'D. <mar...@lu...>]

Hi All

Along with the discussions about the details of the next release and the
Admin group has also been discussing the best methods of addressing the
current Firebird compatibility issues for third-party tools and path for
a longer term solution.

Here are the decisions which we arrived at:

1 - For v1.0, the "version string" returned by the server will be fixed
as "6.2.0.xxx".  The engine and install packages will, however, carry the
version number of "v1.0.0"

2 - The Windows install packages will be changed to ensure that they
will overwrite any existing client libraries, regardless of version.
Thus, ensuring that the latest Firebird client has been installed
(instead of keeping the old IB 4.x/5.x/6.x version). And if possible the
install will rename the existing dll rather than deleting it.

3 - The v1.0 Server/Client API will be extended to allow for tools to
interogate the server to determine the engine flavor (Firebird vs.
Interbase) and the 'real' Firebird version number (i.e. "1.0.0.xxx").
Full details of the API changes will be made available in the next
couple of days.

4 - To address backward compatibility, the next major release of
Firebird will listen on two ports: 3050 for InterBase(r) compatible
clients, where the engine will provide an InterBase(r) compatible
interface; and another port, yet to be decided upon, for new Firebird
client connections.  The new port will return "1.0.0" version strings,
and allow the introduction of Firebird specific features (such as
compressed over-the-wire protocol, more robust logon protocol, etc...)
that would otherwise break backward compatibility.   It is expected the
name of the Firebird client shared object/dynamic link library will also
change to a Firebird specific name at this time.  The new Firebird
client will allow connection to either the compatible 3050 port or the
new FirebirdSQL server port.


Thanks to all who participated in the discussion and helped resolve 
these issues.


Posted on behalf of:

The Firebird Admin Team (The FAT)

by Mark.

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