FrontBase 4.1.1 - Release Notes

Introduction

FrontBase 4.1.1 represents the newest major upgrade to FrontBase and continues the established trend with significant new features being added in a mature fashion. Due to time constraints, there is no new version of the FrontBaseManager included as well as no detailed documentation of the new features. We are working on remedying this situation, but various customers have kindly asked us to release an official 4 build now.

Please observe that there is NO binary compatibility between FrontBase 3.x and FrontBase 4.x databases (see below).

All your existing applications that works with FrontBase 3.x, should work unmodified with FrontBase 4.x, i.e. there are no client side library changes.

The most significant new or enhanced features in FrontBase 4.1.1 are:

• 64-bit I/O system. The maximum database size is now 1,000,000 peta-bytes. A side-effect of the new I/O system is a feature called FrontBase Advanced Device Management ("table space" is a term another vendor is using), that allows you to distribute the various parts of a database across multiple hard drives and controllers.
• LookSee. Our full-text search feature has undergone a dramatic change from 3.x. LookSee is now not only much faster, but also far more scalable.
• Compressed backups. During generation of a backup, the resulting file can be compressed, offering a significant space reduction:

  WRITE BACKUP [TO '<path>'] [COMPRESSED];

  A restore can naturally be done directly from a compressed backup.
• Flat-file export. The WRITE ALL flat-file export is now up to 5 times faster than in 3.x.
• Transaction log. The transaction log and associated mechanisms, e.g. rollforward, has been made more robust and flexible. Transaction logs are also encrypted (if the database itself is encrypted).

Some of the new features that will be introduced with later versions of 4.x are:

• TRIGGERs. The full SQL 4 syntax and semantics of TRIGGER are currently being implemented. An expected release time will be early Q2 2004.
• Hierarchcial SELECTs. The full Oracle syntax and semantics for hierarchical SELECTs are currently being implemented. An expected release time will be sometime Q2 2004.

Installation and upgrade

If you are installing FrontBase 4.x on a system with no previous FrontBase installation or if you don't care about existing FrontBase 3.x databases, read no further. Simply install FrontBase 4.x and start using it.

If you are currently using FrontBase 3.x and wish to migrate existing databases, you will need to export each database into a flat-file version using the WRITE ALL statement (connect as _SYSTEM):

WRITE ALL OUTPUT(DIR = '<path>', TYPE = 'FrontBase', CONTENT = TRUE);

It could be a good idea to generate a backup prior to the WRITE ALL:

WRITE BACKUP;

Install FrontBase 4.x. For each database you want to migrate, you will need to follow these steps:

1. Create a new database with the same name (or a different name per your liking). It may be necessary to specify the -create option to create a new database unconditionally.
2. Connect as _system and execute this command:

   script /schema.sql;

Once the script command has completed, the database should now be in 4.x format. If you have any problems upgrading to FrontBase 4.x or migrating databases, feel free to send an e-mail to support@frontbase.com.