Firebird 2.0 Beta Released

Bugs, problems, etc. can be posted to the Field Test bug tracker or to the
Firebird Development List.

Firebird 2 release contains a large number of new features:
   
incremental hot backup
   
derived tables (subqueries in FROM clause)
   
storing databases on raw devices
   
new EXECUTE BLOCK allows the client to call an "unnamed stored procedure" which is sent as a command
   
IIF(condition, value1, value2) added as a shortcut to CASE WHEN condition THEN value1 ELSE value2 END
   
CROSS JOIN is supported ("a CROSS JOIN b" equals "a INNER JOIN b ON 1 = 1")
   
ROWS introduced to replace FIRST/SKIP
  
   
SEQUENCE introduced as a shortcut to GENERATOR
   
"NEXT VALUE FOR sequence" introduced as a shortcut to "GEN_ID(sequence, 1)"
   
Default values for stored procedure arguments
   
Index length limit (252 bytes) is removed
   
Expression indexes introduced
   
Optimizer improvements
   
New string functions: LOWER() and TRIM()
   
Security improvements (better password encryption, active protection agains
brute-force attacks, users can change their own passwords...)
 

Beta 1 includes fixes for several problems that showed up in the testing of Alpha kits.
Please read the Release Notes for more details.

Feedback, input and comments related with this release will be appreciated.

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