At 04:18 a.m. 2/09/2015, Gour gour@... [Firebird-general] wrote:

>As someone who would like to use Firebird mostly as embedded database
>(of course, no idea what the future will bring about) and just aobut to
>start learning about it, do you recommend to start with 3.o which is
>available in Debian's "experimental" in order to avoid re-learning stuff
>during 2.5 --> 3.0 migration?

As Carlos explained, this "experimental" beta is a precursor to the next major release. It's "experimental" enough that I'd warn a noob away from being an experimenter. Experienced developers are the target of beta releases because it is they who find the bugs when something seems not to work as it should.

Go for v.2.5.4 - it is very stable and has a well-established base of very experienced developer-users: the very same folk who help out the noobs in the firebird-support list. (If you try to ask support questions in this list, you'll get moved on!)

Migrating to Fb3 once it is released is not the dire horror that Carlos' seems to imply in his comments. If you have Vol. 3 of The Firebird Book Second Edition, you can read all about backup and restore with the gbak utility. You simply back up a database created in v.2.5 (ODS 11.2) using the v.2.5 gbak and restore the backup using the v.3.0 gbak--that gives you a migrated database.

>What about the docs? 3.0beta2 release notes are extensive, but I wonder
>about QuickStart Guide and Language Reference? Are the old docs still
>mostly relevant for learning Firebird?

OK, the LangRef updates have been meticulously kept up to date after each full release and sub-release by the Docs team, most specifically by Paul Vinkenoog. As you have no doubt observed already, Paul is a highly lucid and thorough documenter with a standard of English that knocks the socks of most native English speakers. So the v.2.5 LangRefUpdate (LRU) is up to date.

Meanwhile.....I am today doing the final bits and pieces to a major documentation project - the first FULL Language Reference for Firebird. This evolved from a project among the Firebird community in Russia last year, assembling a volume that takes in the LRU and whole new sections for (previously mostly undocumented) DDL and PSQL. We crowd-funded a translation of the whole thing into English. I've spend the past two months (until today-YAY!!) editing the "Runglish", correcting some errors and converting the whole Word document manually into our XML (DocBook 4) source. HUGE job. The reviewers will get the initial PDF build today, so publication is not far off.
Is there any plan to produce The Firebird Book Third Edition covering

>3.0 in paper soon? (I simply like holding concrete books in my hand and
>despite having Kobo ereader prefer to read from the paper.)

Not TFB3e, but Vol. 4 of TFB2e - in cellulose and ink, rather than concrete - covering Firebird 3 and the new API is under development and I'll be able to get back to it now that -- gasp! -- the LangRef project is almost done for the time being.

Denis Simonov is working on a LangRef for Firebird 3 (in Russian) . As I understand, Denis is going to do it directly in DocBook - he is currently "back-porting" the Russian version of the v.2.5 book into DocBook, so we won't have this horrendous conversion to do over.

>It seems Firebird is good option for FPC/Lazarus development, do you
>have any specific hints in regard?

Personally, I recommend sniffing out IBObjects (www.ibobjects.com) and joining Jason Wharton's user group. I haven't used the (beta) FPC components but I've been using IBO with Delphi for 16 years.

Cheers,
Helen