MWA Software is pleased to announce the release of IBX2 for Lazarus. This is formally a pre-release. Although the software has been put through more extensive testing that any previous release of IBX for Lazarus, there are nevertheless considerable changes to the codebase and a period of in service experience is needed before IBX2 should be considered for production use. User reports, both positive and negative, are encouraged.

IBX2 is available for download from http://www.mwasoftware.co.uk/ ibx2

The IBX2 headlines are:

• Full support for both the Firebird 3 API and the legacy Firebird API.

• Support for Firebird Arrays including a new Data Aware control derived from a TCustomStringGrid.

• Reduced RAM footprint.

• Support for embedded SQL statement execution.

• Extensive testing has been performed with emphasis on avoiding memory leaks and to ensure that the performance is at least as good as previous versions.

• Further bug fixes (see changelog).

IBX2 requires a minimum of FPC 3.0.0 and Lazarus 1.6.0.

The original IBX code has been split into two packages: the main IBX package which provides the non-visual components, and a new fbintf package (see separate announcement). The fbintf package provides a common interface for the Firebird 3 API and the legacy Firebird API and is the means by which embedded SQL statement execution is supported. The fbintf package may also be used on its own and has the potential to provide a common Firebird API to all FPC database applications.

IBX2 includes much improved documentation. There is a 108 page user guide for IBX itself and an 89 page user guide to the Firebird Pascal API provide by the fbintf package. There are also 15 example programs included in the package.

IBX2 is intended to be backwards compatible and most user applications should re-compile with no issues. However, there are differences and the user guide includes a section on upgrading to IBX2.