Hello,

I'd like to announce the first public release of fbclient, a binding
of the Firebird client library to the Lua language, that is, a
collection of pure Lua modules that allows you to connect and execute
queries against the Firebird Relational Database.

Project website: http://code.google.com/p/fbclient/

Status: this is the first test/development release (full details at
http://code.google.com/p/fbclient/wiki/StatusAndFeatures -- the
project is in active development so you can expect fast bug fixing at
this stage).

Propaganda: http://code.google.com/p/fbclient/wiki/WhyLuaWhyFirebird

Authors: just me for now (but any help appreciated!)

Features:
- 3-layer API: binding -> procedural wrapper -> OOP wrapper
- written in pure Lua, all binding goes through alien
- aims at full API coverage, including the latest Firebird API additions
- decimals of up to 15 digits of precision with only Lua numbers
- full 64bit integer and decimal number support through bignum libraries
- multi-database transactions
- blobs, both segmented blobs and blob streams (only in the procedural
wrapper for now, soon in the OOP wrapper too)
- info API: info on databases, transactions, statements, blobs, etc.
- error reporting API
- service manager API: remote backup & restore, repair, user management, etc.
- can simultaneously work with multiple client libraries of different
versions, including the firebird embedded server library
- tested with Firebird 2.5b2 on Linux 32bit and Windows XP.

Limitations:
- events (looking for a way to have asynchronous callbacks in Lua)
- array support (does anyone ever use them?)
- blob filters (anyone use them?)
- support dialects 1 and 2 (anyone still using those ancient dialects?)
- port/test outside 32bit little endian environments
- testing with Firebird 1.5 (you really should upgrade)


As always, any feedback is welcome and appreciated.

Regards,
Cosmin.