I’m delighted to announce that today Embarcadero has released a new version of its InterBase flagship database engine, InterBase 2020 Update 3. With this release, the company continues to improve the product’s quality and usability.
UX Enhancements
The most visible improvements are the user interface enhancements in the InterBase Manager utility for the Windows platform. In this release the InterBase Manager offers high-DPI support, and additional information like the version number and the current port in use, in an improved overall layout.
As part of the UX improvement we have changed the fonts, colors, and overall look and feel, making these forms more modern. Noticeably, InterBase Manager now uses the PerMonitor V2 Windows UI model, and that has been migrated to and compiled with the latest version of Delphi.
The InterBase Manager window in InterBase 2020 Update 3 (on the right) compared to previous versions (on the left)
In addition, the InterBase Server and Guardian property sheets have an improved UI (for example, the interface includes the entire path of the referenced folders rather than a trimmed version) and they are also made available when the database runs as a Windows Service.
General Improvements
Besides the UX enhancements, InterBase 2020 release 3 includes some additional features:
- Expression Index can now be used to optimize query filters using STARTING WITH and LIKE predicates matching input expressions
- In IBConsole, the Object window and WISQL window now execute SELECT statements in precommitted reads mode, so they don’t stick to the transaction in the database. With this change, normal GC and sweep of obsolete versions will not be held back.
InterBase 2020 Update 3 is also certified for use on more recent versions of the Windows operating system, Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.
Quality Work
The release also addresses customer support cases and internally found quality issues, listed in the Doc Wiki product documentation.
ADO.NET Support for Change Views
As part of the improvements to InterBase, the team has also added Change Views support to the ADO.NET driver. For more information on ADO.NET and Change Views, refer to the ADO.NET documentation, or read the announcement blog post at https://blogs.embarcadero.com/interbase-ado-net-driver-update-enhances-visual-studio-support/.
The new ADO.NET driver is available on GitHub and NuGet, as it is not part of the regular product installation.
More Information
You can find more information on InterBase and the 2020 Update 3 at the following links:
- The product page on the Embarcadero company website, https://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase
- The dedicated product site, https://interbase.com/
- The product documentation site, https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/InterBase/2020/en/Main_Page
- The Update 3 release wiki page, with the list of quality issues addressed, https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/InterBase/2020/en/What%27s_New_in_InterBase_2020_Update_3
- The Update 3 Release Notes
https://docwiki.embarcadero.com/InterBase/2020/en/InterBase_2020_Update_3_Readme
If you are an existing customer, the new version of the product is available on https://my.embarcadero.com, otherwise you can download the trial version at https://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase/developer/free-download