Today, Embarcadero is announcing the release of a new version of its InterBase Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), called InterBase 2020. InterBase is a powerful, zero-administration, small-footprint database engine that can power your server and even run on your mobile devices as an embedded database.
The InterBase 2020 release adds a number of new features, including tablespaces support for InterBase, allowing for better performance on servers with multiple data storage options.
Database Tablespaces
Tablespaces support is the top new feature added in the InterBase 2020 release.
Tablespaces allow for better performance and more balanced and optimized use of the hardware. Technically this feature allow a database object definition to specify a storage location in a particular logical file collection. This is especially beneficial for disk technologies, allowing you to better mix the use of fast SSDs and large HDDs. This is a key difference, since prior to InterBase 2020, all of the files for a database had to be mapped to the same storage. A database administrator can leverage tablespace characteristics to optimize runtime database performance. Selective tablespaces including active data can be backed up and restored as needed to minimize backup/restore time.
New OS Platform Support
InterBase 2020 expands the OS platform support. Embedded InterBase (IBLite and IBToGo) is now available for Android 64-bit and macOS 64-bit. This allows RAD Studio developers to build InterBase enabled 64-bit Delphi applications and target both the Google Play Store and macOS App Store. The full list of supported InterBase 2020 IBLite and IBToGo platforms include Windows, macOS, Linux, Android and iOS. Supported platforms for InterBase 2020 Server Edition include Windows with macOS and Linux support currently in beta and coming later.
Enhanced Performance Monitoring
Performance Monitoring of index usage in InterBase 2020 gives you current statistics on what indexes are in use in the database, and how active they are for various queries (optimization, order by clause etc.). This expands on what we already provide in terms of monitoring statistics for various other entities like tables, stored procedures, triggers, attachments, transactions etc.
Data Dictionary DDL
Database tools can greatly benefit from a standard DDL syntax they can use to apply various descriptions to document the user’s database schema. New ALTER DESCRIPTION syntax allows you to describe any database entity (for e.g. table, index, stored procedure, generator etc.) in a standard (and independent) way without needing to embed the description as part of the entity definition.
SQL Optimizations
Transform inequality operators and not operators to their opposite representation for index based retrieval. Inequality operators, such as <, <=, !=, <>, >, >= can be transformed and optimized. For e.g. Conditions of the form “NOT A>0” can now get transformed to “A <= 0” by the SQL optimizer to use index retrieval for better performance.
Security Enhancements
InterBase 2020 uses OpenSSL 1.0.2s across all platforms to avail recent vulnerability fixes from OpenSSL project.
IBConsole Improvements
InterBase 2020 comes with an enhanced IBConsole GUI for Windows. It supports the latest feature set including Tablespaces and Data Dictionary modifications and includes enhanced support for InterBase’s patented Change Views functionality. InterBase 64-bit Edition now includes a 64-bit native IBConsole application, that will allow larger datasets to be retrieved in the query window.
Phased Delivery
InterBase 2020 embedded versions and InterBase Server Edition for Windows are immediately available. Server editions for Linux and macOS will follow shortly.
Additional Information
For more info, see the InterBase product page at: https://www.embarcadero.com/products/interbase
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OpenSSL 1.0.2 was only supported until the end of 2019. Why use it for Interbase 2020, which needs to be supported for years? OpenSSL 1.1.1 was released in 2018 and will be supported through 2023. This decision leaves users vulnerable to OpenSSL security vulnerabilities. It’s not really a security “enhancement”.