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InterBase Makes its

Mark at the Borland
Conference
Amelia Arnett

Nashville, Tennessee—InterBase began

this quarter with its first-ever trade show
appearance as the InterBase Software
Corporation at the 7th Annual Borland
Conference (BorCon), held this year at
the magnificent Opryland Hotel
Convention Center.

The show was a success for InterBase

and its VARs, some of whom
demonstrated their product at the
The scene at the InterBase booth at the 7th Annual Borland Conference was one of almost
InterBase booth for other BorCon
nonstop activity. We were visited both by established VARs and many interested new ones.
attendees. InterBase VARs Pictured here in the dark uniforms are Quality Assurance Engineer Chris Levesque,
demonstrated products including: Associate Marketing Manager Amelia Arnett, and Account Manager Scott Schnaars.

• XCase, a database design and

maintenance tool from RESolution,
Ltd.
• SalesManager from Laconic Logic
• LeaseAware from Decision Systems,
Inc.
• TRANSMAN from TMT Software.
InterBase Software Corporation
President Jim Weil was “pleasantly
surprised and gratified by the amount of
support from conference attendees. It
was great to hear that they, too, thought
[becoming a formal Borland subsidiary]
was a good idea for InterBase, and some
gave us constructive criticism that was
genuinely helpful. We also met some
new people working on very interesting
client/server projects and had the
opportunity to talk with them about
deploying their solutions on InterBase.”
InterBase generated enough interest at
this year’s BorCon to warrant its own
track and a larger presence at next year’s
show, so be sure to let us know what you
would like to see from us. InterBase is
also making plans for more trade show
appearances in 1998. We’ll let you know
where you can find us in the future. Keep
your eye on www.interbase.com for
more information!
Amelia Arnett is Associate Marketing
Manager for InterBase Software Corp.
She can be reached at
aarnett@interbase.com
CONTENTS
InterBase Makes Its Mark . . . . . . . . 1
Q&A: Mike Tossy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Joy of GBAK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Behind the Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
Handling Deadlocks in Delphi and
C++Builder. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Welcome New InterBase Staff . . . . 6
 Q: What are the biggest surprises
so far?

Well, the technology continues to

surprise me. This product has been
completely underestimated by the
marketplace. Getting the word out has
got to be our number one priority! I was
also surprised that InterBase hadn’t been
better integrated into the Borland tools,
so that is also a key priority.

Q: In what way would you like to

integrate InterBase with the
Borland tools?
I think that InterClient—our new Java
interface—is a great example of the right
kind of integration. By providing our
own Java/JDBC driver we can provide
tight integration with JBuilder. It allows
a high performance interconnect. We can
The InterBase gang, including (l-r) Director of Finance Allison McEwen, President Jim
also provide access to InterBase’s
Weil, Borland Marketing Director for International Paul Beach, and Technical Publications
Manager Bill Karwin, quickly got into the country spirit at Opryland Amusement Park. unique technology—like event
alerters—which is harder to do if you
don’t own the connect technology. I
Q: Where were you before? think InterClient is a model for the kind
of connect technology we need to
Q&A: Mike Tossy A series of small companies, mostly in provide to other Borland tools like
the relational database arena. The largest Delphi and C++ Builder.
Director of Marketing and best known is Teradata. More
Each issue of InterCom features an recently a company called NeoVista that Q: What about Borland
interview with a key InterBase is working in the data mining area. DataGateway for Java and other
personality. This month, we interview BDE-based technology?
Mike Tossy.
They are also important. VARs who
Q: How long have you been with want applications that can run against
InterBase? multiple databases will want to use
DataGateway. But VARs who want the
Almost 4 months, I started on June 2, closer integration with InterBase will
1997. want to choose InterClient.

Q: What brought you to Q: How is InterBase 5.0 coming

InterBase? along?
Jim Weil called me up when he became So far, it is right on schedule. Shipping
President and asked me to take a look. this product on time is key. As we talk,
Well, I’ve been involved in the relational we’re in QA Beta 1 and by the time this
database market since the early 1980s is published we should be in QA Beta 2
and I was aware of InterBase almost or even Early Release.
since its beginning. I knew of its strong
technology and also its not-so-strong Q: What are these new terms
marketing. When I saw the opportunity “QA Beta” and “Early Release”?
here I just couldn’t resist.
QA Beta refers to the Quality Assurance
Beta Release. This is a program where
we give customers—many of whom are

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VARs — an early copy of the 5.0 release
and they help test it. The purpose is to
help us to find the bugs in our code.
There are two of these, thus “QA Beta 1”
and “QA Beta 2.” The “Early Release
Program” comes after QA Beta 2 and is
a chance for our VARs and other major
partners to test their applications against
the new code. The purpose here is to get
their integration started and to find any
problems at this level. All of this used to
occur under the rubric of “Beta,” but we
decide it was cleaner to clarify what was
expected at each phase. By the way,
guaranteed entry into the Early Release
Program is one of the benefits of
becoming an InterBase VAR.
Q: You also changed the release
schedule?
Yes, I felt that there had been too much
time between releases. So, for our
primary platforms we’ve committed to
an annual major release in December.
We’ve also added a regularly scheduled
maintenance release every June. Right
now, we’re planning InterBase 6.0 (Dec
1998) and InterBase 7.0 (Dec 1999).
Q: Who do you see as InterBase’s
competitors? How well does
InterBase compete against them?
Sybase’s SQL Anywhere and Microsoft
SQL/Server would be the big two.
I personally think that the Sybase
product should have been named “SQL
Hardly Anywhere”. The only place it
runs is on Microsoft operating systems.
What kind of anywhere is that?
InterBase runs Windows and NT, and on
UNIX, NetWare and OpenVMS: that is
more truly anywhere. SQL/Server has
that same problem, plus the advantages
and disadvantages of being from
Microsoft. We’ve joked about running
an ad campaign whose headline was
“InterBase: Smaller foot print than
their... word processor.” I believe being a
small, single-product focused company
gives us some flexibility advantages.
Q: What are your biggest
challenges ahead?
Marketing the product. We’ve got to rev
up the PR, promotions, and advertising.
InterBase can’t remain the “best kept
secret.” I’m really looking forward the
next 12 months as we begin to move the
message out.
Mike Tossy is the Director of
Marketing for InterBase Software
Corporation. He can be reached by
phone at 408-430-1505 or by email
at mtossy@interbase.com.
The Joy of GBAK
Bill Karwin
Like going to the dentist, backing up a
database is a chore that most of us would
prefer to avoid, even though we all know
the value of disaster prevention. In the
new 5.0 release, improvements to the
gbak tool make backing up and restoring
databases much more facile. gbak’s new
companion tool, gsplit, provide even
more benefits.
Performance Improvements
The InterBase developers have worked
hard to systematically analyze and
alleviate performance bottlenecks in
gbak. Now a backup executes an order
of magnitude more quickly than in the
previous version of InterBase,
particularly for databases with complex
metadata. You don’t need to change the
way you use gbak in order to take
advantage of these improvements.
Filtering Backup Data
In InterBase 4, gbak could read or write
raw data only to a disk file or a tape
device. In 5.0, you have another choice;
you can backup to the standard output,
and restore from the standard input. Use
the special word stdout in place of the
backup filename when writing backup
data to a pipe; use the special word stdin
when reading data from a pipe to restore
to a database.
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This new option allows gbak to take
advantage of filters such as compression
utilities to modify the input or output of
the tool. For example,
gbak -b employee.gdb stdout |
compress > employee.gbak.Z
uncompress -c employee.gbak.Z |
gbak -c stdin new_emp.gdb
Backing up Large Databases
Some databases may be so large that
their backup file won’t fit within the size
limit set by the operating system (this
limit is often either 2 or 4 GB; refer to
your OS documentation). InterBase,
with its multi-file database feature, can
easily have a database larger than this
limit. This is a serious constraint, since
the output of InterBase 4’s gbak utility is
only a single backup file.
In 5.0, we have added the gsplit tool as a
filter to allow backups to write to (or
read from) multiple files. Using the new
gbak feature of writing output to a pipe,
the gsplit tool takes the data stream and
writes it to several files in succession.
You specify the path, filename, and
maximum size of the files. Here’s an
example:
gbak -b employee.gdb stdout |
gsplit -split emp_part01.gbak 20m
emp_part02.gbak 15m
emp_part03.gbak 200m
The first file, emp_part01.gbak, fills
first, up to 20 megabytes. The next 15
megabytes of data write to
emp_part02.gbak. The excess writes to
emp_part03.gbak.The files can be
located on different filesystems (drives),
or even on NFS filesystems (mapped
drives).
To restore a database from these multiple
.gbak files, use gsplit with this syntax:
gsplit -join emp_part01.gbak
emp_part02.gbak
emp_part03.gbak |
gbak -c stdin new_emp.gdb
Using a Tape Device
Making a backup directly to a tape
device has been improved in InterBase
5.0. Tape device I/O is supported on
UNIX and Windows NT. If the data you
are writing is larger than one tape, gbak
prompts you to insert subsequent tape
media.
On UNIX, where tape is the appropriate
tape device file for your flavor of UNIX
(for instance, /dev/rct0 or /dev/nrst0),
use:
gbak -b employee.gdb /dev/tape
The syntax for writing backup
information directly to a tape on the
Windows NT platform is as follows:
gbak -b employee.gdb \\.\tape
Windows 95 has no named tape device,
so gbak cannot backup a database
directly to tape; you must backup to a file
on disk or network drive, then use your
tape backup software to write the backup
file to a tape device.
Scheduling Automatic Backups
You may find it useful to perform
backups on an automatic schedule, using
the operating system’s scheduling
facility. Here are examples of how to do
this on UNIX and Windows NT:
UNIX
On any brand of UNIX operating system,
you may use the standard utility cron.
Create a shell script containing your
gbak command and any other actions
that you want to associate with the task:
$ edit mybackup.sh
: better, dramatic improvements to the
gbak -user sysdba -password xxxxxxxx
-b /db/mydb.gdb stdout |
compress >/dev/tape
echo “Gbak completed at ‘date‘” |
mail root
Create a schedule for the task. See the
cron man page for details on the format.
Here’s an example of a schedule for
every Wednesday and Friday (days 3 and
5 of the week) at 10:30PM (2230 on the
24-hour clock).
# crontab -e root
30 22 * * 3,5 mybackup.sh
Windows NT
The utility for scheduling batch files on
Windows NT is called AT.
C:> edit c:\db\mybak.bat
gbak -user sysdba -password xxxxxxxx
-b c:\db\mydb.gdb \\.\tape
To create a backup schedule like the one
in the UNIX example, issue the
following command:
at 8:30PM /every:Wednesday,Friday
/interactive c:\db\mybak.bat
To configure NT to properly run batch
files with AT, you must first perform the
following steps:
1. log in as Administrator
2. go to the NT Control Panel / Services
3. highlight the Schedule service
4. click Stop for the Schedule service
5. click the Startup button
6. check the box marked “Allow service
to interact with desktop”
7. click Ok
8. click Start for the Schedule service
On both UNIX and NT, be sure to set
appropriate security on your batch file,
since it necessarily contains your
SYSDBA password. The scheduling
utility must be able to read the file, but
you don’t want any normal user to be
able to access the file.
PLANs in Stored Procedures
In InterBase 4, a design limitation in the
restore algorithm made it impractical for
a Stored Procedure or Trigger to contain
a query that used a PLAN clause to
override the query optimizer. In 5.0,
queries in Stored Procedures and
Triggers can have a PLAN clause and
still backup and restore correctly. Even
InterBase query optimizer reduce the
need for manual query optimization.
Look for the Following Articles
in Upcoming Issues of InterCom
4 IBPerl, the object-oriented package for Perl 5 programmers
to access the InterBase client API
4 More details of new InterBase 5.0 features
4 InterBase at work: case studies
4 Tips on upsizing Paradox applications
4 The InterBase Guru answers the really tough questions
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The many improvements in InterBase
5.0 have increased the performance,
flexibility, and convenience of backing
up and restoring databases. Now there’s
no excuse for avoiding this chore.
Bill Karwin is Technical Publications
Manager for InterBase Software Corp.
He can be reached at
bkarwin@interbase.com.
Behind the Scenes:
InterBase 5.0 Core Team
Helen Kruse Larkin
Everyone knows that a software release
doesn’t just happen. Many different
people and functions and activities play
their parts along the way. Making a
whole out of the sum of these parts
requires careful planning and
communication.
The Core Team is a small cross-
functional group, consisting of members
from several departments of InterBase:
Engineering, QA, Technical
Publications, Technical Services, and
Marketing. This team provides a regular
forum in which to compare progress,
identify bottlenecks, resolve conflicts,
establish priorities, and find the most
expeditious path to the best possible final
product. In general, the task is to deal
with problems sooner rather than later
and to keep a weather eye out for the
unexpected.
The 5.0 Core Team has been meeting at
least once a week since mid-August and
keeps its focus on the release schedule
and logistics as opposed to ongoing
functional activity or relocation to 1800
Green Hills or longer-range planning.
InterBase has so far made two beta
releases. The Early Release Program for
VARs will begin soon and then we’re
into the chute to reach the milestone of
first shipment to customers by mid-
December.
There will inevitably be issues that
surface between now and final release,
but then, that’s just why the Core Team
exists!
Helen Kruse Larkin is Product
Manager of Java Products in the
InterBase Marketing department.
She can be reached at
hlarkin@interbase.com.
Handling Deadlocks in
Delphi and C++Builder
James Arias-La Rheir
Regardless of the SQL server backend,
client applications that you develop in a
BDE-enabled development tool — like
Delphi, C++Builder or Paradox using
BDE-aware components — may
encounter a deadlock after issuing a
SELECT statement when another client
application locks a record by issuing an
UPDATE, DELETE, or INSERT
statement.
The BDE defaults to a mode that
automatically assigns a transaction level
of READ COMMITTED and commits
the transaction by doing a soft commit.
In InterBase, a soft commit is equivalent
to a commit retaining, corresponding to
the InterBase client API function
isc_commit_retaining(). Refer to the
API Guide for more information. Soft
commits are a feature of InterBase that
let the driver retain the cursor when
committing changes. Soft commits
improve performance on updates to large
sets of data. When an application does
not use soft commits, the BDE must re-
fetch all the records, even for a single
record change. With soft commits, the
BDE retains the cursor and does not need
to re-fetch. Explicit transactions started
by BDE client applications never use
soft commits. The default for BDE-
initiated statements is a transaction level
set up as NO WAIT, READ
COMMITTED, NO RECORD
VERSIONS. Because BDE does not use
record versioning in this mode, the
deadlock occurs when a SELECT tries to
read a record that another client has not
yet committed to the table.
The DRIVER FLAGS parameter in the
IDAPI32.CFG file allows you to specify
the transaction behavior of BDE-
initiated transactions against an
InterBase server. Use the BDE
Administrator or the BDE Configuration
Utility to view or modify this setting.
The DRIVER FLAGS parameter has
four settings that are described in Table
1. The two recommended modes are 512
and 4608, depending on which is the

Table 1. DRIVER FLAGS and Associated Problems

Driver Flag Isolation Level BDE/Application Problem
0 Read Committed/Hard Commit Deadlock - performance hit would occur on large tables if
Blank <NULL> deadlock did not occur.
512 Repeatable Read/ Hard Commit Performance hit on large tables as BDE will fetch cursor to
its previous location.
4096 Read Committed/ Soft Commit Deadlock - InterBase retains an interest lock until a hard
(Commit Retaining) commit is performed. See (1) below.
4608 (512 + 4096) Repeatable Read/ Soft Commit Changes (UPDATEs, INSERTs and DELETEs) in other
transactions are not seen and the soft commit maintains
the transaction’s “view” of the dataset. See (2) below.

(1) Long running BDE-initiated transactions prevent other transactions from performing DDL on any relations that the BDE
transaction has looked at. The workaround is to periodically issue an explicit commit to release the interest locks.
(2) Closing and reopening the data set (Query1.Close and Query1.Open) does not show changes made by other
transactions. Refreshing the view requires disconnecting and reconnecting to the database (Database1.Close and
Database1.Open). This may also require changing the Database1.KeepConnected property to False (default is True).
Another approach is to perform a literal Database1.StartTransaction immediately followed by a Database1.Commit. In
starting a transaction, the BDE closes out any transaction it has automatically active for the Database component (this is
in keeping with the SHARED_AUTOCOMMIT setting).

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 more desirable behavior to handle in the
application.
Beginning with the inline version of the
BDE v4.0, the transaction level
automatically defaults to NO WAIT,
READ COMMITTED, RECORD
VERSIONS. The DRIVER FLAGS
modes that use READ COMMITTED
also have the RECORD VERSIONS
option set. The inline version of BDE 4.0
shipped with the inline version of Delphi
3.0. You can identify this version of the
BDE by the timestamp of 4:01 A.M. on
the file IDAPI32.DLL.
In addition to specifying the appropriate
DRIVER FLAGS mode, you also limit
the chance of deadlocks by modifying
the MAX ROWS setting, which is found
on the same BDE DRIVERS page as
DRIVER FLAGS. The MAX ROWS
setting specifies the maximum number
of rows that the driver will attempt to
fetch for every SQL statement sent to the
server. This includes metadata (schema)
queries that the driver sends to the server
during a table open to retrieve column,
index, and valcheck information.
Limiting the number of rows that any
one SQL statement can retrieve from a
large table prohibits users from tieing up
server resources.
Since the MAX ROWS default is –1 (no
limit), it is conceivable that the SELECT
statement can retrieve more records than
the user actually requires. If
experimentation proves that users need
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only 50 rows at a time, then setting MAX
ROWS to 50 will reduce the occurrence
of deadlocks. Of course the BDE will
make additional fetches when necessary.
Be aware that if you set MAX ROWS
too low, you might not be able to open a
table because it cannot retrieve sufficient
metadata information from the database.
See the SQL Links help file
(SQLLNK32.HLP) for more
information on MAX ROWS.
Deadlocks are an issue with any SQL
server, but the BDE (through the
InterBase DRIVER FLAGS parameter)
can handle most of the problems
transparently, without a lot of manual
transaction control.
James Arias-La Rheir is a
Client/Server Technical Support
Engineer at InterBase Software Corp.
Welcome to New
InterBase Staff
Amelia Arnett
InterBase Software Corporation is
pleased to announce a successful first
quarter of recruitment as we settle into
our identity as a new company.
We have hired new Technical
Publications staff who are already
working hard to produce material for the
InterBase 5.0 manuals, and new QA and
R&D engineers to make that product a
success. Two people have joined our
marketing staff to help get the word out,
and we have a new Director of Finance
pictured earlier in our newsletter.
It has been a great first quarter—
welcome to all the new employees!
Credits
InterCom is a quarterly publication of
InterBase Software Corporation and is
sent free of charge to members of the
InterBase VAR Program.
Bill Karwin, editor
InterBase Software Corporation
1800 Green Hills Road, Suite 150
Scotts Valley, CA 95066
Email: bkarwin@interbase.com
InterBase is a registered trademark of
InterBase Software Corporation.
InterClient and InterServer are
trademarks of InterBase Software
Corporation. All other trademarks are
property of their respective owners.
 1997 InterBase Software
Corporation. All rights reserved.