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Keeping Up With the Joneses’ Database


FirstSQL gets triggers, constraints; mobile version on tap

By Edward J. Correia
June 1, 2005 — 
Application-specific database developer FFE Software in early May released FirstSQL 3.0, adding features that its CEO characterized as lacking in his own product but present in major competitors. It also plans a mobile edition this summer.

“We’re just playing catch-up,” admitted Lee Fesperman, CEO of the 16-year-old company based in El Cerrito, Calif. Version 3.0 adds support for database triggers, constraints and JDBC 3, and is the first major update since the company reorganized and renamed in June 2004; it was formerly known as FirstSQL Inc.

New to version 3.0 is the ability to create Java-based database triggers to kick off procedures from database activities. “Uses might include change validations, data-type validations and to optionally abort a change if it decides things aren’t proper. It’s also convenient for logging.”

Another useful new feature, Fesperman said, is sequence keys, which give developers the ability to automatically generate identity or surrogate keys for each new table. “Sometimes there’s confusion over which key should be used” during development, he said. Present in many competitive databases, the auto-increment capability helps avoid that confusion, he said.

He said the features also allow FirstSQL to work more easily with Hibernate—the popular Java object-relational persistence and query engine—including the Add Constraint and Drop Constraint commands that Hibernate assumes are present. FirstSQL 3.0 also now supports JDBC 3, which Fesperman said gives it the ability to retrieve generated keys and the Last Sequence function in SQL. “That’s an extra function for retrieving those.” The driver is sold separately and works with the server version only. “This expands our usability and makes it possible to talk to [FirstSQL] from .NET applications,” he said.

Available now, single-user Professional pricing has been reduced to US$495 per developer seat from $695 for version 2.75; Multiuser Enterprise edition pricing remains at $1,495. Runtime pricing starts at $50.

Going Mobile
Fesperman said that the price reduction was intended in part to seize on an opportunity. “There seems to be a certain fading by PointBase since its acquisition” by DataMirror in December 2003. “We’re trying to attract more developers in the mobile market.”

The company sometime this summer plans to release a version of its Professional edition with the object capability stripped out. “The object capability is expensive and doesn’t always work on some mobile devices. So we’d leave that out and [release] a pure SQL relational database.” Pricing was not disclosed.


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