Products.FirebirdDA 0.8.0

Firebird database adapter for Zope 5

FirebirdDA

FirebirdDA https://github.com/nakagami/Products.FirebirdDA is Zope database adapter for Interbase/Firebird.

Requirements

• Python >= 3.11

• Zope 5

Installation

buildout.cfg:

eggs =
    ...
    Products.FirebirdDA

Driver Configuration

FirebirdDA supports two Firebird Python drivers:

• firebirdsql (default, auto-detected)

• firebird-driver

Set the FIREBIRDDA_DRIVER environment variable to select a driver explicitly. In a Zope deployment this is typically done in zope.conf:

<environment>
  FIREBIRDDA_DRIVER firebird-driver
</environment>

If the variable is not set, FirebirdDA auto-detects: it tries to import firebirdsql first and falls back to firebird-driver.

To use firebird-driver, install it as an extra:

pip install Products.FirebirdDA[firebird-driver]

Connection String

The connection string uses space-separated key=value pairs:

dsn=host:/path/to/database.fdb user=sysdba password=masterkey

The dsn, user and password keys are passed directly to the driver’s connect() function. When using firebird-driver, the DSN is automatically converted from firebirdsql format (host:/path) to firebird-driver format (host:path).

Driver Differences

The two drivers differ in how they return fixed-length CHAR(n) values:

• firebirdsql strips trailing spaces from CHAR columns automatically (xsqlvar.py: SQL_TYPE_TEXT → rstrip()).

• firebird-driver returns CHAR values padded to the declared column width, as delivered by the Firebird wire protocol.

When switching from firebirdsql to firebird-driver, code that compares or displays CHAR values may need explicit rstrip() calls, or the column can be migrated from CHAR(n) to VARCHAR(n).

Test Tab

The ZMI Test tab supports ISQL-style meta commands (requires the Test Database Connections permission):

• show tables — list all user tables

• show table NAME — show columns of a table

• show views — list all user views

• show view NAME — show the view source

• show procedures — list all stored procedures

• show procedure NAME — show the procedure source

• show functions — list all user functions

• show function NAME — show the function source (Firebird 3+)

• show triggers — list all user triggers

• show trigger NAME — show the trigger source

• show generators — list all generators (sequences)

• show domains — list all user domains

• show exceptions — list all user exceptions

• show version — show Firebird engine version

• show database — show database name, engine version and current user

Changelog

Unreleased

Python 3.11+ modernisation

• Require Python 3.11 or newer; target Zope 5.

• Code style: f-strings, contextlib.suppress, proper exception chaining, remove unused imports and dead code.

• Unify docstring/comment style across the codebase.

• Extract ISQL meta command translation into a dedicated isql_meta module.

Driver support

• Add support for firebird-driver as alternative to firebirdsql.

• Automatic DSN format conversion between drivers.

• Fail fast on an unsupported FIREBIRDDA_DRIVER value.

Reliability

• Simplify connection retry logic and improve error resilience.

• Raise OperationalError when retries are exhausted instead of silently failing.

• Guarantee cursor cleanup by splitting query() per driver.

Error reporting

• Format firebird-driver error messages for HTML display.

• HTML-escape error text and the SQL snippet so the Test tab cannot break on markup or Zope TaintedString input.

ZMI enhancements

• Add ISQL show meta commands in the Test tab: object lists (tables, views, procedures, functions, triggers, generators, domains, exceptions), show table NAME (columns), show procedure/view/trigger/function NAME (object source, rendered with whitespace preserved so it copies cleanly), plus show version and show database.

• Show connection status in the object listing.

• Include SQL snippet in error messages for Manager callers.

Security

• Remove unused connection cache that held plaintext credentials.

• Restrict SQL snippets in error messages to Manager callers.

• Gate ISQL meta commands via the Test tab’s Test Database Connections permission instead of a Manager-role check, translating in the Connection’s manage_test (DA layer) rather than the shared query() path – so Z SQL Methods are never affected.

0.7.1 (2024-01-04)

• Reopen connection on “too many handles” errors and fix OperationalError output. [044144c]

• Add connection retries in query() method. [8cd2b8b]

0.7.0 (2020-06-20)

• Port to Zope 4 and Python 3. [1e2033f]

• Refactoring of forms, classifiers and imports. [9c7af69, 0984739, c2f8eda, 1e080d7]

0.6.x (2014)

• Disable connection pool (do not reuse connections across requests). [3fefc46]

• Enable set_autocommit(True). [a2e57f5]

• Declare Products namespace package. [3ebe2f8]

• Add trove classifiers. [0c61502]

0.5.0 (2012-01)

• Initial release by Hajime Nakagami, forked from ZKinterbasdbDA 0.5.0 and switched to the firebirdsql driver. [77e9b51, d7f6336]