Hi all,

There is now an official preview release - v0.5.0 - available on PyPI:
https://pypi.org/project/firebird-driver/

All core driver functionality works, except handling of limbo 
transactions due to error discovered in Firebird (should be fixed in 
soon to be released Firebird 3.0.6).

This preview version was released because the driver architecture is 
evolving rapidly, and I would like get some feedback before the initial 
release planned for end of June.

Some important notes about the driver architecture:

1. It uses namespace package "firebird", and the driver is distributed 
as "firebird.driver" package. There are other packages that share the 
same namespace: "firebird.base" and "firebird.butler". In future I'd 
like introduce "firebird.lib" package for extension libraries (former 
schema, monitor and other extension modules in FDB).

2. Although the initial driver design was close to FDB, there are 
significant differences and the driver architecture and API will diverge 
further from FDB or KInterbasDB. The sole backward "compatibility" is 
defined as compliance to Python DB API 2.0. So the new driver is not and 
will not be a drop-in replacement for FDB.

Here are some main decisions related to implementation and architecture:

a) Safe use. This translates to extensive use of type hints and 
annotations, including Protocols etc. Also many arguments are defined as 
keyword only to avoid ambiguity and improve code readability. This is 
one from main reasons why Python 3.8 is minimal version required.

b) Wrong run-time conditions (like not closed connection) and some 
arguments are checked ONLY as asserts. So optimized Python code does not 
performs any such checks. Note that used trace/audit could  be also 
affected by optimization (depends on how you use it, see firebird-base 
documentation for details).

c) Compact code. It often means that latest Python features are used 
anywhere it makes sense (that includes := operator etc.).

d) Simplicity. This for example also means minimal number of names 
defined, so all various constants and flags used by Firebird API are 
defined as Python enums/flags. That same apply to number of function 
parameters (with few exceptions).

3. The driver uses "firebird.base" package, which is a collection of 
modules that have general applicability, like extended configuration, 
context-driven logging and trace/audit, hooks, work with structured 
binary buffers, extended data structures etc. See:
https://pypi.org/project/firebird-base/
and raw documentation at https://firebird-base.rtfd.io/
This package is a shared base for current and future Python development 
projects under Firebird Project umbrella (currently the driver, soon the 
Saturnin and QA suite etc.)

The driver uses almost all features provided by "base" package, but 
specifically the use of hook mechanism and context-driven logging and 
trace/audit are potentially the most valuable improvements, so any 
usability feedback would be appreciated. I also plan to take advantage 
of extended configuration, so any ideas or suggestions about driver's 
configuration options would be appreciated.

4. With release of Firebird 4.0 beta 2, I started to adapt the driver to 
new Firebird version. Part of this adaptation is new architecture that 
moves some functionality into separate "inner" classes, so it could be 
switched at run-time according to used Firebird version (or ODS). So 
far, all information-related functionality (methods and properties) in 
Connection and Transaction was moved out into "Info" objects, accessible 
through "info" property (i.e. Connection.info.<method> etc.). The 
Services class was renamed to Server, and over next month I'll move out 
all services-related functionality into series of separate 
domain-specific inner objects like "backup", "config", "trace", "users" etc.

The reference documentation is here:
https://firebird-driver.rtfd.io/

5. Please note, that FDB is now considered as legacy driver, and its 
development will be discontinued together with 2.5 once Firebird 4.0 
will be released later this year. However, one FDB maintenance release 
is planned before that, so if you have any pending issues or pull 
requests for FDB, please let me know.

best regards
Pavel Cisar
IBPhoenix


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