Firebird 5.0 introduces many improvements without any changes in architecture or operation, the
most important are:
- Parallel (multi-threaded) operation for backup/restore, sweep and index creation
- Partial indices
- SKIP LOCKED clause for SELECT WITH LOCK, UPDATE and DELETE statements
- Inline minor ODS upgrade
- Compiled statement cache
- PSQL and SQL profiler
- Support for WHEN NOT MATCHED BY SOURCE for MERGE statement
- Support multiple rows for DML RETURNING
- New built-in functions and packages
- Denser record-level compression
- Network support for scrollable cursors
The final release does not include any user-visible changes compared to the Release Candidate 2.
All the changes across the Beta and RC stages can be found in the CHANGELOG.