New Features in This Release

.NET 5 Support

The VistaDB Engine now ships with support for .NET 5.  The VistaDB Engine is now built for:

• .NET Framework 4.5.1 - The oldest version of .NET Framework supported by VistaDB 6. 
• .NET Framework 4.6.1 - To prevent .NET 4.6.1 from using the .NET Standard 2.0 version.
• .NET Standard 2.0 - For older versions of Xamarin Android, iOS, and Mac and newer versions of .NET Framework
• .NET Standard 2.1 - For .NET Core 3.* and newer Xamarin Android, iOS, and Mac.
• .NET 5.0 - For the latest .NET Core (e.g. .NET 5) and Xamarin.

To make it easier to use VistaDB in new projects that target multiple versions of the framework the VistaDB assemblies are provided as NuGet packages for local use instead of as individual assemblies.

Improved Locks for Single Process Usage

The handling of locking for Single Process open modes has been improved in VistaDB 6.1, particularly in cases of significant contention for the same database table by multiple readers and writers. Performance with these modes is improved over VistaDB 6.0 and the locks are consistently granted in a more fair first-come-first-served manner when multiple connections are waiting on the same table lock. No code changes are necessary to take advantage of this improvement if your Single-Process application is already using SingleProcessReadWrite or SingleProcessReadOnly open modes. (SingleProcessReadWrite is the default if no Open Mode is specified in the connection string.)

Issues Fixed in 6.1.0

Engine

• Fixed: Connection Pooling breaks Entity Framework.
• Fixed: Executing BEGIN TRANSACTION fails claiming connection is already in use.
• Fixed: SingleProcess and MultiProcess open modes fail on MacOS & Linux.
• Fixed: SingleProcess open modes can get excessive lock-timeout errors.
• Fixed: Breaking Change: VistaDBDataReader indexer (Item) properties this[int] and this[string] return a .NET null for NULL column values rather than the ADO.NET standard DBNull.Value.

Data Migration Wizard

• Fixed: SQL CE tables with auto-increment columns fail migration if table name needs to be quoted.
• Fixed: ROWVERSION column type is not recognized as an alias for TIMESTAMP type and migrated for SQL CE and SQL Server databases.

Known Issues

Engine

• VistaDBCommand.ExecuteScalar() does not match ADO.NET specification, returning .NET null instead of DBNull.Value when result is NULL but not empty.

Visual Studio 2017/2019

• Extension Doesn't Automatically Install If Visual Studio is Running: If any instance of Visual Studio 2017 or later is running when the installation runs the VistaDB extension will not automatically install into Visual Studio 2017 or 2019.  To manually install, double-click VistaDB.6.VisualStudio.NET461.vsix in the C:\Program Files (x86)\Gibraltar Software\VistaDB 6\Bin directory (by default)