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Author: Italo Vignoli

DBMS migration in LibreOffice

In 2017, The Document Foundation (TDF) launched four tenders aimed at improving LibreOffice in several strategic areas, and documenting the approach and work carried out, to foster sharing of knowledge and inclusion of the wider volunteer community.

One of the tenders was focused on the implementation of a HSQLDB binary format import in LibreOffice (https://blog.documentfoundation.org/blog/2017/05/04/tender-implement-hsqldb-binary-format-import-libreoffice-201705-03/), and after a careful evaluation by the Foundation’s Board of Directors – with the help of competent and independent volunteers – has been assigned to Collabora.

Tenders are funded by donations, and are supposed to improve LibreOffice in specific areas where the tasks are beyond the capabilities of independent volunteer developers, and also share the knowledge amongst the volunteer community to foster active participation in development and related tasks.

Collabora has developed a mechanism to import database files with high fidelity from the HSQLDB binary file format, used by many existing ODB files, by reading the Java serialization code, and writing a filter to import all data into LibreOffice Base. The objective was to remove the legacy Java/HSQLDB database and to simplify the move to Firebird.

Tamás Bunth, the Hungarian software engineer working at Collabora who has worked at the tender, has extensively reported about the progress and the results on his personal blog:

  1. DBMS migration in LibreOffice: Firebird and HSQLDB schema import
  2. DBMS migration in LibreOffice: HSQLDB binary import
  3. Final steps of LibreOffice database migration
  4. Database migration in LibreOffice: bug fixes and more

The feature is going to be released with LibreOffice 6.1, as an experimental one (to allow some further testing before being officially released with LibreOffice 6.2). So, to access it users have to flag the “enable experimental features” option in Tools > Options > LibreOffice > Advanced. If the option is not enabled, the embedded HSQLDB database engine remains the default for new Base files with LibreOffice 6.1, as in any previous version.

If experimental mode is enabled, the embedded Firebird database engine will not only be enabled but will also become the default, while the embedded HSQLDB database engine – although deprecated – will still be available as an alternative.

LibreOffice Base users are encouraged to migrate their database using the embedded HSQLDB to embedded Firebird new migration assistant (released with LibreOffice 6.1 as part of the tender), which is not using the HSQLDB database engine and will be available in LibreOffice releases even after the embedded HSQLDB support will be fully removed.

At the same time, LibreOffice Base users who want to stick with the HSQLDB database engine should start planning the migration of their database to an external HSQLDB server.

LibreOffice at OSCON in Portland

OSCON is the largest open source conference and exibition in the United States. The event has returned to Portland to celebrate its 20th anniversary on July 18/19, 2018, after a couple of years in Austin, Texas. The Document Foundation was given a free booth in the Non Profit Pavilion, and was represented by three enthusiastic volunteers – Robinson Tryon and Robin Haberman from the US, and Eric Bright from Canada – who had lots of good conversations with everyone from long-term users and supporters of LibreOffice, to those who were new to the whole concept of FOSS.

TDF participation at OSCON, as in other events, was possible thanks to our generous donors, who support the project development with their financial support.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.0.6

Berlin, August 2, 2018 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 6.0.6, the sixth minor release of the 6.0 family, ready for mainstream users and enterprise deployments.

TDF recommends deploying LibreOffice in production environments with the backing of certified professionals, providing development, migration and training support (list at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). This is extremely important for the growth of the LibreOffice ecosystem.

For enterprise class deployment, LibreOffice should be sourced from a company providing a Long Term Supported version of the suite (members of TDF Advisory Board: http://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/).

LibreOffice 6.0.6 change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.6/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.6/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 6.0.6 is immediately available for download at the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and fund the presence of volunteers at events like the LibreOffice Conference, where they can meet with free software advocates coming from all over the world (https://www.libocon.org/).

Several companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide either value-added LTS versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

How LibreOffice’s quality has improved thanks to automated tools and the volunteer contribution of security specialists

Last Coverity Scan metrics about LibreOffice, with 0 outstanding defects on 6 million lines of code. Kudos to our developers.

Berlin, July 25, 2018 – The Document Foundation celebrates five years of improvements to LibreOffice’s source code under Red Hat’s leadership, thanks to the adoption of automated tools such as Coverity Scan and Google OSS-Fuzz, and to the key contributions in the area of source code fuzzing of security specialists such as Antti Levomäki and Christian Jalio of Forcepoint.

“The combination of Coverity Scan, Google OSS-Fuzz and dedicated fuzzing by security specialists at Forcepoint has allowed us to catch bugs – which could have turned into security issues – before a release,” says Red Hat’s Caolán McNamara, a senior developer and the leader of the security team at LibreOffice.

Since 2013, Coverity Scan has helped to reduce the number of issues by several orders of magnitude (from 0.93 to 0.00093 per 1,000 lines of code). The score is significantly better than the FOSS software average of 0.65 and the proprietary software average of 0.71.

LibreOffice defect density score during the last two years

The Coverity Scan score is related to a static analysis to find source code defects and vulnerabilities. In static analysis, the code under examination is not executed. As such, the score does not represent an absolute value about quality and security of the software when executed on end user desktops.

More recently, developers have implemented fuzzing or fuzz testing, a technique that involves providing invalid, unexpected or random data as inputs to a program, which is then monitored for exceptions such as crashes or failing built-in code assertions, or for potential memory leaks. Fuzzing is able to catch issues just a few hours after they appear in the upstream source code repository, and help to solve bugs and potential security issues before they reach the end user.

#abetterlibreoffice

TDF Annual Report 2017

The Annual Report of The Document Foundation for the year 2017 is now available in PDF format from TDF Nextcloud in two different versions: low resolution (7.4MB) and high resolution (31.5MB). The annual report is based on the German version presented to the authorities in April.

The 48 page document has been entirely created with free open source software: written contents have obviously been developed with LibreOffice Writer (desktop) and collaboratively modified with LibreOffice Writer (online), charts have been created with LibreOffice Calc and prepared for publishing with LibreOffice Draw, drawings and tables have been developed or modified (from legacy PDF originals) with LibreOffice Draw, images have been prepared for publishing with GIMP, and the layout has been created with Scribus based on the existing templates.

Pictures have been kindly provided by members of the LibreOffice community from Albania, Brasil, Germany, Italy, Japan, Taiwan and Turkey.

TDF Annual Report will soon be available on Lulu for print-on-demand. In addition, some printed copies will be available at LibreOffice Conference in Tirana.

The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 6.0.5

Berlin, June 22, 2018 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces LibreOffice 6.0.5, which still represents the bleeding edge in terms of features – and as such is targeted at early adopters, tech-savvy and power users – but is also ready for mainstream users and enterprise deployments.

TDF recommends deploying LibreOffice in production environments with the backing of certified professionals, providing development, migration and training support (an updated list is available at https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/professional-support/). This is extremely important for the growth of the LibreOffice ecosystem.

LibreOffice 6.0.5 change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.5/RC1 (fixed in RC1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/6.0.5/RC2 (fixed in RC2).

Download LibreOffice

LibreOffice 6.0.5 is immediately available for download at the following link: https://www.libreoffice.org/download/download/.

LibreOffice users, free software advocates and community members can support The Document Foundation with a donation at https://www.libreoffice.org/donate/. Donations help TDF to maintain its infrastructure, share knowledge, and fund the presence of volunteers at events like the LibreOffice Conference, where they can meet with free software advocates coming from all over the world (https://www.libocon.org/).

Several companies sitting in TDF’s Advisory Board (https://www.documentfoundation.org/governance/advisory-board/) provide either value-added LTS versions of LibreOffice or consultancy services for migrations and training, based on best practices distilled by The Document Foundation.

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