"Ann W. Harrison" wrote:

>
> At 06:13 PM 12/20/2000 +0100, Paul Reeves wrote:
>
> >It seems to me that we could allow the placing of additional entries in
> >IBConfig
> >which specify the path(s) of external files. The syntax could be similar
> >to that
> >for specifying temporary directories. If there are no EXT_FILE_DIR entries
> >then
> >no external files are allowed. Otherwise only the directories specifically
> >mentioned can be used. The syntax for external file creation would remain the
> >same.
>
> Over lunch, Jim suggested that we use that directory as the start
> of the path to the external file, allowing (but not requiring)
> different databases to use different directories beneath the top
> level. Of course that doesn't work so well if you want to offer
> directories on different devices for those files ....
>

The syntax for specifying TMP_DIRECTORY in ibconfig is this: (taken from ops
guide)

==quote==

TMP_DIRECTORY size pathname

This defines the maximum size in bytes of each sort directory. You can list
several
directories, each on its own line with its own size specification and can
specify a directory
more than once with different size configurations. InterBase exhausts the space
in each
specification before proceeding to the next one.

==endquote==

So the mechanism is there to read several directories and associate them with a
single 'variable'.

For EXT_FILE_DIR (or whatever) I agree that each directory specified could be
just a top level.

(And I hope no-one gets confused by the reference to size in the quote above
-thats just a temp dir thing.)

Paul
--

Paul Reeves
http://www.ibphoenix.com
taking InterBase further