Hi Jim,

> Unfortunately, under the InterBase Public license, the application
> developer is obligated to publish his source changes to gbak, not
> only giving the key to the entire world, but advertising the change.

That is a interesting item, but, here is somthing that may work.
The implementation of the key in gbak would have to be published.
BUT
The key itself is data that could be part of a external RES file.
The method of implementation would be OS, while the particular key
is simply a piece of data (like the bitmaps in some desktop
environments)
and can be exchanged as needed.

I do not know if this is possible, but, I am sure once I post this, I
will recieve alot of emails about why it will or won't work.

And the server side api, controlled by the application, would still
allow backups and restores.

> Once we have the entire InterBase community trained in the fine
> points of system architecture, we're going to try to teach the
> ODBC community the rudamentary basics of software sanitation.
> It's not going to be pretty.

Jim, with your ODBC design, are you also making a linux ODBC port?

best regards

Dalton