On Sun, 30 Apr 2000 21:20:36 -0400, Claudio Valderrama C. wrote:

>
> Hope I won't be flamed to mention MsSql's case. ;-) MickeySoft created a
>big set of scripts to upgrade Sql65 to Sql70 databases "in place". I ran the
>script on my machine, with a few tables and databases, only a few Megabytes.
>I had to make some adjustments to the Master db to avoid the script exiting
>with an error message. The script took all the evening and also, it left a
>lot of trash in some directories inside the new installation, that I never
>have been sure if I can delete or not. In a "real" database, it would have
>took days. The very few big customers I have (the ones that can and want to
>pay MickeySoft) simply backed up, uninstalled Sql65, installed Sql70 and
>after 40 reboots, they began restoring their data. The net result: much
>faster and much more reliable.

Hmmm... Mickey$oft is not able to do the conversion? Ahaaa, uhuuu ;-))) What
a shame! :-)

>
> Writing a tool or script that migrated from ODS_8 or ODS_9 to ODS_10 in
>dialect 1 seems to be not a big problem. However, writing the tool to
>convert to dialect 3 is no joke (comments welcome), because there are
>several decisions that need to be planned.

I agree. Blind conversions of DBs works when the basic behavior of the host
doesn't change anyway. IB dialect 3 does not fit this hypothesis, there are sig-
nificant behavior change (specially on certain datatypes).

> A blind conversion is IMHO a direct call for disaster.

I think that Dominique's request can be accomplished (in little DBs in HD that can support have 2
copies of the DB) by an automagically call to gbak (a complete backup-restore cyles)..