On 21 Jul 2005 at 11:34, Jim Starkey wrote:

>Firebird apparently has no mechanism to report what features and
>levels are supported by the database engine. There is a version
>identification string, which is at best a poor substitute, requiring
>both a problematic parse and a knowledge of what features are
>associated with which versions.
>
>I suggest we consider a more civilized approach. The obvious
>mechanism is a database info item as that mechanism already exists and
>was designed for extensibility.

I think this idea is not good enough. To obtain a database info you
must be connected to a database first. Personally, I'd like to be
able to get engine capabilities before connecting or creating
database.
Simple example: I have an application which supports IB5 as well as
FB2. When I need to create a database I must know what dialect I
should (can) use. I don't want to use dialect 1 everywhere because it
may be prohibited in FBn and can't use dialect 3 everywhere because I
get "feature not supported" from IB5.
--
SY, Dimitry Sibiryakov.