> 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.
> ....
>
> To get the ball rolling, I suggest we add a new database info item,
> fb_info_capabilities, that returns a byte vector of know
> capabilities.

After some thinking I believe that this is not the best approach. The
problem is that either we have to limit the feature set extremly, or
the switch in the code will be just enormous (even considering bits).
Especially, if we consider different client requiremements, this is
not going to be an easy task, and probably the most complex would be
to make the "features" of the same granularity and group them correctly.

As Helen suggest, most of the features are related to the ODS level.
Rest is related to the server version. So for now I think that we have
everything we need for the client to be able to make the right
decision about the server capabilities.

Roman