Jim,

J> The cost of capabilities + attach is much greater than attach +
J> capabilities, which is the standard case.

I think you have skipped commenting on Dmitry's example.

BTW, I think this discussion should also consider the future of the
Services API as Firebird currently implements it. I am aware it
doesn't conform to the original philosophy of InterBase but since it's
there I'd like to know if Firebird is going to keep on supporting it
and extending it or phase it out in favor of something else. In the
former case, it seems to me that attaching to the services manager is
the obvious (=coherent with what we already do for similar things)
path to get database-independent information.

Ciao
--
Nando Dessena
http://www.flamerobin.org