> That's just silly and you should know that. Every network
> connection starts with a socket. It's what you do after it's
> connected that makes the difference.

Yes, please explain that to the customer that installed some business
software with embedded Firebird who suddenly discovers that backup
feature does not work. And hours latter it turns out that it was just
because of the Windows firewall that silently prevented application
from connecting to it (there is that option there, but a message that
somebody wants to connect to your application sounds not very good).

> I'm sorry you have already decided what is important and what is
> not

Yes, I decided what is important and what is not basing on the user
requests for JayBird. So far nobody asked for gfix or gstat services,
only for gbak and gsec. gsec is not applicable for embedded Firebird,
so gbak is left.

> but I don't understand your objection to backup. Did you miss the
> section of authentication, perhaps?

No, there is no objection to backup. I object to the concept of a TCP
communication within the application boundaries. Replace socket with
IPC or just some method call and I shut up.

Roman