Niki Ivanchev wrote:

> Hello to all.
> Yesterday me and Roman had a little discussion about firebird embedded
> under linux refusing to work
> I feel a little bit stupid. The answer was in /var/log/messages
> I had never expected that java may log something there. I was expecting
> output on the console..
> this is what I have in it:
> Sep 10 12:47:25 nikolay java: Missing configuration file:
> /usr/local/firebird/firebird.conf, exiting (No such file or directory)
>
>
> But why? As I remember embedded version does not care about aliases and
> firebid.conf and so on......
> Is it somehting broken there or I have missed something in the docs?
> Regards and my excuses to Roman again for wasting his time yesterday
>

Why is a hard question. The simple answer is a lack of understanding of
layered software. The database engine is a callable service. It should
either do what it is requested or return an error explaining why it
couldn't. Somebody decided that the configuration file module was the
center of the universe. If it couldn't find the config file, even
though an empty file would have been acceptable, it logs an error to the
system message fix and exits (yes, Virginia, exits the friggin
program). This has been discussed in fairly strong terms on the
firebird-devel list, twice.

No callable service should have this behavior. No subroutine library,
no matter how grand or well intentioned, has the right to terminate a
program.

Vulcan has a more civilized configuration file system that either works
or throws an exception. The Firebird head guys have promised to do
something for 2.0, but I wouldn't necessarily hold my breath.

--

Jim Starkey
Netfrastructure, Inc.
978 526-1376