> What's not clear is what charset is specified by default in the
> connection if I leave off the lc_ctype parameter....

NONE

> Since it's possible to query the database to determine what it's
> native charset is, wouldn't it be feasible for JayBird to use that
> as its default when it makes the connection? (Perhaps it'd actually
> have to connect once to find out the charset and then close and
> reopen with the correct one, but this could be specified with a
> reserved name like "USEDBCHARSET" or something else.) At the moment,
> I'm basically faced with having to do the connect, read the charset,
> close, reconnect with right charset drill from outside the driver.
> It seems like the driver COULD do that, right????

Yes, driver could do this. However you're the first one that asks for such
feature. Personally I think that if need to connect to the database with the
default database character set exists, it should be solved on the database
server level. I know that new INTL code released in parallel to Firebird
2.0. This feature request is worth discussing with the INTL developers.
Would you start the discussion in Firebird-devel list, or should I do this?

Thanks!
Roman