> Yes, we have many live Mac clients, they all go well. Currently our
> clients use Firebird Classic server (1.5.x) on PPC and Intel Macs (we
> had to build Firebird from source for the latter), and currently we
> use the v1.5 Jaybird driver which works without problem, connecting to
> either Macs, PCs or linux.
> (We want the 2.1.1 Jaybird driver especially so we can use the
> services API.)

Ok.

> Is the -service parameter only available in FB 2.0?

Yes. I suggested it only to check whether the backup is also available
via Services API in your particular environment. The gbak itself (when
invoked without -service option) works completely different and that's
what we can't do in Jaybird.

> Also in our 'real' or 'live' customer sites, most client machines
> (that the backup will be run from via JDBC) won't have gbak since they
> won't have Firebird on them (only the remote DB server will have
> Firebird) - this is why we need to use the JDBC services API. We've
> only tested gbak to see whether the remote backup works in theory...

If it turns out that your Firebird 1.5 CS does not support backup via
services, you have to think about other strategies. I see two of them:

- use Firebird 1.5 SS (if backup via Services works there);

- install gbak (and fbclient, you don't need full Firebird installation
on the client) on each workplace and invoke it from Java.

Roman