At 04:35 PM 27/10/2009, you wrote:

>Hi Helen,
>
>Thank you very much for your input - greatly appreciated! There are hacks around a problem, and there are the correct ways to address the problem. I'm afraid as a newbie to Firebird/PHP, I take what I can trawl off the web. In this case the hack first and now your recommendation.
>
>My only thought is that for someone just getting familiar with the Firebird environment, this is a rather steep curve.

I think you're not doing yourself any favours time-wise by not getting stuck into the technical ins ands out that you would find by reading your way through the various versions of release notes (which you should treat as cumulative). It is *the* place where these things are documented.

Visit the Documentation Index section of the Firebird Website. Saves trawling and, worse, saves you picking up googled content that is just plain wrong.

Helen