Hi:

> First - forget Alias - it is a shortcut that has little meaning outside
> the local machine you are on. This is an area that Intebase is both too
> clever and stupid at the same time.
>
> You need a full path to identify the database you are going to talk to
> 'full stop'
>
> The machine name identifies which one to talk to, and the full path
> identifies the file to use.

I am making my app set itself up.

Need to be logged on to server as administrator and install client on machine logged
onto as administrator.

When client first runs:

Client first checks it own name v LOGONSERVER. If same it knows it knows it is local.
If not,

I gets SID of local and uses that to access/iterate through server
registry: [HKEY_USERS\SID\Software\Borland\InterBase\IBConsole\
Servers\Local Server\Databases\LTDMSADB]
DatabaseFiles=C:\LTDMS\LTDMSA\Data\LTDMSData.gdb

to get the full path then prepends nts: and uses that to set up relative paths for
everything in client, sets these values in client registry. Client now knows where
everything is and starts up.

All clients must access a config file and other common files in sub directories of
path to .gdb.

> As interbase will run on a number of
> operating systems, it does not care what flavour of machine it is
> talking to, as long as TCP/IP protocol is used. That is the clever bit.

Since as I understand, other OS's like Linux don't use paths like C:\, how do you
set up the win client to access the .gdb on Linux?

> The stupid bit is there has not been agreement yet on a common basis for
> using an Alias in place of the path name. It's on the wish list.

You should be able to nts:3050:Alias and then the OS of the server wouldn't matter.
The database engine, listening on the port should know the alias path. Then, I
wouldn't know the SID and the administrator would not need to be logged on to the
server to facilitate getting the path. Of course this would all be solved if Interbase
stored the database information in a subkey of HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE
which is accessible with RegConnect and without using SID.

Thanks.

Best regards