Robert, may I comment:

> > 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.

Actually I think they should add three new commands, CREATE ALIAS,
ALTER ALIAS and DROP ALIAS, something like:

CREATE ALIAS XYZ USING '/var/ib_data/xyz.gdb'; /* for unix */
CREATE ALIAS XYZ USING 'c:\ib_data\xyz.gdb'; /* for WinNT/2K */

Then when a program wants to use an alias it simply accesses it using
"servername:alias" The DB server would check this against the alias
table and if it finds it, it uses the alias, if it doesn't it tries
it as a path, if it still doesn't find it, it gives up.

By the same token, you could

ALTER ALIAS XYZ USING 'f:\ib_data\xyz.gdb';
Which tells the server that you moved the database.

Storing anything in the client machine registry, is worse then using
the path, because you have to remember to create the entries on new
machines, and what about moving a database, it's OK to update the
registries on 20 machines, but what if you have 5,000 machines in 435
locations nationwide, you can't trust users to run a script (at least
one will forget, and will complain to the CIO when his machine
doesn't work).


Paul Schmidt,
Tricat Technologies
Email: paul@...
Website: www.tricattechnologies.com