At 10:55 AM 26-03-01 +1200, you wrote:

>bug Id 230, SF Id 113642,
>Win 32 accepts ambiguous TCP/IP connect strings. Quoting from the summary
>description it says that:
>"Win 32 allows clients to connect with either servername:c:<localpathname>
>or servername:c:\<localpathname>. If connected clients have connected with a
>mixture of these string formats, the database is treated as if it were
>multiple databases and corruptions occur."
>
>My first thought to this was... WOW, surely this is a serious (high
>priority) bug...
>If just connecting with different strings can cause a database corruption
>then surely this should be considered major?

It is major. It's not an InterBase bug but a Windows "undocumented feature" that was discovered about 18 months ago and found to cause this dangerous and otherwise inexplicable behaviour.

>Do other versions of IB have this bug... IB 5.6? Borland's IB 6 release?? If
>so... I am off to check all our client's connection strings!!

It affects any version of IB on Windows (and probably many other applications, too) until there is a version of IB that blocks connection using a string that doesn't comply with the "correct" format.

The BDE will let you set up an alias with the bad path. IB Objects raises an exception and won't attempt to connect.

If people follow the advice in the Operations Guide wrt connection strings, the problem should never arise; but it's amazing how often people do things contrary to advice, just because they can.

Cheers,
Helen


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