On Monday 09 April 2001 08:46, you wrote:

> Well, you probably should be running DNS rather than using a HOSTS file.
> With DNS running, you don't need to edit any system files, nor worry about
> keeping them in sync when your servers' IP address changes. "Sticks and
> stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me." :-)

I'm trying to use Interbase/Firebird as an embedded database for an
application that a regular user can install. The single computer setup is
fine but I want it to also be easy to setup two Windows computers talking to
each other with one acting as a database server. In this case asking the
users to setup a DNS server is not going to work. Even manually changing the
hosts file is not what I would like.

I quite like Sybase in this area in that you run the server on one computer
and give it a name (which doesn't even need to match the computer hostname or
anything) and then on another system, you can just tell it to connect to a
named server. It uses broadcast messages to find the Sybase servers on your
local network and gets their names and connects you to the right server
without having to worry about hostnames or IP addresses and setting up DNS or
changing the hosts file. Very nice!

--
Brad Pepers
brad@...