I was wondering just what the options are in Windows for doing backups. I
have a backup function in my software which works well in Linux by calling
gbak but I can't figure out the Windows side of things. Here is what I've
tried:

1. At first I used system() on Windows just like Linux but this seems to have
limitations. It seems to have a very limited command line length and perhaps
not like spaces in the program name. Its hard to tell really whats failing
though since there is no output I can see (I like on Linux that I can run
from an xterm and see the gbak output if it fails but I can't see a way to do
this on Windows).

2. I then instead wrote out a batch file. In it I set ISC_USER and
ISC_PASSWORD and then call gbak. The problem with this is that it pops up a
MSDOS window showing the command running (and the password in plain text!)
and besides that the screen shows an error that its out of environment space
anyway so the backup fails this way too! Not very professional looking...

3. There is the backup function in the services interface but this does the
backup on the server when I want it to write to a file on the local
filesystem.

The only other thing I can think of is to write my own backup program but
that would really not be nice!

Are there any other ways to execute an external program in Windows that may
not be sensitive to spaces and command line lengths and such? I'm a Linux
programmer and am finding it very hard to get used to how hard it is to do
some really simple things in Windows!

How does the IB console do backups?

--
Brad Pepers
brad@...