At 06/13/2002 08:44 PM (Thursday), randmonroe wrote:

>I am currently going through our company program and making changes
>where need be for moving to firebird (InterBase 6.5).

You do understand that Firebird 1.0 and Interbase 6.5 are quite different
programs, don't you? They share a heritage but implement different SQL
variations, have different additional functionality from Interbase 6.0, and
are likely to never become fully compatible again.

>Since Firebird has the different dialects and it seems that InterBase 4.1
>is a dialect 1.

Yes, Firebird Dialect 1 (and Interbase 6.5 Dialect 1) are intended to
emulate Interbase 5.x and earlier SQL syntax. This is to ease the migration
path.

However, it seems you have time and inclination to modify your 4.1
environment to align it with Firebird 1.0 so I would encourage you to
continue this course and when the time comes jump directly to Firebird 1.0
Dialect 3.

>Is it possible that if something goes wrong, I can get back to InterBase 4.1.

The normal process for migrating from 4.1 to Firebird 1.0 is to backup the
4.1 database using the 4.1 GBAK and then restore it using the Firebird 1.0
GBAK. Once your database has been restored by Firebird 1.0 GBAK, it will
have been built in ODS 10 format instead of the ODS 8 format used by 4.1 GBAK.

I don't believe the 4.1 GBAK will know how to restore from an ODS 10
backup. Therefore, you will not be able to return to an all-4.1 environment
using a reverse of the normal upward migration process.

However, if you use an admin tool to unload all your data to a neutral
format, you should be able to restore an empty database to ODS 9 format
using 4.1 tools and then reload the data from the neutral format. This
assumes the metadata did not change between 4.1 and Firebird 1.0 and that
the trigger and stored procedures are also the same.