Hi,

> I've recently dedicated myself to a major upsize of a large bde app
> to Firebird. To get used to the features/nuances of IBO & c/s db's
> in general, I'm currently upsizing a smaller app.
> I've completed the db access portion, and now I'm trying to use it
> in action on a 5 pc network. Which has led me to some questions:
> (I've done quite a bit of reading from this group also, these are my
> remaining issues)
>
> 1)I read in a post that you cannot serve firebird from a Win98/ME
> machine. Is this true? Why is this?

Simply because Win98/ME suck in serving as a database server.
Besides that, they are highly instable -> I wouldn't trust my data to
that .

> 2)When setting up the connection, I understand the DatabaseName
> property needs to be server:drive+path\dbName
> If the share name is simply \data, do I still need d:\data?
> Is DatabaseName the correct property to use here?

You don't "connect" to a file - you tell the server (process on the
server machine) where the file is located. You then connect to the
socket that the server (process) is listening on. Therefore, you always
need to use the local disk in the file location. Now you can also come
to the conclusion that client-machines do not need (and should not have)
access to the database file itself. They can (from Windows explorer)
easily delete it (when not in use) or hex-edit it, copy it and corrupt the
database.

> 3) Can a particular machine (poss. Win98) which hosts the db to the
> clients also have someone on the machine accessing the same db? (I
> know this is not recommended, but is it possible) Does it just come
> down to the Protocol property?

As long as all connections use the "remote" protocol (eg: via TCP/IP)
and not the "local" protocol (via a memory mapped file internally) this
is no problem, unless, of course, your local app takes away a large %
of CPU time and other apps cause lots of disk activity. It's really best
to have a dedicated machine (Win NT, Win 2000, Linux) to server as
a database server machine.

> Sorry for these questions, it's just that I've had (reasonably!)
> smooth sailing in getting my head around c/s & firebird (and I
> like!) and now trying to use the app, I'm suddenly quite bamboozled.

Have fun!

Martijn Tonies
InterBase Workbench - the developer tool for InterBase and Firebird
http://www.interbaseworkbench.com

Upscene Productions
http://www.upscene.com

"This is an object-oriented system.
If we change anything, the users object."