[snipped various reasons why I am wrong in my assupmtions]

> >
> > Overall, does this methodology of checking file modification dates
> > seem sound to our resident gurus?
>
> No
>
>

Alan and Aage (and others),

Do you have a recommendation for how I should check whether a .gdb
file has changed since a previous backup?

At first, I was going to use the checksum value returned by gstat, but
found that feature hasn't worked for years.

Now you are telling me file modification dates are irrelevant.

Do you think this would work?

1) Run a gbak against the target file

2) get the file checksum of the target database AFTER gbak finishes

3) on subsequent backup attempts, if the checksum from #2 is different
than the current checksum of the target database file, then perform
another backup.

Best Regards,

David Montgomery