From: "Nick Upson" <uebridger@...>

> Is there any documentation about doing this, I understand that the process
> is just to backup/restore
> but I'm looking at other issues.

There are two documents available in IB6 Beta Documentation with useful informations:
InterBase60_MigrationGuide.pdf
ReleaseNotes.pdf

> what testing methods have people used? What issues should I look out for?
> what is the best way to use a dialect 2 database?

Database can't be of dialect 2. Dialect 2 is used only on client side
to help locate problematic spots in the database being moved.
It is all described in documentation.

> for example, without a time datatype, I've got several fields holding time
> in an int (the format is hhmm)
> once I've got a dialect 3 database I'd rather use the correct datatype but I
> can't see an easy way to switch over (maybe there isn't one)

Do you mean e.g. number 1234 means 12 minutes and 34 seconds?
Then cast the number to (fixed length) string and use substr function to separate
hours and minutes parts, then concatenate it together with colon as separator
to form correct time format. To solve the problem with left aligned numbers,
add some appropriate number first, so different parts of time are always
on the same position.
E.g. this works with Firebird (with InterBase you would need to replace SUBSTRING function by UDF):

UPDATE tat SET
t = SUBSTRING(CAST(i+10000 AS CHAR(5)) FROM 2 FOR 2) || ':' || SUBSTRING(CAST(i+10000 AS CHAR(5)) FROM 4 FOR 2);



Ivan Prenosil
[ I am looking for a job: InterBase - Firebird - Delphi - C - fulltext db - and more ... ]
Ivan.Prenosil@...
http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase