Hello Jason,

> I was thinking of using firebird for my current web site which uses
> MySQL and is getting really hard to manage.
>
> I need to be able to work with the database during development on my
> Windows machine.
>
> I got firebird 1.5 RC2 I think... and latest version for FreeBSD is
> 1.0.2...
>
> Are the DB files completely compatible? Can I just upload the
> database to my FreeBSD machine?

Not completely, at least you must never assume that. But AFAIK, the
ODS (On Disk Structure) hasn't changed from 1.0 -> 1.5

But you should never copy the database file itself between OS'es, or
between server versions. The official way to copy a database between
two systems is:

1. Make a backup (.gbk/.fbk) on the source system, using the FB tools
on your source system.
The backup file is universally exchangable, so:
2. Copy the backup to your target system. Restore the database on the
target system using your tools there. That should do it, provided
that your database doesn't e.g. use UDF functions that aren't
available on the target system, or uses extensions that were
added in 1.5

If your FreeBSD is always up and reachable from your Windows machine,
you'd better not move copies around all the time but work with the
FreeBSD copy only. Just point the Windows client app to the FreeBSD
server.


HTH,
Paul Vinkenoog