At 12:57 PM 24/07/2003 -0700, you wrote:

Scott,

>Which is it? Don't I want to take out the garbage?

Of course you want to get rid of the garbage. gbak isn't just a backup
tool, it's also used for cleaning out old stubs that the regular garbage
collection and sweeps leave behind.

To avoid jumping to any more wrong conclusions about gbak, I recommend you
study the following two documents:

1. The full documentation for gbak, which you will find in the OpGuide.pdf
volume of the IB 6 beta docs
2. Paul Beach's paper on fixing a corrupted database.

Both are downloadable from the IBPhoenix site.

But gbak isn't a magic bullet. If, as a relative newbie, you insist on
changing metadata by attacking the system tables, then you can expect to
get corruption. A good precaution would be to backup a known-good database
before you start doing this kind of thing - a bit like remembering to wear
a parachute for sky-diving. (Heck, I've been using IB and FB for 9 years
and I *still* don't change metadata this way. A stitch in time saves nine.)

As for environmental corruption, it happens sometimes (though I've never
seen it, touch wood). It's actually very hard for a even a bad network to
break a Firebird database. However, if you are determined, buy all your
network gear from computer fairs, run your network on NT, use NetBEUI as
your network protocol, set forced writes off and use the BDE for connecting
all your applications. That'll help. On a more robust network, you can
kick the server's power plug out of the socket without 100 users connected
and not get corruption. (Don't try this if you're using the BDE, though.)

heLen