I have many IB5.6 users out there but to be able to make it work with
Firebird I still will have to upgrade my databases to no longer have the
reserved names that were added in IB6 ? Is that correct ?

I would love for firebird to just have a switch that said "Run server as
IB5.6 spec" and for it to not use the new IB 6 reserved words, if I
could do that I would use FB at all my sites, cause at the moment it is
a real headache restructuring 4 gb upwards of data at 24 hr services to
implement new fields that do not use the reserved words.

Martin

-----Original Message-----
From: Helen Borrie [mailto:helebor@...]
Sent: 26 August 2003 11:12
To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [firebird-support] Will future versions of FB open older
version ODS ?


At 09:47 AM 26/08/2003 +0000, remk_1 wrote:

>AFAIK, Interbase has this feature. You can open older ODS database
>using newer version of IB.

No, it was broken and was disabled in IB. But in Firebird, instead of
disabling it we fixed it. It's been there since the earliest 0.9nn
betas,
if not earlier.

>It allows to upgrade the database server
>first, then use (new version) of GBAK to backup/restore the (old ODS)
>database to upgrade the ODS.

I think you have this a bit mixed up. What you do is back up using the
gbak that belongs to the current (old) ODS and then restore using the
gbak
that belongs to the new ODS.

I think there was something supposed to happen with the Services API,
where
gbak would detect the ODS of the database and provide the option to back
it
up as the current ODS and restore it as the new, provided it was not
more
than one ODS step. I hadn't heard that Borland ever implemented it -
perhaps it is there for IB 6.5-to-7...

> Is is even possible to connect to old
>ODS database and work with it (without using the new features). Does
>anybody know whether this behaviour will be possible in future versions

>of FB ?

Reiterate: it has been available with Firebird all along, to open an
ODS 9
database and treat it as a dialect 1 database. It's not available in IB
6
(even though the doc says it is...) but they might have fixed it in IB
7.
Even after three years I'm still maintaining IB 5.6 databases running
under
Firebird servers. Backing up using 5.6 gbak, however.

>I know the best way to upgrade to a new version of IB/FB is to make the

>backup first, then reinstall the server and finally restore the backup.

>From the end user perspective, however, it is easier just to upgrade
>the server and then let the application program to upgrade all its
>databases.

"Easy" isn't the primary criterion when you're talking about a company's
IS
and a major task like an ODS upgrade. On some sites (too many, indeed)
backups are not part of company culture. As an absolute minimum, one
would
want to perform a complete native-ODS-version backup, restore and test
of
the production database before considering *any* operation that would
change the ODS.

heLen




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