Hi there

> For my application to connect to and communicate with the global database
> that resides on the remote machine I have to first retrieve the path to

the

> database location on the remote machine. To do that, the user has to
> establish this connection the very first time he starts the application.

He

> can do this by using the Windows standard open dialog to choose a location
> on a remote machine for the global database. The Windows open dialog

however

> always returns a UNC style path for the global database location on the
> remote machine and I found it impossible to convert this UNC path
> (server1\\path1\database.gdb) to the true drive letter path
> (server1:E:\path1\database.gdb)... or in other words I could not find any
> windows API method that tells me that 'path1' on 'server1' is on the 'E:'
> drive. And unfortunately firebird requires (or better the IBX components

in

> Delphi7) require that one supplies exactly this local drive letter path
> instead of the UNC path.

Ok. Well, what we do to solve this problem for our users, is that they
browse to a file containing the name of the database, rather than the
database file itself. This file is setup by whoever creates the database
initially. The value in this file is then used by the client to find the
database on the server.

Hope that helps

Gary Marshall