Hi Gary,

> 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.

.. thanks... Your solution comes close to what I have implemented, since I
store the location of the global database in my local database. So when the
application starts up on the client, I read the location to the global
database and can connect to it without any problem. The problem occurs only
during the first startup of the application, when I have not stored this
path yet in the local database. There when the user has to choose the path
to the global database (the database which I then also create on the fly by
the way, on the very first startup of my application) via an open file
dialog, there I'am screwed, since if I do this from a remote location
(remote in respective to the firebird server that manages the global
database) I cannot retrieve the drive letter path to the database when
residing on a client machine.

... if I understand you correctly, it seems that you have tried to do the
same thing as I would like to do, but found that it is impossible and you
force a sort of system administrator to create the global database on the
machine where the server resides and then you distribute a file that
contains the path to this database to every client installation of your
application?