At 02:08 PM 29/01/2004 +1000, you wrote:

>I don't have a lot to work with inside the installation besides scripts
>and ant tasks, not sure what condition I could use for a script file. I
>have an ant - socket condition - checks for the existence of a TCP/IP
>listener at the specified host and port. Would it be fair to say that
>once the firebird server is listening on 3050 that the database is
>ready?

Yes. One small proviso is that, if a (Windows) server machine has an
embedded server application already running then, by design, the database
file will be exclusively locked by the embedded server process and the full
server won't be able to open it.

Watch out for filesystem backup processes on Windows servers, as well,
including those wonderful "protection" services that run on default
installations of WinXP and Server2003. If they are running and they are
working on your database file and you're lucky, they will have a full file
lock on the file when the first client attempts to connect and the server
won't be able to open it. If you're unlucky, and this John-Doe copying
process only locks blocks of disk, then your server will be able to connect
and your client connection could corrupt the database. And I mean,
seriously, fatally corrupt.

/hb