At 03:33 AM 14/11/2004 +0000, you wrote:

>Answering a few questions for Martijn and unordained
>
>Q1. How to test & start Firebird service from wsh on XP?
>NO ANSWER GIVEN

You seemed to have answered it yourself: You found
instsvc.exe. Presumably you tried

instsvc query

?
You might also have browsed the installed services in the Services applet.

You might also have followed up the suggestion on pg 16 of the Firebird
book to use the Control Panel applet.

Those are three ways you can find out whether the service is running. An
even simpler way is to try to connect to a database.

>Q2. Can Firebird "isql.exe" export to csv or xml? NO

Simply, no means no means no. Firebird is a relational database management
system, not a data browser. You declined to try the tools offered, heck,
you didn't even offer thanks to people who took the time to point you to
several client options.

>Q3. What about FBExport?
>Well, thanks to Milan Babuškov for making and suggesting this App.
>I'm sure it works the way he wants it to, and fills a gap in the FB
>feature set. I had a look at ~
>http://fbexport.sourceforge.net/manual.html
>from what I can see it is not suitable for my use, the reasons being:
>Does this tool give all the freedom & options of isql.exe?
>Can I pass a .sql file of instructions for it to Run?

This response again begs the question: "What do you expect a RDBMS to
do?" It is a data management system that is independent of any
development environment or operating system. Between a database system
and a user are data access and application layers (amongst others). Data
access is a matter of requesting and receiving sets of data; the
application layer is a question of interpreting delivered data in forms and
formats that meet user requirements.

>Q3.1 What about ibWebAdmin?
>Thanks, Milan, I will check that one out.
>
>Two Questions from Philip the "unordained"
>Q4. Would you ALL be happy for me to write an xml outputter? NO
>I am a complete FB novice. I know no C++. My code is k-rap.
>Besides, the feature is slated for the next major release.

OK, so you are a self-confessed k-rap programmer and you are a complete FB
novice. So let's rephrase the question---what do you think you need a
relational database management system for? To inspect it in Excel? To
read tables with VBScripts? There are interface layers out there that
enable that. Have you heard of ODBC drivers? Firebird has several of
those. You can even download instructions from the Microsoft website for that.

>Q5. What about the suggestion that I pay someone to write it?
>Maybe Milan Babuškov is the one to give isql.exe an -xmlout
>and -csvout switch? How much money would be required. Send me
>some quotes. I would love to help the cause. Better output
>options such as these are a vital feature.

It's much more likely that a third-party tool would be developed to do
that, than that isql would be bloated to do something substantially
useless The "business problem" with xml always gets back to: what
format(s)? There are thousands of them! A specialised plug-in is much
better equipped to supply format options than anything that might be spat
out by a parser.

>Q4. What about embedded double-quotes in comma-separated files?

What about them? Does that have anything to do with Firebird? Firebird
can store embedded double quotes in its character types...

>I'd rather use xml (for me csv for be a 2nd rate option)
>(unfortunately as of 11/2004 csv or xml is not a native option)

XML is a "native" option for anything???? I've just spent the weekend,
into the small hours, writing parsing filters for some really disgusting,
supposedly "standard" XML, output by one of the most expensive authoring
tools on the market, just so that we can use a big bunch of material in our
docs. Do you actually *understand* what you want? Do you have any idea
what you would *do* with XML output?

CSV might be a viable option, since it is (more or less) a generic
format. There are already tools that do CSV export very well. I directed
you to one; you spat the dummy it, too hard for you. How really do you
expect to work with an SQL database if writing a query isn't simple enough
for you?

>Two Questions from Martijn Tonies:
>Q6. Ok - in your opinion, what should Firebird do?
>I think FB should do exactly what it does at the moment, that's fine.
>My issues with it are in terms of accessability, ease of use,
>samples and examples, and documentation for the beginner. In fact I
>haven't experienced what it can do beacuse of the massive barrier to
>entry, long since forgotten by experts like you, but that confronts
>every new user to the product.

"There is none so blind as him who will not see."

Books don't write themselves, research papers and howtos don't jump up and
pour themselves into your brain spontaneously. People don't get money for
writing books and documentation for free software. The scores of people who
make the free tools available to you do it without any compensation. Most
of the Firebird core developers do what they do for love. Besides what
authors and tools developers doing freebie authoring and tool developing,
many of us also spend many voluntary hours a day on list support and
somehow, we have to try to earn a living as well. That makes all of us a
bunch of geni-asses, actually. If it wasn't for the geni-asses, you and the
other 999,999 end-users wouldn't have any free software.

>Q7. What did you expect it to do?
>I expected in 2004 more positive answers to Q1 & Q2.

I gave you a very full answer in Firebird-general. Several people gave you
suggestions here. Because they are not simple enough for you, you reject
them with rudeness, without thanks, without trying and without even signing
your messages.

In the preamble at www.firebirdsql.org?op=lists is a click-through to an
article you really need to read. You might consider taking note of the
conduct guidelines on the Lists page, too....

^heLen