I apologize in advance if this is a really really stupid question.

I have used Firebird for a while now, and various flavours of Interbase
prior to switching to Firebird. I have, over the years, developed numerous
applications for various clients that run on top of Firebird / Interbase. I
make no claim to being a Firebird or IB or SQL guru, but the applications
work, and work well, sometimes under very adverse conditions.

These applications have ranged from small "stand alone" systems all the way
through to WAN systems with many users and large datasets. I normally don't
ask clients whether they want FB/IB or not - the application installs it
and constructs the database whether they like it or not. On the few
occasions where clients have insisted on using a.n. other database, I have
charged them extra for the pita factor, and they have paid. In a few
memorable cases, they have paid me again to convert to FB/IB when, after a
while, they have realized that I was right. :-D ("Yes, I can make this use
MS Access over a network. But you will sign this form acknowledging that I
have told you that it will run like a dog, and that I take no
responsibility for it whatsoever")

One of the many things that has always impressed me about FB/IB is its'
small - extremely small, compared to, for example, MSSQL - footprint. Even
if you install everything, it only comes to about 10 MB or so. With storage
space becoming cheaper and cheaper, 10MB is nothing these days. It hasn't
been much since before the days of 200MB hard drives. With its' small size,
I find it as easy to use for a large server as for a single "desktop" type
database.

So here is my stupid question :

Why use FB embedded anyway?

Or maybe I can rephrase that :

Under what circumstances should I as a developer consider using FB Embedded
rather than FB?

Regards, and tia

Tim