adele_leroux wrote:

> Hi, many thanks for your answer (and Alexander's). I am however not
> 100% sure what you mean by the embedded version of firebird. We
> access firebird from a delphi application using the IB components in
> delphi. Am I right by saying that this is not the embedded version?
> I have a Firebird 1.5 server manager icon in my control panel, but
> if I stop the firebird manager, my application still runs fine???

Chère Adèle,
You're not using the embedded version. You'd know if you were. Firebird Server
Manager in your Control Panel shows the status of the Firebird server process on
your local machine. It is also possible to access a server on another machine.
However. You cannot manage that one from within the Control Panel on your pc.
You should be able to find the Firebird server in your Program Files directory
and in the list of active processes. The server is called fbserver.exe.

You might want to read some more on basic concepts of developing for
client/server DBMSes. I could not find any good articles in the Firebird
community sites. However, here is an old article that compares app development
for DBase to developing apps for Interbase. Interbase is Firebirds commercial
brother-in-law. DBase is in the Access category.
http://community.borland.com/article/interbase/dbase.pdf

Here is another article Interbase for Desktop Database users.
http://www.ibphoenix.com/a499.htm

Cheers,
Marco