--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Marcello Fontolan
<fontolan@m...> wrote:

> Reading some messages makes clear to me that is necessary a backup

and

> restore offten.

No. It is necessary to backup and make _control_ restore into
another file to be shure your database is healthy and gbk-copy is
restorable. For example, current instance of my production database
(8+Gb, 650 tables) was created 1-NOV-2003 and survived 9+mln
transactions, I still have no intention even to rebuild indices,
performance is satisfactorily.

> If I have a application running fulltime, can I put the database (or
> the Firebird server) in some kind of "monouser" to do the backup and
> restore?

Backup without garbage collection is cheap and fast and don't
require exclusive access. Of course, if you are not making regular
copy for safety but want to replace database, you should stop users.
You can perform database shutdown to access database exclusively by
SYSDBA or database owner (if they are different). This is described in
details in IB6 Operations Guide. Note shutdown don't break
connetcions, only don't allow them make anything except disconnect, so
before replacing database you should restart server if there are still
some connections. Anyway, don't make this overwriting database in
restore process, restore into another file and replace file being
absolutely sure you _already have_ new instance.

> Can I read how many users are conected to the database at a time,

even

> if they are using the same username?

Don't know, I use Classic which have'nt such a service at all.

Best regards,
Alexander.