Hi,

At May 2, 2004, 19:14, Helen Borrie wrote:

> AFAIK, no. CREATE DATABASE has to have a hard path.

Aliases work, I just tried it. But, it will fail if the file already
exists, as it always did.

> It's a "bootstrap"
> problem, isn't it? I recall a discussion about on devel about possible
> logic but there are security considerations, too, of course.

Since you can't overwrite the existing database, by issuing a CREATE
DATABASE statement, then I don't think that there's a security issue.
Unless, of course, someone changes the logic to overwrite the existing
file, in their "own private build".

I think the discussion pertained to GBAK, since GBAK is able to
overwrite an existing database when restoring(with the proper
options). I wouldn't support using aliases when restoring a backup,
because of the security and integrity implications.

> The main
> purpose of aliasing is to keep the hard path off the wire when accessing a
> database. It would be pretty futile if application code had some way to
> extract the alias path, wouldn't it?

It could be regarded as a weak point in the server. And, as you said,
defeat the point of aliases.

--
Best regards,
Daniel Rail
Senior System Engineer
ACCRA Group Inc. (www.accra.ca)
ACCRA Med Software Inc. (www.filopto.com)