Artur,

Questions and Answers:

Sybase uses exclusive file locking on its .db (database) and .log
(transaction logging) files to prevent users from copying the database
files while the service is active.

As far as the machine being powered off or some sort of unplanned
termination, sybase deals with this by using the .log file which logs
every transaction in a linear fashion which basically causes the worst
case scenario to be one lost record rather than any data corruption if
the machine is powered off during a transaction. (and im sure they
also use forced writes). In the last year and a half, our company has
seen only a few corrupt sybase databases compared to firebird where
there was massive corruption on a huge scale costing the company tens
of thousands, although I will admit that this all could have been
error on our side.

We can certainly train support personell not to copy the database
files around while the service is running as they are prevented from
doing it with Sybase already. My question is, why doesn't firebird
use exclusive file locking when it first opens the filehandle for the
database file in a similar fashion?

I'm assuming that the database files CAN be file copied while the
Firebird service is not running, correct?

You had mentioned a difference between an InterBase database and a
FireBird database and forced writes. Would there be a simple way to
convert our databases to FireBird or just simply change the forced
writes parameter? And if so, does this typically solve the problem
with the power down scenario?

We are using Windows 2000 Pro and Windows XP Pro out in the field, btw.


-Augey