At 10:59 AM 30/05/2004 +0200, you wrote:

>Helen,
>
>Thanks for the answer, but it only marginally answers the question: I have
>noticed from reading the code that XDR (and luckily I already used it years
>ago) is used for the transformation format, but this only explains the
>difference between the transportable format and the normal format. I had
>thought there was more to that format difference, and reading the code
>showed this use of XDR.

Well, you DID ask for the specs for the transportable format...

>But unless I do not understand it correctly, this does not document the
>backup format: it explains the encoding used within it for the elements it
>stores, but not the overall format.of the files.

AFAIK, it is not documented at all; or, if so, it's one of the many
documentation assets that Borl didn't open source.

>Do you have another suggestion ?

Open a gbak file in a text editor. There you can see what it's
storing. It starts with DDL for the system tables; then a bunch of DML to
insert the object definitions; then a whole lot of alphabetti which I
assume is the data in XDR format. That's as much as I can tell from a
fairly cursory look. But, with the sources from BURP and a gbak file, you
should be able to make some sense of it. That's all I can suggest.

Oh, one more: when you do it, would you please submit it to firebird-docs?
:-))

/heLen