Hi Helen

I am getting somewhere..... The machine with firebird installed ( the xp machine) does have 'study-2' as the host name. I had a firewall on the windows 98 machine (the 'client'), this seems to take a dislike to programs I'm developing, so I have uninstalled it temperarily. However, until i connect to the internet via my dial up connection on the windows 98 machine (study-1) nothing works. As soon as I connect to the internet i get a ping (from study-1 to study-2) report of 1ms max round trip and, then using 'study-2:d:\FireBirdTest\mydatabase.gdb' as the connection string I can connect to the database using IB_SQL and my app by running them from the drive on study-2. It does seem very slow considering there is only one record in the database! Several seconds to show the form after 'connecting'. Showing the form only involves running a master slave IBOQuery.

Also I'm not sure why, but I dont seem to need gds32.dll in the client machine's windows dir, I assume this is because i am running the app from study-2 rather than installing the app to the client machine?

I was planing to suggest that my app is installed onto the server and a shortcut to the app placed on the client machines. The network technicians I have worked with prefer this to creating packages for my client apps to install on their networks client machines. Is this a good way of working from the database point of view?

Also thanks for your advice about the IB_Session_FB15.pas unit and fbclient.dll. As I intend my app to eventually be installed on other peoples networks and stand alone machines, would i be better using fbclient.dll or gds32.dll?

Many thanks
Pete

----- Original Message -----
From: Helen Borrie
To: firebird-support@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, July 09, 2004 10:33 AM
Subject: Re: [firebird-support] Can firebird be used on a windows peer to peer network?


At 09:04 AM 9/07/2004 +0000, you wrote:
>Hi
>
>Sorry to ask what is probably another stupid question but I have been
>trying to find/work out the answer for several days now...
>
>In the process of converting my paradox based app, I have used the
>firebird-1.5.0.4306-win32.exe to install firebird to the c: drive of
>several machines and then run my test app with no problems.
>
>I now need to work out how it will be installed to a LAN and as a
>first step was trying to install it to my peer to peer network (win98
>and winxp).
>
>I have tried installing firebird to c drive and installing my app and
>database to \\study-2\SharedDocs\FireBirdTestDir but I get an IO
>error. During the installation, an ini is created that stores the
>application dir, in this case '\\study-2\SharedDocs\FireBirdTestDir'.
>This is then used as the databaseName for my IB_ connection. I also
>tried installing firebird to \\study-2\SharedDocs\FireBirdTestDir.
>
>I also read on www.alanti.net/firebird/inst/ that i need a copy of
>gds32.dll in the app dir, but that didnt seem to help.
>
>I have read in the quick start-up guide that 'shares do not work' is
>this the problem?
>
>This is probably a daft question but I am new to both networks and
>client server db's!
>
>Many thanks for your time and knowledge

1. Windows peer-to-peer networking is not a supported protocol: Windows
peer-to-peer is file-sharing and device-sharing. Your choices are tcp/ip or
named pipes. You can be running peer-to-peer stuff on the network at the
same time as you have clients attaching to and communicating with the
server via tcp/ip or named pipes.

2. For simplicity, decide on one machine that's to be the server. If you
choose the Win98 machine, you can ONLY use tcp/ip. If you choose the XP
machine, you have the option of Windows named pipes (though its not a good
protocol for database connections, too noisy).

3. All databases MUST be on the *same* machine as the server - not on
shares or mapped drives (as you have already discovered).

4. Each client machine must have a copy of the correct client
library. For Firebird 1.5, the client is named fbclient.dll. If you are
using Borland stuff for your apps, you can generate a "borland-compatible"
version named gds32.dll. Copy this into the Windows directory (Win98) or
Windows\system32 (XP), over the top of any gds32.dll that is currently there.

5. Assuming you use tcp/ip (recommended), test the network connections by
pinging the server. For this you need to know the server's IP address or
(if it is a properly set up XP Pro machine) its host name. Win98 machines
don't have host names but you can create one that Firebird can use by
making an entry in the Hosts files of both server and clients. (You can
get more info about this from the Firebird Quick Start Guide). If the
client machine gets a ping response from the server, then you're ready to go.

6. Let's say you have a database test.fdb on the server in
c:\databases. You have host file entries for the server as

10.12.13.1 MyHost

OK, to connect your app, e.g. IB_SQL, to the database, use this connection
string:

MyHost:c:\databases\test.fdb

Supply a valid username and password, and you're in.

Note, if you MUST, the connection string using the named pipes protocol is:

\\MyHost\c:\databases\test.fdb

/heLen


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