At 08:51 AM 4/02/2005 +0200, you wrote:

>Hi group,
>
>I've just installed the IB 6.0 Client on my new HDD (had a crash two weeks
>ago and lost the lot). I have Firebird 1.5 installed on my FreeBSD box. I
>can register the remote server from within IBConsole, and I can register a
>DB on the FreeBSD box (note that this DB was created using IB 6.0 some time
>ago). I can also connect to the DB, but when I try to retrieve a list fo
>tables, or pros, or any other metadata from the DB (using IBConsole) I get
>the following error message:
>
>
>
>Dynamic SQL Error
>
>SQL error code = -901
>
>feature is not supported
>
>
>
>Is this due to an incompatibility between the IB6.0 client and the Firebird
>Server, or am I missing something her?

Yes. Firebird is not InterBase and InterBase is not Firebird. Get the
correct client from the server's bin directory of a Windows installation
(you can use the Win32 installer to do a client-only install on the Windows
machine).

>Using SQL Explorer, I can connect to the DB and view tables, procs, etc.
>with no problems using an Interbase Alias.

That's no excuse. :-) Seriously, SQL Explorer uses a really ancient
InterBase driver and no BDE version ever got the ODS10 data types
right. Some reads won't work. Definitely don't try to use this tool for
any write ops on your databases, or they will DIE (or get very sick!)

>If I appear to be something of a dweeb please forgive me, as I've been
>pitched into Firebird rather unceremoniously. Due to a switch to FreeBSD
>from Mandrake recently, we had to deploy Firebird rather than IB6.0 which is
>not directly supported on FreeBSD.

Using the correct client should solve your problems. You can rename it to
gds32.dll if you want to, before copying it to your system
directory. However, if you run the installer carefully AND make sure that
you don't have any IB client active during the install, you can check two
boxes to a) generate a version of fbclient.dll that Borland products can
work with and b) name it gds32.dll for you and c) write it to the system32
directory of your Windows installation.

Even if you forget something you can still generate this special version by
running the program instclient.exe from the command line. See the FAQs at
the website and also grab the Quick Start Guide while there.

./heLen