Does anybody know if it is possible for a client machine in a windows
network environment to access settings from either aliases.conf or
firebird.conf on the server programmatically?

The assumption is that the firebird folder on the server is not
available directly to the client machine.

The reason I ask is because I want to simplify the process of users
referencing databases on a remote server without losing the ability to
backup the database from the client end.

It doesn't appear that gbak is capable of referring to an alias, it
needs the full path on the server machine and I want the client
machine to be able to reference server databases by alias, while the
full path name is not visible to the user, but the application will
know it for purposes of backing up/restoring.