Nando, and others who answered, thanks much for your help.

I have it working now, here is what I found.

At 12:41 AM 7/14/2005, Nando Dessena <nando@...> wrote:

>Walter,
>
>W> To run it with the embedded server, I put a copy of the Delphi exe file on
>W> the USB drive in F:\SpedDemo, along with a copy of fbembed.dll 1.5.2.4731
>W> renamed to gds32.dll.
>
>Just a note: since you are using IBO, which supports fbembed.dll, I
>find it sloppy on your part to rename it to gds32.dll. Just modify
>your application so that it uses the correct library name. The ability
>to rename the file to gds32.dll is a last resort for those that cannot
>do without it. You can.

IB_SQL requires gds32.dll, and so also my app seems to, so I have left it
at that. I am very much a newbie with IBObjects, someday I will have to
figure out how to make it use fbclient.dll.

>W> Also as detailed in Helen's book, page 18, I have copied firebird.conf into
>W> F:\SpedDemo\fb and aliases.conf into F:\SpedDemo, Firebird.msg into
>W> F:\SpedDemo\fb also fbintl.dll and fbudf.dll in their own subdirectories..
>W> Firebird.conf contains the line "RootDirectory = F:\SpedDemo\fb"
>
>I can't see how your application can possibly know that firebird.conf
>is located under the fb subfolder since the only place this
>information is recorded into is firebird.conf itself! ;-)
>
>Have a look at README_embedded.txt to know what your options are about
>where to place the files). I don't know where the example shown in The
>Firebird Book comes from, but it looks like a typo.
>
>Furthermore, personally, I wouldn't use RootDirectory because there's
>no guarantee that the USB stick will get the F:\ volume name in all
>cases. You can:
>
>a) move firebird.conf up one level.
>
>or
>
>b) set the FIREBIRD environment variable at your program startup
>(before the client library is loaded, which means in the
>initialization section of one unit that is initialized before
>IB_Constants).
>
>In both cases, delete the RootDirectory key from firebird.conf.
>
>I don't know if this solves your problem but it needs to be fixed
>anyway.

Yes, there seems to be some incorrectness in that page of Helen's book. In
the end I put all the files - myApp.exe, Firebird.conf, Firebird.msg,
aliases.conf and gds32.dll in the same folder. I removed the
"RootDirectory" line from Firebird.conf, I'm not sure if that file is
needed at all now.

Aliases.conf now has EdChart=\SpedDemo\db\EDCHART.FDB and the database file
is in the db subdirectory. Leaving the drive letter out of the path, so it
is a relative reference to the root of the current directory, seems to take
care of moving the whole structure from one drive to another, so it should
not matter what drive letter my USB flash drive gets assigned to when it is
plugged in.

As for the null pointers etc., I don't know where they came from but as
long as they stay gone, I am happy :)

Thanks again for your help.

Walter


/*
C. Walter Ogston
ogstoncw@...
*/