> What would be the easiest way to switch off the "mad in the

middle"? Is there a simple way to make firebird accept xml queries
and parse xml output? Or would he have to rewrite his website to
send sql queries to firebird?


Nils,

You can Google to find some kind of plug-in *maybe*, but AFIK
Firebird, in all flavors, does not natively support XML. There are
some quite lively discussions about this topic in this ng.

I do some XML and HTML in/out of FB 1.5. The best way I have figured
is to use XSLT in the incoming side to change the XML into something
more friendly to FB, or for the output - make a stored procedure to
create XML/HTML/XHTML with the information supplied by
internal "Selects".

Rick