Is there a service API call, utility or component that will let a remote application read the aliases.conf file in order to ascertain the actual pathname of an alias? I know for security reasons that it's not a healthy thing to do but there must be a way.

Here's what I am trying to do. When I send an update for a program to a client, some DDL changes might be needed. I have the program testing for an update SQL in the program network install directory the first time the admin runs the updated program. If it requires the database structure to change, I want to backup the database before making the changes. In order to do that remotely, however, I need a path on the firebird server, not an alias. The alias will work for the file being backed up, but the destination path must be relative to the server, so I want to just create the backup in the same directory as the original db. If something goes wrong, I can just restore the original again, otherwise the backup will get overwritten the next time an update happens.

I can write a UDF that will read the registry for the FB bin directory location, read in the aliases.conf file and scan it for the alias. The UDF would then return the full path.

I thought there might be an easier way or that someone else has already done this so I figured I'd ask before spending the time to write the UDF.

TIA

Woody (TMW)

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