> InterBase 5.6 would happily write over the front of the file, but
> it's eight years old and should be retired.

Yeah, it did that on a customer's site back in 1998/1999. After they
had 3 days of downtime (because the last backup was 3 weeks old, but
that's another story) we had to migrate the app to, you guess it,
Oracle. Because that never breaks, you remember? They had a 4-day
downtime with Oracle since then ;-))

When it happened, there was noone who could help us. The ODS was a
tightly held secret and there was neither IBPhoenix, nor IBSurgeon nor
Ann Harrison nor anybody/anything else ...

Ah yes, and there was not even a hint in the documentation that this
can happen. It should have been written in 16pt boldface on the first
page with a 1cm black (or, better, red) border around it. IMHO.

Firebird is so much better.


Best Regards

Stefan