Hi Adam

> >
> > No guardian running. Are you suggesting that you run CS and have no
> > updating problems?
>
> Not at all. I am saying that there has been issues with the installers
> in the past installing guardian against a classic install. The
> guardian process was designed to watch the firebird server process and
> restart it if it crashed. Of course if you use services, you could
> always configure failure actions to restart the service.
>

I was just hoping you had direct experience of this - however Dany has
indicated the same problem, pointing to CS.

It did install guardian but we turned it off.

> But then again that wasn't your original question. You were enquiring
> over whether anything had changed between IB and FB 1.5. The obvious
> answer is yes. IB didn't even have classic on windows. From my
> understanding, there should be no difference between the way FB 1.5 SS
> and FB 1.5 CS handle 'object in use'.

I am suspecting there is.

>
> Basically, in order to make a DDL change, you need exclusive access on
> the objects it touches. (This may or may not have always been the
> case). The safest way is to ensure exclusive access when making ddl
> changes.
>

I'm sure it is theoretically the safest way - however we have been making
extensive changes for 10 years and have never experienced a problem.

> Firebird 2 does allow you to make some changes like adding FK
> constraints even if you don't have exclusive access, however they
> don't come into effect until it does get exclusive access. See the
> release notes for more information.
>

What you are saying, and my experience, would suggest that IB SS worked like
FB2 - but FB CS does not. We are trying CS because the user has a multi
processor server and has a mixture of batch jobs and high volume transaction
processing. However I do need to be able to make changes to the metadata
without shutting them down or restarting the service.

Thanks for your help Adam. I suspect that unless anyone can provide any
more concrete info on this we will have to revert to SS until FB2.

Regards
Paul