At 07:46 AM 14/04/2006, you wrote:

>Hi All:
>I use a screen reader as I'm visually impaired. It does not work so well
>with the isql shell.

Did you know that you can customise the command shell (colours,
fonts, size, etc.)? If not, let me know and I'll try to walk you
through it off-line. ISQL and the other command-line tools follow
any custom settings in the shell. As I think I mentioned yesterday,
I have a shortcut that opens a shell directly in Firebird's \bin
directory. It opens in "full-screen" mode which, for my convenience,
is half a monitor wide; my background colour is dark green and my
text is Lucida Console in white. So, if your reader does better with
some background/font/font colour settings than others, this may be
your rescue! Perhaps something like a bolded Lucida console in black
on white might even make it possible for you to see things like SQL>
and CON> yourself, if the reader ignores them.

>I have managed to connect to the example employee.fdb
>database I think as when everything is entered correctly I hear nothing,
>that is no error message.
>Next I wanted to execute a command against the dB to see if I'm actually
>connected so went looking for the FireBird Users Manual in the docs but I
>guess they are on a cd I might have to order.

There isn't really an up-to-date "Firebird Users Manual" yet - it's
work-in-progress in the firebird-docs project. There is "Using
Firebird" on the IBPhoenix subscription CD, which is for Firebird
1.0. The firebird-docs group is revamping the sources from that book
totally and upgrading it to Firebird 1.5 and 2.0.

> Is there anyplace that tells
>about using isql which I haven't been able to find yet?

Do you have OpGuide.pdf, the Borland IB 6 beta book?

>Or, is there someplace I can find out what a script is
>and how to write one so I can
>avoid using isql shell?

Yes: The Firebird Book.

>My last option is to jump right into using Liberty Basic with ODBC to try
>and test the connection.

Can't comment as I don't know what Liberty Basic is/does.

>Can I enter a standard sql statement against the database in isql like
>select something from something?

Yes, that's what isql is for (amongst other things). Just don't
forget to terminate every statement with a semicolon, or else the
CON> prompt will just sit there waiting for the CON[TINUATION].

>I'll have to look up syntax for sql statements if this will work.

The free book for that is LangRef.pdf, which covers the syntax up to
and including InterBase 6.0 (more or less).

There is also a big HTML document that contains the [not entirely
up-to-date] syntaxes with links from the summaries and indexes. It
used to be available at
http://www.ibphoenix.com/main.nfs?a=ibphoenix&page=ibp_60_sqlref but
right now it seems to be broken. However, this one works:
http://www.channelcrm.dk/DownloadFiles/SQLRef.html

After that, you need the language sections (DML and DDL) of the
v.1.5.3 release notes.

Rick, if possible, could you remember to delete the old message text
when you top-post to replies? Thanks.

./heLen