> Describe exactly what it is that you are trying to do.

I am sorry for that. I want to do this:

1. I have a delphi rich GUI app accessing a firebird server. Both
Delphi GUI app and firebird server are resides on different host.

2. I want to perform backup operation from my client app and I want to
get the backup file on client host.

If I use service_mgr to perform the backup operation, the backup file
will reside at firebird host finally. In order to get the backup file
to client host, I need a mechanism to transfer the backup file over
(FTP or samba service). This is what I want to avoid.

If I use gbak without service_mgr, I can get the backup file directly
on my client host.

I choose the gbak approach without using service_mgr to avoid setup
extra service to transfer my backup file client host.

As I am writing a rich GUI application, I don't want my application
suddenly pop up a GBAK console windows. I follow the guide from
microsoft knowledge base (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190351) to
redirect the output of GBAK process to my GUI app. I have
successfully implement the output redirection strategy and it works fine.

The next problem appear. For database with size over 100M, the backup
and restore operation take times to complete. The redirection
strategy I implement will cause GBAK process running half way become
"not responding". I believe this should be the GBAK problem. It
didn't flush the output buffer as it display lines. This problem also
mentioned in the knowledge base article.

Hope the above explanation make you clear about my question. Thank you.