Guenter Heinendirk wrote:

> Thanks for the very fast reply.
>
> Your answer sounds, as if the protocol is still not stable.
> If I try to extract the protocol of other clients, I fear that the work is lost to fast because of changes in the protocol.
>
> How are the other projects developing the client protocols? Do they really try to discover the protocol by trial and error with the use of TCP loggers like wireshark?

Generally, the protocols have been backward compatible - that is, a
server will speak several protocols, one that is the latest and best,
plus all the old ones. So implementing the current protocol is safe
because it will be preserved over many versions ... I doubt that an
InterBase 1.0 client could talk to Firebird 2.5, but it may.

Most projects use the stable API presented by the client library
and let the client track the lower level protocol. Others model
themselves on JayBird which is reasonable well-documented internally.


Best,

Ann