At 04:00 PM 4/04/2008, you wrote:

>>
>> You can't connect to any kind of virtual drive (subst, mapped drive,
>> yadda, yadda, yadda), only to the physical
>> path as seen by the host machine.
>
>I know this is true. But I can't help but wonder, why is there such a
>requirement?

Because a "database file" is a block of disk space whose on-disk format is totally under the control of the database engine, which depends on being able to make system calls to the OS instance it is running on.

>I am especially baffled by the fact that "the true path" is
>required even for GBAK _backups_ (not the database, but the FBK/GBK file).

I'm sure that is "baffling", considering it is not true! ;-) Gbak's backup file is "just a file" and you can write it to anywhere you can write such a file.

./heLen