At 11:06 PM 6/08/2008, you wrote:

>I'm writing a Windows service that is dependent on the Firebird service.
> Is it valid to hard code "FirebirdServerDefaultInstance" as the
>Firebird service name,

Yes, if it is the instance that you want your service to depend on.

>or should I be deriving the name somehow to
>ensure future (and perhaps backwards) compatability?

If other instances of a firebird server are running as services then someone put them there. (Check the Registry if your site suffers from software anarchy on the servers!) At the moment it has to be done manually although I believe there are still plans to make it an option you can do automatically via the installer.

There are no plans to change the name of the default instance so, if you know that your service is always going to want dependency on the default instance and you are secure in the knowledge that someone else isn't going to come along and replace *your* FirebirdServerDefaultInstance with a different version, then you have no fears about future-proofing.

./heLen