> I AM trying to use the libraries from the client side. I've got port
> 3050 open on the server (a remote machine) and I'm trying to connect to
> it from my shared hosting account (hereafter referred to as my _local_
> machine).
>
> The local machine does not have the ibase php libs installed. So I
> can't use any of the abstraction libs either. I can access the remote
> machine fine from my desktop (MacOS) with the gui tools, so I'm
> confident that that end will not present an issue. I'm just not able to
> generate a connection on the local end to it.
>

OK I understand now.
To my knowledge there is no way you can get PHP to use any driver which is
not found in the EXT directory. Nor is there anything written in pure PHP
which is a client lib. I think you'd best take this to the PHP list for
further discussion though. The people over there may know a way to
dynamically load the client from a working directory.
Alan