On 28/02/2013 1:40 PM, André Knappstein wrote:

> To create databases, look up the literature about which commands to
> use or use one of the available free management tools.

I really didn't want to have to learn how to use a full client/server
RDBMS just to create a file. Maybe Firebird isn't the right solution
for me. All I know is what my experience with Firebird has been so far,
which is my first experience with it in about five years. For right
now, I know I don't want client/server. I just want embedded (via
ODBC). The ODBC driver doesn't support embedded out of the box (it has
literally everything else, though... it's almost a management tool in
and of itself). So I get the embedded server, but the embedded server
doesn't come with any command-line tools or executables of any sort. It
has only libraries, so I couldn't use it to actually create the database
for embedded use. Wanting to avoid the pain of installing a full
client/server database simply to create a file, I tried to just download
the server and use the sample DB that came with it. But I got a
security error every time I tried to delete the existing tables in it.
So I bit the bullet and installed the full server in non-service mode
and went through the pain of trying to get it up and running enough to
connect to it and create a database. After some frustration, and some
time, I finally found out that it completely violates Windows file
protection guidelines by putting the security database inside the actual
program installation directory. However there is no manifest file
installed with it that tells Windows to elevate privileges. So,
finally, after terminating the server and restarting it as
administrator, I was finally able to connect just to create an empty
database. I promptly uninstalled the server, keeping a copy of the
blank DB for future use.

And if that was painful, don't ask me how painful it was to get Jaybird
to work. Other products put the necessary DLLs inside the .jar. 'Nuff
said.

Firebird has something really unique here. A product that can scale
from SQLite to Postgres in one product. I think you should be singing
this from the mountaintops. Encouraging this sort of use. SQLite can't
grow like Firebird can, and Postgres can't shrink. What an amazing
product! I have to say, though, nothing is ever easy with it. And this
was my experience in the past too. Great product. But nothing about it
just works out of the box.

Kurt.