I've been under a heavy rain of SW bugs for the latest 10 days so I only
got the emails every 3 days but didn't read anything. Some ideas
interspersed below:

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Steffen Nyeland [mailto:steffen_nyeland@...]
> Sent: Jueves 8 de Marzo de 2001 11:08
>
> Hi,
>
> It seems to me that FireBird has changed the way or values for the
> isc_info_xxxxx vars.

At least the version issue has become an unsolved point. Do we sync with IB
or do we start our own version counter? Same level reflects compatibility
but... who can assure that IB7 and Firebird2 will be compatible in the
future, for example?

> We have general login manager for our in-house applications, and one thing
> it does is go through the "IB_Connection1.Characteristics".
>
> We never had a problem, until I wanted to ship my Qube 3 (Linux) with a
> FireBird 0.9 CS test 4 patch 1 to Saudi, and then I had the dumb idea to
> test it first - got an GPF - found the place in the code
> "IB_Connection1.Characteristics". It seems that isc_info_end is never
> found/set.

I would be grateful if you have time to trace the issue more in detail...
whether the problem comes from some assumption in your code or an unexpected
value in IBO itself. You could shout at the firebird-devel list at SF.

> gstat on the server gives correct results:
>
> Checksum 12345
> Generation 1308
> Page size 1024
> ODS version 10.0
> Oldest transaction 1303
> Oldest active 1304
> Oldest snapshot 1304
> Next transaction 1306
> Bumped transaction 1
> Sequence number 0
> Next attachment ID 0
> Implementation ID 19
> Shadow count 0
> Page buffers 0
> Next header page 0
> Database dialect 1
> Creation date Mar 2, 2001 20:30:09

The ODS and the server version have some complex relation. I posted at my
site a table of engine/ODS written originally by Dmitry Kuzmenko.

> ..the "IB_WISQL" prop-editor states ODS = 0.0 (all other fields are also 0
> - pagesize etc..)

All other fields, too? Did the whole world turn into a big zero? I wasn't
aware of this issue. In theory, the server version shouldn't affect the
retrieval of other values, however...

> Any clue who to blame ? ;-)

Hmmm, I help Jason in maintaining IB_WISQL and also I'm a member of
firebird devs, but I'm not willing to be blamed for now. :-) It will be some
months more before I can get more disk space, so for now I can't test the
problem directly. One basic point is that programs expect the major version
to be 4, 5 or 6. IB3 was a different beast, geared towards GDML and embedded
SQL. What does a poor program when it finds that the server's major version
is zero? (Currently FB is at 0.9X so this is the case indeed.) Does it
reject the connection? Does it panic and assumes that this is the first
version of IB before the initial public release around 1985? Remember that
tools don't check for the string part where you could tell if your server is
FB or IB.
Some other functionality could be dependent on the server version being
greater than N, so the issue remains unresolved as I said previously.

C.