At 03:31 AM 21-11-02 +0000, you wrote:

>I've started work on a fairly major system using IBO 4.2, Delphi 5,
>and Firebird 1.0, only to discover today that the customer already
>has Interbase 5 installed and in use. (I did ask before I started;
>they didn't know it was there.) The IB5-based software is from a
>major vertical market vendor and it's the most important thing my
>customer uses, so I can't disturb it and nothing's going to change
>but me.
>
>I need some advice; it crosses the lines between IBO and
>Interbase/Firebird questions, but I'll start in this group:
>
>- How much trouble am I going to have developing in FB1.0 and
>deploying in IB5? Are there many basic differences? (About the most
>sophisticated SQL I use is some sub-selects and some unions).

From the IBO point of view there won't be any problems.
From the database point of view, there will be problems regarding date and
time types and possibly with some of your numerics. There definitely WILL
be problems if your Firebird database is Dialect 3. However, neither
Dialect 3 nor Dialect 1 can be backed up and then restored as IB 5.x. That
strategy is upward-only - you can't take an ODS 10 database back to ODS 9.

If you are certainly going to deploy this database for access via a 5.x
server, then it has to be a 5.x database. Your only current option is to
rebuild your Fb database under the 5.x server, from script, totally
avoiding quoted delimiters, and then to pump your data across to it from
the Firebird database.

Once you have your 5.x database, you can still develop with it using your
Firebird server, just as long as you ensure that you use the 5.x version of
gbak to perform any backups that you might potentially need to restore.

>- I need to use their copy of GDS32.dll, right? But no other changes
>to my software?

When you are working on the database using the Firebird server, you should
use Firebird's gds32.dll. When the database is running under the 5.x
server, you should use "their" gds32.dll. There is an extra proviso
here: if your application is using database events, the 5.5 and 5.6
versions of gds32.dll will cause problems. They would need to revert their
IB 5 client to 5.1.1. I believe we still have this for download somewhere
on the IBO website.

>- To deploy my DB, I'm planning to take a transportable backup of my
>database to their system and restore it using the IB5 software, right?

No. See the comments above. The 5.x (ODS 9) gbak won't restore a gbak
file made by the ODS10 gbaks.

>- (Since I'm not installing anything other than my database file to
>their server) There's no chance I'm going to mess up their critical
>IB5-based program, right?

No. It should be just fine. It would pay you to double-check that they
are not using 5.5, though. 5.1 OK, 5.6 OK and better than 5.1. 5.5 was a
disaster that should never have happened. They can upgrade to 5.6 free
except for a $25 charge Borland makes for the media.

>- Am I into any licensing issues? They have enough "seats" of the
>other software (and thus I'm assuming of IB5) to cover every PC in
>the place, so I'm not breaking any licensing agreements, right?

No. The IB 5 licences were for the server and clients. It is not
concerned with how many databases are running under the licensed
server. They just can't run two servers under a single server
licence. But sure, if they wanted to run another server, you should
encourage them to make it a Linux box and run Firebird. IBO lets you
rename gds32.dll to something else to avoid clashing with an existing
gds32.dll.

cheers,
Helen