> My reason for asking this is in the context of making a feature in my
> application for sites to backup and restore their FB datafile in as
> simple a manner as possible.

then do you customer a favour and install this service
http://www.is.svitonline.com/ddking/
on their server when you install FB. Then visit them or train one person or
write up a clear procedure to do a once per annum restore.

> I want a solution to be friendly to
> users whose applications may be forced to close and to minimise the
> time they cannot reconnect to the datafile.
>

as I say - this is purely up to the processor speed and gbak you can't
hasten it past these variables.

> So I thought a strategy to minimise the offline time would be to:
> 1. make a backup file (FileBK) of the datafile FileBD.
> 2. rename the datafile FileDB->FileOldDB_date

as long as noone is updating while you backup - otherwise, rename before you
backup

> 3. rename the backup FileBK->FileDB
> 4. do something with FileOldDB_data
>
> Perhaps the IBOAdmin code does this, I don't know. It seemed to me
> this would reduce the time the Datafile was unavailable to my
> application. During the backup apps could request a login but would
> be refused in a friendly manner as the datafile "knows" a backup is
> underway and a restore is coming. Only when a restore was planned
> would connections be refused.

the connections have to be refused as soon as (*before*) the backup starts

>
> To do the renaming I'd need access to the file in the FB DB folder.

<snip>
Alan