I appreciate the detailed response. I thought I understood until I
read the last sentence. If I make an entry for the other computer in
the hosts file I can then use it as a server over TCP/IP? Am I correct?

--- In IBObjects@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@t...> wrote:
> At 07:07 AM 22/02/2004 +0000, you wrote:
> >Computers A and B are conneccted by a cable and just using MS
> >networking. If computer A wants to connect to B, where B is running
> >Firebird and has the database file, what do I set the database
> >property to? Can I just use UNC? Will this work?
>
> It's a UNC-like connection string but you can't use Windows
> peer-to-peer-style UNC strings to mapped drives or shares. Firebird's
> architecture is client/server and it doesn't know about
peer-to-peer...You
> also can't use this style of connection if the server is Win 95, Win98,
> WinMe or (I think) WinXP Home. (I'd like to hear from anyone who
tested
> WinXP Home).
>
> B (your server) has to have a Server Name. If your Windows version
doesn't
> have a way for you to set up the server name, then you'll know that it
> doesn't support being a Named Pipes server.
>
> Suppose you called it BServer. Then A would connect to the employee
> database on Firebird 1.5 as follows (full string):
>
> \\BServer\C:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\examples\employee.fdb
>
> With IBO it is best to use the individual connection properties:
>
> ServerName: BServer
> Path: C:\Program Files\Firebird\Firebird_1_5\examples\employee.fdb
> Protocol: cpNetBEUI
>
> With these three properties, IBO constructs the correct connection
string
> at run time. At design time, it also writes the full string into
> DatabaseName. You should delete this and replace it with your own
> "user-friendly" name, such as Db.
>
> Win95, etc. *can* be servers, but they can only be TCP/IP servers.
Then
> you would set up the server machine's physical or logical IP address
with
> any server name you like in the HOSTS file.
>
> Helen