At 12:08 PM 2/03/2005 +0200, you wrote:

> I would like to run things in the ideal way, which I think as you
>suggested would be to run the server on a separate machine, but sometimes we
>have to give up to the needs of customers who always think to economize and
>have one machine less in their offices.
> Some customers are very open and comprehensive but others no (especially
>in the market around me), all those technical reasons to have a server on a
>separate machine means nothing to them. And since the customer is always
>right, I think sometimes we have to "lean" in front of them...
>
> Coming back to your suggestion, is it possible to have one compiled
>version of my application that checks if the server is embedded or not and
>run accordingly?

A single application: yes, indeed! It doesn't have to "check"
anything' but you must not hard-code the server and database path in the
application (it is always a bad practice, anyway!)

When a client is connected to a database through an embedded server, no
other user can connect to that database. Confine your embedded deployments
to single-user systems and make life simple. If you must have a client
running on the same machine as a server that is serving remote stations,
connect the local client through the localhost server or, simply, through
the network.

What I dislike about running a local client is that it takes processing
capacity away from the server. You can build a dedicated server out of
virtually anything.

I've just built a totally new one from a combination of "leftovers" and
some oddments purchased on eBay. The two "shop-bought" things on it is a
stubby case (half-height tower) for $45 (with two front USB ports), a KVM
switch ($49 Aust.) which lets me use the same keyboard, mouse and my nice
TFT flat monitor for both my main dev machine and the new server. On eBay,
I bought a mainboard + a CPU I didn't need, a 7200 rpm hard-drive, a CD-Rom
drive and a modem card. I stuck in another low-capacity HDD from the
junk-box, an old FDD that I will probably never use and a NIC from the
junk-box. Total spend: $156 Aust. I'll probably sell the surplus CPU on
eBay and get some of that money back. :-) It's totally beaut and ideal
for a Firebird server on a small LAN (I have three other servers, too). I
utterly refuse to spend big $$$ on computer hardware.

BTW, Lester, you didn't mean to say "compile two versions of your
application", did you?

Helen