John

If you need a good reference guide for Firebird, I can recommend the
Firebird Book by Helen Borrie as a very good and complete reference on
Firebird. It covers all things concerning firebird for version 1.5 and
I believe there is an addendum available or coming out for version 2.0.

Best Regards

Jack Engleman

--- In IBObjects@yahoogroups.com, john cantin <kyukido@...> wrote:
>
> Helen, thank you so much for your detailed explanation.
> that helps alot and i really appreciate it!
>
> Helen Borrie wrote:
> >
> > At 02:35 PM 17/01/2008, you wrote:
> >
> > >so all i have to do is specify more clearly which table stu_index and
> > >pro_index are in?
> >
> > Hmmm, well, I guess that's a vague way to say it. Technically
> > speaking, you are required to supply fully-qualified column names,
> > i.e. qualifier.columnname, in all clauses of multi-table queries. If
> > you use relation aliases (as you should) then you use the relation
> > alias as the qualifier. If you use relation names (table, view or
> > procedure names) then you use the relation name as the qualifier.
> >
> > But you'll notice there's one more correction here:
> >
> > >Helen Borrie wrote:
> > >> select
> > >> ss.*,
> > >> d.pro_index
> > >> from s_students ss
> >
> > - indicating that you need to qualify the output columns and also
> > include any column[s] that are referenced in the ORDER BY clause.
> >
> > >> left outer join s_contracts sc on
> > >> (sc.stu_index=ss.stu_index and sc.contract_active='Y'
> > >> left outer join d_programs d on
> > >> (sc.program = d.program_code)
> > >> /* guessing location of WHERE and ORDER BY fields */
> > >> where ss.stu_index=345
> > >> order by d.pro_index
> >
> > You wrote:
> > >sorry if this is the wrong group...
> >
> > It's the wrong group to be asking about the differences between IB
and
> > Firebird. This group is about IB Objects and your application code.
> > IBO will throw the exceptions that are returned from the database,
> > regardless of whether your IBO application is attaching to a Fb or an
> > IB Server. The REASONS for the exceptions come from SQL language
> > incompatibilities between the *different* database engines. Solving
> > the SQL questions belongs in firebird-support but we don't mind
> > helping you to understand why IBO has thrown an exception.
> >
> > If you're asking about an IBO problem, make sure you state which
> > database engine and version and which IBO version you're using. It
> > really does matter A LOT!!
> >
> > If you're changing over to Firebird, one of your important resources
> > has to be Firebird release notes. As a collection, the Fb 1.5.5
and Fb
> > 2.1 releasenotes, along with the Quickstart Guides and the IB 6.0
Beta
> > manuals *are* your Firebird manuals.
> >
> > InterBase has had a long (and ongoing) tradition of letting you use
> > illegal or ambiguous SQL syntaxes. Firebird, version by version, gets
> > progressively less tolerant of such syntaxes. They are all documented
> > *cumulatively* in the release notes: Fb 1.0.x and Fb 1.5 in the Fb
> > 1.5.5 notes, Fb 2.0.x and Fb 2.1 in the *latest* Fb 2.1 notes, all
> > downloadable via Firebird's Documentation Index.
> >
> > Helen
> >
> >
>