Re: [Firebird-devel] WNet and XNet

[Jim S. <ja...@ne...>]

Alex Peshkov wrote:

> On the other hand, this feature is very convenient sometimes - user 
> has network disk, and he want to open a database on that server. With 
> automatic redirection enabled this works fine.

But when the disk is on a network file server, it works very badly.

I think we need some serious discussion of the automatic redirection 
feature.  It's one of those DWIM (do what I mean) features that is 
sometimes a convenience and sometimes a pain in the ass -- one of those 
nasty little areas where "easy to learn" and "easy to use" are at war 
with each other.

>
> I don't suggest to retain WNet for this feature. In fact automatic 
> network redirection is not protocol-related feature, it is OS-related. 
> In Unix we redirect NFS mounts, in windows - SMB mounts. TCP/IP may be 
> easily used for this purposes with only one potential problem - when 
> NetBIOS and DNS names of server do differ. But this means so badly 
> administered network, that I suggest not to take into account such case.

Actually, it is protocol related in that the particular network controls 
the node namespace.  NetBUI names are usually related to DNS names, but 
they don't have to be.  Using a Samba mount to project a TCP connect 
string, for example, is dangerous, maybe impossible, though while safe 
to use with named pipes (which isn't to say we want to use named pipes).

We need to take a fresh look at database naming and decide first what we 
want to do and then how to do it.  Identifying a database by filename 
may have made sense once, but it doesn't any more.  I abandoned the 
concept in Netfrastructure years ago and have regretted it for an 
instant.  That still leaves the problem of mapping a remote database 
from a connect string to a <node, protocol, local name> triplet. 



-- 

Jim Starkey
Netfrastructure, Inc.
978 526-1376