Hi,

i have a native btrieve-application, which specifies the complete
paths to the (btrieve) data-base files explicit. Therefore the
directory containing the data-files has to be mapped to a local drive
letter on the clients via a "release".
Unfortunately btrieve needs write - rights on that mapped drive,
allthough the client itself never changes the files: the requests to
update or create are send to the server-engine on the server! And the
engine changes the files!
So one can imaagine, that it shoubd be possible to omit write-rights
to the datafiles on windows-system-level, but the btrieve-server,
which runs on the server with more rights, should be able to change
the files.

Unfortunatley this semms impossible.

So I wonder, if one can avoid mapping using IDS:

The documentation of IDS is staggering poor! So I made some experiments:

The datafiles are at d:\project\data ("d:" is a local drive on the
server). The server has IP-Adress "x.y.z.u".

So I switched "Use IDS" on the Server-engine to "ON" and put to the
idshost-file

#############
# j:                   www.pe.com       # Drive mapping
z:  x.y.z.u
#############

The drive z: is not mapped on the client!

If I open a file z:\\project\data\test.dat within the application, I
get the error 172:  Database name not found.

OK, but using btrieve I dont have any Database name!

I turn "trace operation" to ON and select OPEN(0). In the LOG-File I get

File:       "btrv://x.y.z.u/www.pe.com?dbfile=project%5Cdata%5Ctest.dat"

This is strange, because, the line in idshost where the www.pe.com is
mentioned, is commented out (line starts with #)!

If I change the line say to

#############
# j:                   www.peXYZ.com       # Drive mapping
z:  x.y.z.u
#############

I get in the log:

File:
"btrv://x.y.z.u/www.peXYZ.com?dbfile=project%5Cdata%5Ctest.dat"

This is also so, if I put

#############
# j:                   www.peXYZ.com       # Drive mapping
###
###
###
z:  x.y.z.u
#############

to idshost.
If idshost contains only the line

z:  x.y.z.u

I get:

File:       "btrv://x.y.z.u/%c2%92%7C?dbfile=project%5Cdata%5Ctest.dat"

If I use

#############
# j:                   www.peXYZ.com       # Drive mapping
z:  x.y.z.u  abcdef
#############

then I get (as expected:)

File:       "btrv://x.y.z.u/abcdef?dbfile=project%5Cdata%5Ctest.dat"

If I do not use idshost, the logfile looks like (d$ is mapped on the
client as "F:"):

File:       "\\mycomputer\D$\project\data\test.dat"

without "btrv:" and so on (and nothing about the local
"drive" "F:"!)

How can I avoid the "dbfile=" construction in the ids-replacement?

I would expect somthing like

z:  x.y.z.u/D$

in the idshost-file, but doing so, I get a  status-code 3103 (the
server is running!).

I suppose, that I do something wrong here. Any idea, how to make it
correct, would be welcome!
Thanks in advance!

Mircea