I suggest one small addition to databases.conf in FB4 - aliases for
directories.
Existing method to set aliases in a form:
alias = file
{
Key1=ValueA
Key2=ValueB
...
}
has serious disadvantage - it's hard to provide and support
configuration for a large set of databases that should have same
configuration, also it's impossible to configure something for an
unknown in advance, able to grow set of databases (for example when new
databases in that set may be sometimes created by client application).
This problem can be solved adding aliases for directories. Directory
alias has directory separator symbol in the end of the name, like this:
group/ = /path/to/databases
{
Key1=ValueX
Key2=ValueY
...
}
When client tries to attach to database with a name starting with group/
(CONNECT 'group/some.fdb';) name will be expanded to
/path/to/databases/some.fdb. And any database in group/ will have same
per-database configuration values including a case when someone wants to
CREATE DATABASE 'group/newdb.fdb'.
Backward compatibility.
If someone has in databases.conf alias looking like directory alias
alias/ = /some/db.fdb
we may still resolve it in old manner - expand 'alias/' into
'/some/db.fdb'. If such file exists and it's not a directory attach will
succeed. An attempt to use alias in invalid way will in any case cause
an error "Is a directory"/"Not a directory" depending upon what was
attempted.
Certainly first of all passed from client db_name is checked as file
alias and only after it as directory alias, i.e. if in addition to
group/ = /path/to/databases
we have file alias
group/db1.fdb = /other/place.fdb
or even
group/db1.fdb = /path/to/databases/db1.fdb
but with another configuration it will be used if user connects to
'group/db1.fdb'.
Implementation.
Requires modifications in single function expandDatabaseName(), i.e.
should not delay FB4 release.
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