On Mon, Dec 9, 2013 at 6:58 PM, Christian Gütter <n...@guetter.org> wrote:
> > > nobody replied to the questions I asked about the Firebird system > tables some days ago. Maybe they were a bit too lengthy and specific. > > I am wondering if anybody could point me to some documentation > regarding the Firebird system tables instead, as I could not find any. > > Probably not in the InterBase books - or the Firebird Book (which I recommend highly and is available through ibphoenix.com) - is the reason for the very odd numeric values for datatypes. Firebird is the open source clone of InterBase. InterBase was designed to be compatible at the API level with the VAX Rdb products. The level of compatibility was such that if you pointed gbak at an Rdb/VMS database, backed it up, it could be restored as an InterBase database and all the applications would work if they invoked the InterBase client library rather than the Rdb client library. The Rdb products used the VAX/VMS datatype codes, plus some out-of-band codes for non VMS types like blobs. That heritage is also the reason for the obscure error code values - every project at DEC had a unique hex prefix for its error messages so different products wouldn't conflict. The codes look much better in hex than in decimal. Good luck, Ann
