The Services Interface

From the configuration page for your Firebird DSN on Windows you have access to a useful graphical management console that is built across the ODBC API and Firebird’s Services API.It gives a database administrator on Windows a user-friendly way to run service utilities that would otherwise be run from a command-line tool.We are using it to introduce this chapter because the source code could be a useful resource for developers looking for ideas about including Services functions in their applications.

Exploring the ODBC Services Console

To use the console, open that configuration page and click the button in the centre, labelled btn:[Services]:

Figure 1. Launching the Services UI on Windows

The console is a tabbed display providing access to many of the Services API functions, with the menu:Backup[] tab on top.

Figure 2. Firebird ODBC Services console — Backup tab

Figure 3. Restore tab

Figure 4. Statistics tab

We selected menu:Header pages[], which produced the gstat -h report for our database.Clicking on the btn:[View Log] button delivers the output to the browser:

Figure 5. Statistics log

Of course, you can have any statistics report, the Firebird log, metadata reports and more.

The menu:Repair[] tab gives easy access to most of the gfix housekeeping functions:

Figure 6. Repair tab

The menu:Users[] tab could be used to maintain accounts in the security database of any version of Firebird prior to version 3.0, although the Services API method was discouraged from V.2.5 onward.The Services API method is still available to maintain users in Firebird 3 databases if they were defined using Legacy_Auth authentication management.It will not work with users defined with the default SRP authentication manager.

Figure 7. Users tab

Click on the appropriate button to add, modify or delete a user.Remember, the user performing these tasks must be SYSDBA or a user with elevated server privileges.The role RDB$ADMIN is not sufficiently elevated.

Figure 8. Add user

Figure 9. Modify user

Figure 10. Delete user