Firebird Interview Question:

Why does reading require write privileges on database file?

Submitted by: Administrator

In order to run the SELECT statmement, it still needs to start a transaction.

If you wish to build a read-only database to place on some read-only media like CD or DVD ROM, you can do it with:

gfix -mode read_only database.fdb

...or within your favorite administration tool. It is also available via ServicesAPI, so you may do it from your application as well. Please note that you can only make this change while preparing the database, because the read-only flag needs to be written in the database file.

When the database becomes read-only, the only thing you can write to is the read_only flag (to reset it back to read-write).
Submitted by: Administrator