Overview of the InterBase Service Components

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This section describes the general concepts of the InterBase service components and methods for attaching and detaching from a services manager.

About the Services Manager

All InterBase servers include a facility called the services manager. The InterBase service components enable client applications to submit requests to the services manager of an InterBase server, and the service manager performs the tasks. the server can be local (on the same host as your application), or remote (on another host on the network). The services components offer the same features when connected to either local or remote InterBase servers.

Service Component Hierarchy

The root object of the InterBase service components is TIBCustomService, from which descend TIBControlService and TIBServerProperties. TIBServerProperties contains properties and methods specific to server configuration, while TIBControlService is the ancestor object from which all the database configuration and administration components descend.

The following three components descend directly from TIBControlService:

  • TIBControlAndQueryService contains all the database administration elements, such as monitoring, maintenance, and backup and restore, as well as all of the user validation and security elements.
  • TIBConfigService contains all the methods and properties for database configuration.
  • TIBLicensingService contains all the properties and methods to add and remove database licenses.

Attaching to a Service Manager

To initiate a connection from your application to an InterBase service manager:

1. Place a service component on a form.
2. Set the ServerName property for that component to the name of the server on which the services are to be run.
3. Use the Protocol property to set the network protocol with which to connect to the server.
4. Set the Active property to <True>. A login dialog is displayed. If you do not wish to display the login dialog, set the user name and password in the Params string editor, and set LoginPrompt to <False>.

To start the service, use the ServiceStart method.

Note:
TIBLicensingService and TIBSecurityService do not require that you start the service using the ServiceStart method. For example, to add a license you could use:
Action := LicenseAdd;
ServiceStart;

or you could use:

AddLicense;

Detaching from a Service Manager

After you finish your tasks with the services components, you should end the connection with the service manager by setting the Active property to <False>. This calls the Detach method which detaches the service component from the service manager.

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