Firebird newcomers often complain that you need to specify the full path to the database file in the connection string, like this:

FbConnection c = new FbConnection(@"Server=localhost;Database=C:\data\mydb.fdb;User=SYSDBA;Password=masterkey");

In Firebird 1.5 and higher you can use database aliases. Just add the database path to the aliases.conf file on the server:

mydb = c:\data\mydb.fdb

Then you can use this alias in the connection string instead of a database path:

FbConnection c = new FbConnection(@"Server=localhost;Database=mydb;User=SYSDBA;Password=masterkey");

This has many advantages:

• The connection string is shorter.
• Client applications don't have to know the exact location of a database file on server.
• You can change the database file location without changing the connection string.
• You can limit the databases that can be open to those in the aliases list (see Firebird server security).