-n server option

Sets the name of the database server.

Syntax

{ dbsrv11 | dbeng11 } -n server-name database-filename...

Applies to

All operating systems and database servers.

Remarks

By default, the database server receives the name of the first database file with the path and extension removed. For example, if the server is started on the file samples-dir\demo.db and no -n option is specified, the name of the server is demo.

There is no character set conversion performed on the server name. If the client character set and the database server character set are different, using extended characters in the server name can cause the server to not be found. If your clients and servers are running on different operating systems or locales, you should use 7-bit ASCII characters in the server name. See Connection strings and character sets.

Database server names must be valid identifiers. Long database server names are truncated to different lengths depending on the protocol. Database server names cannot:

begin with white space, single quotes, or double quotes
end with white space
contain semicolons
be longer than 250 bytes

Note

On Windows and Unix, version 9.0.2 and earlier clients cannot connect to version 10.0.0 and later database servers with names longer than the following lengths:

40 bytes for Windows shared memory
31 bytes for Unix shared memory
40 bytes for TCP/IP

The server name specifies the name to be used in the ServerName (ENG) connection parameter of client application connection strings or profiles. With shared memory, there is a default database server that is used if no server name is specified, provided that at least one database server is running on the computer.

Running multiple database servers with the same name is not recommended.

There are two -n options

The -n option is positional. If it appears before any database file names, it is a server option and names the server. If it appears after a database file name, it is a database option and names the database.

For example, the following command names the database server SERV and the database DATA:

dbsrv11 -n SERV sales.db -n DATA