I have a legacy Paradox application that has been running successfully for almost 20 years using the Borland Database Engine. Data is entered into the main program by many different order takers, who then daily put the data onto a memory stick for use by laptops in many service trucks, which also use Paradox.
I just finished rewriting the used-to-be Paradox program that runs on the laptops, using Delphi XE2 Professional and TClientDataSet (briefcase model).
Now I need to upgrade the main application to a client-server model, using a Firebird server. The question is, what is the best approach, since I don't have the Enterprise Edition. I see quite a few different 3rd party tools available, or would the tools provided in the Professional Edition be sufficient?
The tools provided in the Professional version should be fine to work with . I am assuming , you have used BDE components like TTable , TQuery etc for accessing the Paradox database . You could use the same via ODBC connection ... Best solution will be to move away from using the BDE components to ADO / other components...
http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/37538 provides driver information for Firebird
Related
Currently I have an old Delphi project using BDE to connect to Paradox.
We want to investigate whether ADO can be used to replace the BDE but still use Paradox for Delphi version 10.2 Tokyo.
So please advise me that Delphi 10.2 supports Paradox Database? If so please give advice on replacing the BDE to ADO?
Thanks & Best regard
A Microsoft ODBC driver for Paradox databases comes with Windows, so you can certainly connect to Paradox tables using ADO and ODBC. See the 32- and 64-bit ODBC administration apps under Control Panel | Administrative Tools, and in particular its Drivers tab.
To create a simple Paradox + ADO app:
Use Windows' ODBC wizard to create a system- or file-DSN that uses the MS ODBC Driver for ODBC to connect to the Paradox table.
In your Delphi app, use a TAdoConnection to use e.g. the OLE DB provider for ODBC to use the DSN and a TAdoQuery to do a SELECT * from the P'Dox table.
See my answer here
BDE to ADO conversion in DELPHI 5
for a way of converting from BDE to ADO to access Paradox tables. Btw, once you have access to your Paradox data via ADO, it is straightforward to replace Paradox with a proper, robust RDBMS.
Recent versions of Dephi, including Tokyo, come with a very capable alternative DB-access library called FireDAC, but:
It has a much steeper learning curve than ADO.
Its author no longer works for Embarcadero, so with their numerous other lay-offs, FireDAC may become an "evolutionary dead-end."
Being from Embarcadero, it does not have the "safety in numbers" that comes with using MS's tried and tested ADO.
My Delphi XE3 application used Interbase components to connect to a Firebird 2.5
SuperServer.
I started a new project to isolate the problem, and tried to connect to my software database. The results follows.
1 - I can connect to the database using TIBDatabase normally.
and I want to deploy it to use embedded Firebird my question is:
can I use Interbase components to connect to a embedded Firebird?
if yes then how can i do it?
if not then is there any free Firebird components?
While Interbase and Firebird are sill almost compatible API-wise, I recall some have reported having problems when using IB components (which come with Delphi) when connectiong to Firebird. These components are officially for Interbase only and thus you can be sure that over time the situation will get worse (more incompatible), not better. So I would recommend using components which officially support Firebird. I personally use UIB which is free, but there is others as well (both free and commercial).
can I use Interbase components to connect to a embedded Firebird?
By default you can use Interbase components to use Firebird.
if yes then how can i do it?
You must change the name of firebird client library, in common word.
In dbExpress and Firebird server edition => use fbClient.dll and
dbxFb.dll in client side of program.
In dbExpress and Firebird embedded edition => change name of
fbEmbed.dll to fbClient.dll and use dbxFb.dll in client side of
program(fbClient.dll and dbxFb.dll).
With IbExpress and and Firebird server edition => change name of
fbClient.dll to gds32.dll.
In addition, Daniel Magine writed an article about Firebird and dbExpress.
http://www.embarcadero.com/rad-in-action/database
if not then is there any free Firebird components?
You can use ZEOS.
UPDATE
In Firebird 3:
When does not contain a network protocol but just the database name, the Remote provider rejects it and the Engine12 provider comes to the fore and tries to open the named database file. If it succeeds, we get an embedded connection to the database.
I am currently using BDE components to connect to a database in Delphi 5 professional version. My problem is that BDE components need BDE Administator to run the application on another machine. So I am planning to buy a new version of Delphi which contains ADO components.
Question: Are ADO components also having issues like the BDE? Do ADO components need any specific setup to run applications on another machine?
Thanks for the help.
All the components have issues in some point, in the case of ADO is very stable, but you can have some specific problems with the providers (like the infamous not support for blob fields in ORACLE using the Microsoft provider) but certainly is more recommendable use ADO instead of the deprecated BDE. About the dependencies, ADO uses providers to connect to the RDBMS, most of them are installed by MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components) which is included in most of the Windows versions. So in most cases you will not need install any addtional component, at least which you want use a provider not inluded in MDAC like MySql, Firebird or others.
Sounds like if you posted two times the (almost) same question... with more focus on ADO this time.
As was written in the previous question, if you attempt to connect to an Oracle database using ADO or OleDB, you'll find out that all OleDB providers are buggy for handling Oracle BLOBs: Microsoft's version just do not handle them, and Oracle's version will randomly return null for 1/4 of rows... So IMHO ADO or OleDB are not a serious option for accessing Oracle database. :(
And if your purpose is to get rid of the BDE installation, you'll find out that the Oracle's OleDB provider is quite huge and that the BDE is much light and better... A standard Oracle's client installation containing the OleDB/ADO provider (which is not installed in the "Light" version of the Oracle's clients), needs a .zip setup of about 660 MB...
On real database data, I found out our Open Source direct access to Oracle to be 2 to 10 times faster than the OleDB provider, without the need to install this provider (nor the BDE). You can even use the Oracle Instant Client provided by Oracle which allows you to run your applications without installing the standard (huge) Oracle client or having an ORACLE_HOME. Just deliver the dll files in the same directory than your application, and it will work.
Of course, this is full Open Source, and works from Delphi 5 up to XE. So when your project may upgrade to a newer Delphi version, it will work. You are not tied to non-Unicode Delphi 5-Delphi 7 version of Oracle components, as you can found on Torry's, e.g. but those components may help you get rid of the BDE installation for an existing project.
If you don't use BLOBs in your database, you can use ADO. In this case, my advice is to read this post, and use TADODataset, which is available in Delphi 5.
Ok Naren, since you are on Oracle you can use this Oracle driver DOA. We use it exclusively in our Delphi projects.
All our Delphi projects are on Delphi 7 but we are converting all of it to Delphi XE now. When using DOA you do need to install the Oracle client libraries on the client machine. The upside is speed and Oracle support, so the DOA drivers don't need to work on the most common command set like ADO needs to, so the Oracle support is brilliant.
We are migrating from Delphi 6 to Delphi 2010,earlier we were using BDE engine to connect to Sybase Database from Delphi 6. We found out that Delphi 2010 does not support BDE.
We are trying with dbexpress but we are not able to catch the exception(raise error) thrown by Sybase.
Could you please let me know if there is any other driver except dbexpress to connect to Sybase Database from Delphi 2010.
Thanks.
Regards,
AS
You can use AnyDAC to connect to:
Sybase SQL Anywhere (AnyDAC native driver)
Sybase Adaptive Server (AnyDAC ODBC bridge).
I suspect your real problem is that you have the Professional version of Delphi rather than Enterprise. As far as I know, BDE can still be used with Delphi 2010.
With Delphi 6 the Professional version allowed connections to remote databases. Somewhere between Delphi 6 and Delphi 2010 that policy was changed.
Anyway, you really need to give up on BDE and move forward.
Edit: (jeroen)
The BDE for relational access (aka the BDE SQL Links technology) has been deprecated since 2002, about 2 years after the introduction of dbExpress in Kylix and Delphi 6.
You could try a workaround:
Install Delphi 6
Update BDE to the latest available version (there should be some updates on Embarcadero site, I hope)
Install Delphi 2010
IIRC the available SQL Links should not be removed (otherwise it would break the older version), and they should still work in Delphi 2010. But that's really a stopgap try.
Devart's UniDac can connect to Sybase without using dbExpress, but I never used it.
Sybase drivers for dbExpress is included in Enterprise version of Delphi. If that is not an option you can use dbGO (ADO) that is included in Professional.
You can try ZEOSLIB which contains SyBase connectivity, along with many other SQL dbs.
As far as I can see, it requires you to remove your Query/Table objects and replace them with its own Table and Query replacement objects, but then, so would moving from BDE to ADO/dbGo or dBExpress.
And you really should get the BDE out of your application. It's dead as a doornail.
is there a free standalone editor for DBExpress connections (Delphi 2009) that can be installed on a customer PC and be used to manage DBExpress connections and (if available) drivers?
I'm not aware of any available as of today. However, it'd be easy to write one, as it mainly involves the manipulation of several ini files.