Author: Ernesto De Spirito
After Borland's official announcement regarding the future of the BDE, I contacted
(and was contacted by) many Delphi developers who are currently using the BDE to
learn about their future plans regarding data access...
Answer:
After Borland's official announcement regarding the future of the BDE, I contacted
(and was contacted by) many Delphi developers who are currently using the BDE to
learn about their future plans regarding data access.
For local databases, the BDE will keep being used, although a discrete minority are
seriously considering switching to a BDE alternative in the short term (mainly
Interbase accessed thru IBX or dbExpress, and third-party data access components).
For server databases, the scenario changes radically. Among those who are still
using previous Delphi versions, many are not likely to upgrade, so they'll keep
using the BDE + SQL Links all they can, while almost all the rest are considering
mainly dbExpress, ADO and ADO.Net, but developers showed their concern about these
alternatives:
dbExpress is not as "universal" as SQL Links, meaning there are missing drivers for
some important database servers (like Microsoft SQL Server). About dbExpress being
faster than the BDE, this is not true for small queries beause there's no caching
mechanism (since there is no front layer like the BDE), so the metadata gets
downloaded in every query. I'd like to credit Vasilis Devletoglou for sharing his
findings about the inner workings of dbExpress with us. Finally, when one used a
technology for many years, sometimes it's a bit difficult not be a bit conservative
and consider new technologies as "beta". We all know dbExpress arrived here to
stay, but many developers percieve it's still "green" and needs further
development.
ADO and ADO.Net don't conform the expectations of Delphi programmers in performance
and/or features, and it can't be ignored the fact that most programmers would
rather prefer to use a Borland solution.
In conclusion, the only ones that are happy here seem to be those who switched to a
BDE alternative some time ago... :-)
Copyright (c) 2001 Ernesto De Spirit
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