Re: BDE alternatives?

From: Lauchlan M (LMackinnon_at_NOSPAMHotmail.com)
Date: 10/03/03 

Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 18:29:34 +1000

> Right now I am more inclined to ADO.Net, especially after Hannes' reply.

I take it your question relates to doing it in Delphi 6 or 7 now, not in
Delphi.NET in a couple of months. So ADO.NET would be a non-issue for now, I
would imagine.

Remember that Hannes is a developer for NexusDB (which is a good thing), so
his advice is well-informed. But AFAIK, NexusDb does not (currently) have
ADO.NET support (Hannes might correct me if he wshes), but it is a good
solution today anyway. If you follow Hannes's advice, you would not look
(today) at NexusDB, which is a good product, because of the lack of ADO.NET
support, which I am sure is not Hannes' intention.

Anyway, I think every Delphi DB solution will, after the next Delphi.NET
release at the end of this year, be scrambling to release ADO.NET support,
so I don't think this will be the major distinguishing factor between the
database solutions when you make your choice today.

> I have not use ADO.Net, but from what I heard, those two are similar
> only in name. Not sure whether that is true or not.

I have used both. I have used ADO in Delphi 6, ADO.NET in Visual Studio.NET
2003. I find it to be much the same idea although there are architectural
differences. In either case, in practice, you put down an ADO connection
component of some sort, and some dataset sort of thing to connect to it. In
classic ADO in Delphi, you typically connect to the connection component
with an ADODataSet or an ADOQuery; in ADO.NET you can either connect with a
datacommand and datareader, or with a data adapter and dataset.

I have a slight preference for the simplicity of 'classic' ADO in Delphi
because of its simplicity to use, but ADO.NET tends to be more optimised for
performance. In Visual Studio.NET, you have to do a shocking amount of
manual coding to do databinding etc, where in Delphi you would do the
equivalent by setting properties (much more RAD).

Then, Borland have extended ADO.NET by providing Borland Data Providers with
C# Builder and presumably with Delphi.NET. These are optimised for a wider
range of database vendors and let you see data live at design time (which,
believe it or not, the MS ADO.NET ones don't).

Either solution would be quite straightforward to learn.

I suggest just wiring up some practice apps in ADO (this will be real easy:
drop a ADOConnection, turn off its login prompt property, double click on it
and use the oledb driver [faster, easier to configure than an ODBC
connection] to point to your database. Drop an ADOConnection, set its
CommandText property, and set its connection property to point to your
ADOConnection component. Drop a DataSource component and a Grid and wire the
grid to the datasource and the datasource to the dataset and you're done
with an ADO connection in your Delphi app) and in DBExpress. See which one
you like, do some speed tests, and ask around on the newsgroups for best
practices to speed them up.

HTH

Lauchlan M

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