The future of the BDE

Problem/Question/Abstract:

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 Spirito
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