My next website obituary goes to ODBC98.com, the ODBC library to connect from Delphi to ODBC.
The main reason why you needed to buy this "high-priced" library was so you could use ODBC without having to use BDE.
The BDE was depreciated and many bugs were not fixed, notably, the FoxPro bug where BDE corrupts FoxPro files and broken DBF files (file not found?).
Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/Embacarado (or whatever) recommends that you use ODBC or ADO or some high-priced library to use DBF, FoxPro, or ODBC-Compatible database.
The main reason why you don't want to use BDE was simple:
1) The thing is so, like, file-server like where there it uses TTable, TQuery and so slow -- Visual Basic 4, Visual Basic 5, Visual Basic 6 feels like jolt cola and cool-aid.
2) The sheer amount of frustrations needed to get BDE working. First, the installer (what installer?) to install BDE (erm, you needed paid copy of Wise 3.0, 4.0, 5.0) or InstallShield bloatware or something else. It was simply amazing BDE had no certified installer to come with it. (until Delphi 2005 came out - or after 6 years later).
3) The amount of bloat it added to your application was 6 or 7mb extra. That would translate to 5 or 6 more diskettes to ship your product.
4) The corruptions would essentially paralyze the PC: you had to reboot the PC to remove the locking and waste much time to resolve simple issues.
5) It had upto 255 users maximum. Of course, that is plain lie since nobody could possibly connect 255 users to single file: The actual limit was 52 users for one DBF file and 40 users for Paradox file. At least, ODBC got it right with connection pooling.
6) Anyone who possibly used BDE to host their CGI website? ... anyone game enough to spend US$200-300 a month on hosting?
Promises unkept. The owners kept promising updates, bug-fixes (what bug fixes?). He often hinted to buy the source code to protect your investment.
Later on, the website went away, odbc98 owners got rich, the delphi users got left with worthless library, all spent for nothing.
Article update #1 - March 2013
1) Prices for ISP hosting is at 2001 - 2008 estimated prices. Prices have dropped since then.
2) Odbc98.com goes to a non-existent site, the vendor moved on.
See: Article Corrections
The main reason why you needed to buy this "high-priced" library was so you could use ODBC without having to use BDE.
The BDE was depreciated and many bugs were not fixed, notably, the FoxPro bug where BDE corrupts FoxPro files and broken DBF files (file not found?).
Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/Embacarado (or whatever) recommends that you use ODBC or ADO or some high-priced library to use DBF, FoxPro, or ODBC-Compatible database.
The main reason why you don't want to use BDE was simple:
1) The thing is so, like, file-server like where there it uses TTable, TQuery and so slow -- Visual Basic 4, Visual Basic 5, Visual Basic 6 feels like jolt cola and cool-aid.
2) The sheer amount of frustrations needed to get BDE working. First, the installer (what installer?) to install BDE (erm, you needed paid copy of Wise 3.0, 4.0, 5.0) or InstallShield bloatware or something else. It was simply amazing BDE had no certified installer to come with it. (until Delphi 2005 came out - or after 6 years later).
3) The amount of bloat it added to your application was 6 or 7mb extra. That would translate to 5 or 6 more diskettes to ship your product.
4) The corruptions would essentially paralyze the PC: you had to reboot the PC to remove the locking and waste much time to resolve simple issues.
5) It had upto 255 users maximum. Of course, that is plain lie since nobody could possibly connect 255 users to single file: The actual limit was 52 users for one DBF file and 40 users for Paradox file. At least, ODBC got it right with connection pooling.
6) Anyone who possibly used BDE to host their CGI website? ... anyone game enough to spend US$200-300 a month on hosting?
Promises unkept. The owners kept promising updates, bug-fixes (what bug fixes?). He often hinted to buy the source code to protect your investment.
Later on, the website went away, odbc98 owners got rich, the delphi users got left with worthless library, all spent for nothing.
Article update #1 - March 2013
1) Prices for ISP hosting is at 2001 - 2008 estimated prices. Prices have dropped since then.
2) Odbc98.com goes to a non-existent site, the vendor moved on.
See: Article Corrections
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