understanding the BDE and process

[howzatUK]

Hi can anyone help me understand what the BDE does? i know it has something to do with database connectivity but was wondering if anyone could explain it in a logical way i.e what conects to what including source code, sql, BDE and the actuall database? How does this process work in what sequence?

Thanks for any help you can give

 

[Kocky]

If you know what ODBC does than you also know what the BDE does. ODBC was devoloped by Microsoft to make a transparant connection layer to different Databases so the user didn't have to bother with what type of DBMS that is running.

Borland (developer of Delphi) made the BDE (Borland Database Engine) long before there was ODBC and it does exactly the same thing. It let's you connect your application to a database without having to worry about the connection parameters and setup. The BDE does this for you.
BDE is not used any more because it is outdated and Borland has stopped development for the BDE a few years ago.

I would advise you to switch to ODBC if possible.

 

[svanels]

BDE not used anymore? Are you sure? It has some overhead, but the borland native drivers gave better results with Delphi than ODBC. At least that was my experience.
The working of the BDE can be found in the help file, topic BDE-based architecture from Developing database applications

Steven

 

[howzatUK]

Thank you for your help.

So BDE sits between the delphi application and the databse and passes requests and data between the two? I thought this was the job of SQL?

 

[svanels]

The BDE translates the "sql" generated from your application to a "sql" that your RDBMS understands. That is why you have to use the Database specific drivers.

ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) was invented by Micro$oft to "replace" ODBC, the drawback, it works only with Windows. Using ADO and you are targetting a Linux system will give problems.

The IBx (Interbase) datacomponents,will only work with Interbase

And so there are a lot of systems that have 3[sup]rd[/sup] party drivers (API's) that implement their flavor, targeted at a specicific platform.




Steven