Roy Lambert wrote:
> And then there's something called the Darwin Awards ........

I wouldn't dare accuse anyone in these distinguished newsgroups of
contending for that one! I'm sure some are just forced by a major
superior power to continue to endure the hardship of the BDE.

> I wouldn't dare accuse anyone in these distinguished newsgroups
> of contending for that one! I'm sure some are just forced by a
> major superior power to continue to endure the hardship of the
> BDE.

Thanks, Dominic. Always don't underestimante this superior power!


Georg

"Dominic Willems" <domus.software@pandora.be> wrote in news:6762DA9A-684D-
4813-9AB7-E15D488A7102@news.elevatesoft.com:

> Jason Lee wrote:
> Are there really STILL
> people using that thing? They deserve bravery medals.
>

I dropped in today on a client using a Paradox application I installed in
2000 to run his electrical tools workshop, as I hadn't heard from him since
last year's "happy new year" visit.

He's still pleased as Punch with it, and is now asking for some more
functionality.

So there's one real person still using Paradox, but all on his own -
perhaps that has something to do with it...

Any new functionality will of course involve migrating to DBISAM / EDB (to
be ascertained).

--
Chris
(XP-Pro + Delphi 7 Architect + DBISAM 4.24 Build 1)

Chris Erdal wrote:
> He's still pleased as Punch with it

You did the right magic. I remember with Paradox (or BDE) there was
always this little thing here or there that one would overlook, that
caused stuff to go south like a stray solid rocket booster. With DBISAM
there never was this little thing here or there. No special voodoo
skills or corrective DLLs needed, no external configuration stuff that
got changed by other BDE apps.

DBISAM always just worked, and it has saved me, in total, weeks of time,
I'm sure, since switching to it.

"Dominic Willems" <domus.software@pandora.be> wrote in news:0285E748-4BA9-
4B56-9276-00AF8738D2A9@news.elevatesoft.com:

> DBISAM always just worked, and it has saved me, in total, weeks of time,
> I'm sure, since switching to it.
>

You're right, the BDE was always very tricky. I fought for a long time with  
corrupt Paradox tables, and in another app I built initially in 1995 with
Delphi preview and SQLLink to HPUnix + Informix 4, and then migrated
through Delphi 1, 2, 3,4,5 and 7 via a windows NT server + MSSQL 6.5 and
then MSSQL 2000 I had some very strange inserts/updates that were no longer
there the next day. I never did get to the bottom of that one...

But now I've ordered DBISAM I'm sure all will be well!
--
Chris
(XP-Pro + Delphi 7 Architect + DBISAM 4.24 Build 1)

Chris Erdal wrote:
> But now I've ordered DBISAM I'm sure all will be well!

You can book your next 8-month holiday, for your support calls will
just...stop.

"Dominic Willems" <domus.software@pandora.be> wrote in news:10A8E29A-1C9A-
45A6-B72B-31341F7763F3@news.elevatesoft.com:

> You can book your next 8-month holiday, for your support calls will
> just...stop.
>

<vbg>

--
Chris
(XP-Pro + Delphi 7 Architect + DBISAM 4.24 Build 1)

Jason,

There are still some of us out there shackled to the BDE. So consider
yourself fortunate to be free!

We have well over a thousand customers running a paradox application in
multi user environments. In fact, we have some customers who are still
running the 1980's DOS version of our software! We check for all the
corruption issues (IPX/SPX, caching, op locks, virtual redirector etc)
we can in the software and have tools to make it easy for users to
update the registry to correct what we can automatically. If a customer
does not follow setup instructions or is computer illiterate, it can
take a lot of support time to help them out. With careful attention to
setup, we have been able to keep our customers running reliably.
Corruption is rare and when it does occur we have always been able to
track it down to hardware or some known setup issue.

Of course, I've written all my new apps with DBISAM since V1.x and I
long for the day when we can ditch Paradox for good. Unfortunately we
are trapped by the report engine (crystal reports). I tried years ago to
switch the database & I just couldn't get Crystal 8.5 to reliably change
drivers in an existing report. When DBISAM V2 came out I had hopes that
changing database engines could be measured in weeks. Updating the
150,000+ lines of code and 100s of forms from TTables to TDBISAMTables
was not that bad, but dealing with Crystal was just a nightmare. I was
finally able to get hold of one of the software guys at Seagate (funny
to think about how much things have changed - long distance from the US
to Canada back then was almost $1 a minute - now its free) and he
basically told me I would have to rewrite all the reports since they had
no native DBISAM driver (or even TDataset driver), that they would not
be writing one, and that they had no technical info available that would
allow me to write one myself. The issues at the time, if my memory
serves me, were that Crystal removed report field objects and broke
table links when you switched from the Paradox driver to the ODBC
driver. I think it was due to the difference in the way the drivers
identified the file path of the source database file - ODBC required an
alias & Paradox used a path. Anyway, there was just no easy or reliable
way to change the source database on an existing report. Recreating and
debugging these reports in Crystal or another report engine - if any was
even capable at the time - would have easily taken 6 months to a year in
itself.

After wasting so much time on dead ends and wanting to make a lot of
database structure changes to give the product a wider appeal, we
decided to rewrite the application from scratch while continuing to
improve the legacy application where practical. It has been an enormous
task, but looks like it will finally come to a close before years end. I
can't wait to finally dump the BDE & Crystal in one blow!

BTW, I last tried switching this thing over to DBISAM around 2000 - no
snide remarks about my competence or laughing please - I get enough
grief from my boss - so things may have changed. If anyone has been
able to successfully port a BDE/Crystal app to DBISAM/Crystal and use
their existing reports, I'd love to hear about how you did it.

When I last tried this I abstracted out the database tables so I could
easily swap database engines in case I ever found one that would work.
The application database changeover can be done in less than a week , so
it might be worth another try if Crystal has improved their conversion
process.

Have a good one,

Sean







Chris Erdal wrote:
> "Dominic Willems" <domus.software@pandora.be> wrote in news:6762DA9A-684D-
> 4813-9AB7-E15D488A7102@news.elevatesoft.com:
>
>> Jason Lee wrote:
>> Are there really STILL
>> people using that thing? They deserve bravery medals.
>>
>  
> I dropped in today on a client using a Paradox application I installed in
> 2000 to run his electrical tools workshop, as I hadn't heard from him since
> last year's "happy new year" visit.
>
> He's still pleased as Punch with it, and is now asking for some more
> functionality.
>
> So there's one real person still using Paradox, but all on his own -
> perhaps that has something to do with it...
>
> Any new functionality will of course involve migrating to DBISAM / EDB (to
> be ascertained).
>

Sean,

<< BTW, I last tried switching this thing over to DBISAM around 2000 - no
snide remarks about my competence or laughing please - I get enough grief
from my boss - so things may have changed. If anyone has been able to
successfully port a BDE/Crystal app to DBISAM/Crystal and use their existing
reports, I'd love to hear about how you did it. >>

The issue with Crystal and the DBISAM ODBC driver is that they keep breaking
the SQL path generation with every new build of Crystal.  EDB won't have
this issue since it doesn't use directory names in SQL table names, so it
might be worth waiting and porting to EDB if you still want to port the
thing over to something else.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim,

I did a quick check last night and came across the instructions to
change a paradox report to advantage database. Looks like there are also
issues with the report engine not keeping the joins the same when
switching to their ODBC driver. For example, the default join for
paradox is left outer join and it looks like the default for their ODBC
driver is inner join. From what I can tell when you switch drivers you
must manually change each link to the proper join. The notes say this is
version 8, so maybe this has been fixed in Crystal XI. Once EDB is out
I'll check into it.

Out of curiosity, will there be a way using EDB and its ODBC driver so
that I can use code to specify the database location? I seem to remember
that when I tried the ODBC driver before, I needed an alias for every
database on each machine. We have users with 20-30 databases that they
switch between, so the application needs to be sure the report engine is
getting the data from the correct location. Any idea if this can be done
with EDB and/or Crystal in code?

Thanks,

Sean

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:
> Sean,
>
> << BTW, I last tried switching this thing over to DBISAM around 2000 - no
> snide remarks about my competence or laughing please - I get enough grief
> from my boss - so things may have changed. If anyone has been able to
> successfully port a BDE/Crystal app to DBISAM/Crystal and use their existing
> reports, I'd love to hear about how you did it. >>
>
> The issue with Crystal and the DBISAM ODBC driver is that they keep breaking
> the SQL path generation with every new build of Crystal.  EDB won't have
> this issue since it doesn't use directory names in SQL table names, so it
> might be worth waiting and porting to EDB if you still want to port the
> thing over to something else.
>