One my clients has a system written in Delphi 3 and the database is Paradox. My job is to convert it to use SQL Server 2008. How can I make it connect to SQL 2008?
This is pretty old stuff, I know. I appreciate the help.
Thanks
At the very least BDE should be able connect using ODBC and choosing the SQL 2008 Driver in ODBC. I haven't tried, but I doubt that the BDE SQL driver will connect to SQL 2008, and I doubt anybody will develop a BDE driver for 2k8.
Do you intend on moving from Delphi 3? If so, then SDAC (SQL Server Direct Access Components) from Devart would be worth looking at. They support SQL Server 2008 but unfortunately require Delphi 5 or above. They use OLE DB and any Windows machine with 2000 or above will have the drivers installed (which is part of Microsoft Data Access Components - MDAC).
You can use ADO without using Ado Components, by importing ActiveX Data Objects Library, but this will require more work.
Why not upgrade the project to Delphi 2007 as a stepping stone towards the future? There have been many improvements and bug fixes to the language since Delphi 3 that you could easily take care of. The pain of migration might be much easier than dealing with issues which have been already addressed and corrected in the latest versions of the compiler.
You can try one of the Free Components from Torry.net to connect to the SQL server using ADO.
Check TaoADODataSet and Free ADO Dataset in the page http://www.torry.net/pages.php?id=569. These components have Delphi 3 support.
Related
Presently, I have an accounting software we bought that use a dBase IV database. The application I have created with Delphi communicates with these database with SAP advantage SQL Server. The advantage is the fact that SAP Advantage has component for Delphi and its quite easy to setup the connection between my application and the dBase file.
Now the bad news is the fact that SAP has decided to discontinue that software and the last version supports Windows Server 2012. In a near future, we want to change the server to Windows Server 2016, but since SAP Advantage doesn't support 2016, I have to find a new way to communicate between my software and the dBase file.
In my search on the web, I think that MS SQL Server can make the connection between dBase and my application but the information and step to do it is really hard to find and I got the feeling I'm running in circles.
Is there someone that can tell me the step to make it work, if it's possible or is there other RDBMS that can work with dBase IV?
Also, I'm open to other way to do it. I think I saw somebody talking about web service. Would it be a good alternative in my case but is I possible to do SQL request with that?
Presently, I'm using SAP Advantage V11, Windows Server 2012 Essential and Delphi XE2.
Thanks for your help
I've got experience with MySQL, DB2, and Oracle, but aside from writing a few queries, I've never used SQL Server.
My question is a three parter:
1) For a developer, what are some good "free" client tools to look at, and why (by "free" I mean open source, freeware, or the tools that come with SQL Server itself)?
2) I plan to run Developer or Express Edition on my workstation for development, and either Standard or Enterprise Edition in the testing and production environments. What methods exist if any for transferring data between different servers and the different editions?
3) Are there any common pitfalls that someone like me (who is used to the other database systems that I mentioned) might encountered during development?
TIA
SQL Server Express with tools.
All editions have the same SQL language features and code is 100% portable between them. There are 3rd party tools to synch changes, but moving entire DBs is easy using inbuilt tools.
Nah. The problem with databases is SQL and set theory, not the choice of RDBMS. If you understand databases/SQL you'll be OK.
SQL Server Management Studio which comes with SQL Server (any editions), or you can download it separately. SQL Server Profiler which doesn't come with Express.
Management studio has tools for backup/restore database. You can also consider detach/attach method to synchronize db .
It's hard to say. But if you had Mysql experience you will be pleasantly surprised by SQL Server.
UPDATE
There are so many things that each DB vendor implements differently that it's really hard to focus on some of them. One thing I was not used before is that SQL Server doesn't let unique columns to have more than 1 NULL value(there is a workaround though)
I know little about sql server access, and all googled out for sql server accessing are using
C# or php like language.
Is there a good step by step about how to set up sdk and write an start program in c
to access sql server database?
You have a couple of options:
ODBC
SQLServer's DB-Library
If your application has a fairly simple DB interface (mostly common insert, update, delete, select commands), I would go for ODBC because of portability issues.
Do keep in mind that in order to use DB-Library you might need to get DLL's from older versions of SQLServer, since it's been deprecated in 2008.
Is it faster to use 1 type of provider over the other? We are using SSIS (SQL Server 2005) to pull some data from Oracle and import it into SQL Server. It was my understanding that OLEDB is faster, because the connection is native, and the data isn't being run through any .NET code?
Is this correct?
OLEBD will work faster for sure.
But you will have to make a choice between Microsoft or Oracle driver for the oracle database. I recommend you to try both and decide which one offers you a better performance.
I've heard that oracle's drivers have improved quite a lot on ssis 2008 (writing performance was horrible).
That depends! From .NET code you would always prefer using the Oracle .NET provider to access a Oracle database. Recon you would want to use the .NET provider from SSIS as wel
I usually use Delphi-targeted databases for most of my work (NexusDB typically, lately), but still have bad memories of how painfully slow connecting (and posting) to MS Access was via ADO. I have a new project that may need to target MS SQL Server. For D2007 Pro, what is the best way to connect to MS SQL Server? (Third party components = fine, if that's the best route).
The TADOConnection really isn't that bad. Access was never intended to be a production RDBMS. ADO works much faster with SQL Server than with Access. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/225048 for some of the reasons why.
The AnyDAC offers great feature set and performance, as simplifies development of the database applications. AnyDAC supports MS SQL Server, MS Access and much more.
The UniDac Component from DevArt / Corelab is your best option
It offers fast performance and you can talk to a number of differrent databases
I always recommended DevArt db components fro their performance and reliability.
You can choose between SDAC(for direct access to sql server) or UniDac (direct access to Sql server, Oracle, MySql,PostgreSql and Interbase/firebird)
if you don't require the advanced components that access specific features of sql server like TMSChangeNotification, TMSTransaction or TMSServiceBroker, then you can go with UniDac so your application will be designed to work with multiple databases.
Devart offer components and dbExpress drivers for accessing SQL Server databases. The also have UniDAC which supports other databases as well.
Da-soft AnyDac supports SQL Server and other databases.
Bob Swart has published Delphi for Win32 VCL Database Development on Lulu, if you need any help.
I use ADO to connect to Sql Server since Delphi 7 and it always worked great