From: Phil!Gregory Date: 16:23 on 21 Apr 2005 Subject: More BDE Hate I would love to stop using the BDE. If only we didn't have so much legacy code that relies on it. The BDE sometimes needs to create temporary tables for intermediate data (often as a result of SQL queries) it does this in what it calls a private directory. (You need to set the private directory because if you don't the BDE will use the same directory that your executable is in, and that's bad, because it makes the lock files too large. I don't know why; it just does. But that's an old hate now.) When you initialize your BDE session, the session puts an exclusive lock on the directory. So you can't have multiple instances of your program using the same directory. Fine, I can deal with that. Oh, and if the program exits unexpectedly and doesn't unload the BDE, that directory stays locked. "Okay," I think, "since I only have one instance of my program running, I'll just have it delete any old lock files when it starts, since they won't be valid." What I learned is that the BDE DLL[0] remembers the locks, so as long as any other program has the DLL loaded, I can't just restart my program. Needless to say, this makes developing and debugging the program somewhat painful. Program crashes, I have to go exit all other BDE-using programs on my system, then restart them, because I need to use them. Repeat every time the program dies while I'm working on it. Hate, hate, hate. [0] The BDE DLL is actually named idapi.dll. Go figure.
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 17:11 on 21 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: More BDE Hate EXPN BDE
From: Phil!Gregory Date: 19:25 on 21 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: More BDE Hate * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2005-04-21 11:11 -0500]: > EXPN BDE Borland Database Engine. It's how Borland's (and some other companies') products do database access. Ideally, it's supposed to provide a nice, implementation-independent way to use different databases. In practice, it gives me lots of stuff to hate.
From: Yoz Grahame Date: 01:12 on 22 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: More BDE Hate On 4/21/05, Phil!Gregory <phil_g@xxxxx.xxx> wrote: > * Peter da Silva <peter@xxxxxxx.xxx> [2005-04-21 11:11 -0500]: > > EXPN BDE >=20 > Borland Database Engine. It's how Borland's (and some other companies') > products do database access. Ideally, it's supposed to provide a nice, > implementation-independent way to use different databases. In practice, > it gives me lots of stuff to hate. But it's seriously deprecated now, isn't it? I've just started learning Delphi for work reasons and as far as I can see (which hasn't been very far yet) there are much better ways of doing easy DB access, no? Borland's stuff gets a lot of flack for being considered outdated - when I told Nat Torkington that my employer's product was built on Delphi and Interbase (now Firebird) he said, "Whoah, that's like when people tell you they're still writing COBOL..." But it's actually not bad: there are loads of good and cheap/free Delphi components (such as those by DevExpress, which are great) and Firebird is a pretty good open source RDBMS that's unfairly overshadowed by far worse but better-known databases (yes, MySQL, I'm looking at you). The problem is mainly that Borland's marketing efforts have utterly sucked for the past decade. (NOTE: The bearer of the enthusiasm displayed above retains the right to both withdraw it and stamp on it angrily once he has got to know and hate Delphi in more depth.) -- Yoz
From: Phil!Gregory Date: 16:04 on 23 Apr 2005 Subject: Re: More BDE Hate * Yoz Grahame <yozlet@xxxxx.xxx> [2005-04-22 01:12 +0100]: > On 4/21/05, Phil!Gregory <phil_g@xxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Borland Database Engine. > > But it's seriously deprecated now, isn't it? I wouldn't say "seriously", but it's not really recommended, either. Borland is still supporting the BDE for access to Paradox and dBase tables, but that's about it. Unfortunately for me, we've got a lot of data in Paradox tables, and given the number of pending bugfixes and enhancement requests for our various programs, it's easier to use the BDE and hate it than to rework our local database architecture. > I've just started learning Delphi for work reasons and as far as I can > see (which hasn't been very far yet) there are much better ways of doing > easy DB access, no? So I've read. I can't really compare, though, because not only am I restricted to the BDE (see above), I'm using Delphi 5, in which the BDE was still king. > Borland's stuff gets a lot of flack for being considered outdated I get the readtion of, "Isn't that Pascal? Pascal sucks!" a lot, but Delphi isn't too bad. At least it's better than C and C++ for application-level programming, though I wouldn't mind a language that did all of my memory management for me (as opposed to Delphi's halfway approach that manages base things like strings and moderatly esoteric things like interfaces, but not common things like objects). Also, its bondage-and-discipline approach to types can be both beneficial and annoying, depending on the circumstances. (Yes, it keeps you from passing something the wrong parameters, but it can make abstraction a real pain sometimes.) > The problem is mainly that Borland's marketing efforts have utterly > sucked for the past decade. I hear that a lot from Borland enthusiasts. (Though I hear it more from IBM enthusiasts.) > (NOTE: The bearer of the enthusiasm displayed above retains the right > to both withdraw it and stamp on it angrily once he has got to know > and hate Delphi in more depth.) Everything sucks and is worthy of hate, in one way or another.
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