Databases in Delphi

One of the most big changes in Delphi world is the support of Databases. Turbo Pascal
lacks the libraries that support the accessibility to standard databases.
In the first release of Delphi, Borland introduces a new technology of accessing
Desktop databases such as Paradox, DBase, Access, Foxpro... , and Database servers
such as Oracle, MS-SQL, Sybase, InterBase, Informix, etc. Borland developed big
libraries for Delphi and C++Cuilder called BDE (Borland Database Engine). This engine
existed befor Delphi, and formally it was called IDAPI (Independent Database Application
Programming Interface). The goal of these libraries is to support a wide varity of
standard databases in a transparent method, to shield the programmer of deep details
and structure of each database format. By using BDE you can write applications that
uses Paradox tables and then you can use Foxpro tables without modifing your code,
and you can easily move to Database Servers.
BDE is a Windows Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) so that it can be shared between
your applications. If you want to deploy applications that use the BDE you must install
the BDE in that computer. Another time you will not need to install the BDE if you
want to deploy new Database applications because it needs to be installed once in
the client computers. The size of BDE libraries is about 4 Megabytes.
BDE is the competitor of Microsoft's ODBC (Open DataBase Connectivity), and it is
more faster than it.

Use InstallShield Express wizard to setup your applications and to copy the BDE libraries
with your applications. The only thing you need to do is to specify the database
driver you used, for example (Paradox, DBase, or Foxpro) or you can make a full packing
of the entire BDE libraries. InstallShield Express is shipped with Delphi CD.