Hi there,
I'll have to do some maintenance on some Delphi app extracting information from Paradox tables and I don't want to relearn all of that static typing stuff and what not ... So, what would be the best way to access (heh!) Paradox tables from a (headless, Customer only wants lots of command line switches :-) Dolphin application? What would I have to do to deal with the BDE? Does ODBC work on recent Paradox tables? Maybe ReStore? (hey, I even got a license for this :-) Thanks, s. |
Stefan Schmiedl <[hidden email]> wrote in news:b64fs7$1l25c$1@ID-
57631.news.dfncis.de: > Hi there, > > I'll have to do some maintenance on some Delphi app extracting > information from Paradox tables and I don't want to relearn all > of that static typing stuff and what not ... > > So, what would be the best way to access (heh!) Paradox tables > from a (headless, Customer only wants lots of command line switches :-) > Dolphin application? > > What would I have to do to deal with the BDE? > Does ODBC work on recent Paradox tables? > Maybe ReStore? (hey, I even got a license for this :-) > > Thanks, > s. Hi Stefan, First of all - I've know idea if you can access Paradox table from Dolphin, I suspect that you can't. I'm responding because I'm trying to disuade you from using Paradox tables. Of all the desktop databases (dBase, Paradox and Access), Paradox suffers the most from index corruptions under Windows in a multi-user environment (Access is the least worst I believe). This corruption manifests itself as "Index Out of Date" errors and will require you to rebuild the offending index(es) whenever this occurs. You will have to rebuild the indexes in single user mode too because you'll need exclusive access to the data. Also, Paradox tends to grind to a halt at about 15 users if they are doing intensive updates, apps that predominately read data will get away with more connected users before problems arise. If you must use Paradox then I recommend access to your data through the BDE (btw, this is now a deprecated product) and to use that effectively then you will need to use either Delphi or C++Builder which have a lot of support for the BDE. Through bitter experience I strongly recommend that you use anything other than Paradox to hold your data what ever language you use. If you have to use a desktop database technology then I would recommned that you use Access as the engine (MDAC) is easily and freely available and I'm sure that Dolphin supports ADO/OLE DB, perhaps someone with more Dolphin database experience could confirm this. Hope this helps Regards Barry Carr Ixian Software Components Ltd Blairgowrie Scotland |
In reply to this post by Stefan Schmiedl
"Stefan Schmiedl" <[hidden email]> wrote in message
news:b64fs7$1l25c$[hidden email]... > I'll have to do some maintenance on some Delphi app extracting > information from Paradox tables and I don't want to relearn all > of that static typing stuff and what not ... > > So, what would be the best way to access (heh!) Paradox tables > from a (headless, Customer only wants lots of command line switches :-) > Dolphin application? > > What would I have to do to deal with the BDE? > Does ODBC work on recent Paradox tables? > Maybe ReStore? (hey, I even got a license for this :-) Try a Google search, it looks like there are ODBC drivers for Paradox ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Paradox+ODBC ). If so you could use the DBConnection in Dolphin, see the old Education Center ( http://www.object-arts.com/Lib/EducationCentre4/htm/databaseconnectivity.htm ) for more info, or the ADO wrapper in Dolphin, see the MS documentation ( http://www.microsoft.com/data/ado/default.htm ) for more info. If you are interfacing with an existing database structure I do not think ReStore will be the right tool to use, without customization. The standard version of ReStore needs to dictate the structure of the database. That is great when you create the database, but will not make it easy to work with an existing database. Chris |
In reply to this post by Barry Carr-6
On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 18:42:59 +0000 (UTC),
Barry Carr <[hidden email]> wrote: > > I suspect that you can't. I'm responding because I'm trying to disuade you > from using Paradox tables. Hi Barry, thanks for your reply. Unfortunately, I have no choice, as the application creating the tables is not mine. I only have written an add-on product for building web pages out of the information. > Of all the desktop databases (dBase, Paradox and > Access), Paradox suffers the most from index corruptions under Windows in a > multi-user environment (Access is the least worst I believe). There have been some issues re: Optimistic Locking we had to tweak in the registry, but I have heard no complaints, after the system was correctly set up. > This > corruption manifests itself as "Index Out of Date" errors and will require > you to rebuild the offending index(es) whenever this occurs. You will have > to rebuild the indexes in single user mode too because you'll need > exclusive access to the data. Also, Paradox tends to grind to a halt at > about 15 users if they are doing intensive updates, apps that predominately > read data will get away with more connected users before problems arise. All desktop databases do this ... at least I know none, which does not. > > Through bitter experience I strongly recommend that you use anything other > than Paradox to hold your data what ever language you use. If you have to > use a desktop database technology then I would recommned that you use > Access as the engine (MDAC) is easily and freely available and I'm sure > that Dolphin supports ADO/OLE DB, perhaps someone with more Dolphin > database experience could confirm this. > I had some experiences with Access databases which were similar to your Paradox encounters ... crashes destroying all of the tables stored "behind" the corrupt one, stuff like that. The main problem I have nowadays with Paradox is that you basically have only one way to access the data, as you said. We'll see, what comes out of this. s. |
In reply to this post by Christopher J. Demers
Hi Christopher,
On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 16:41:38 -0500, Christopher J. Demers <[hidden email]> wrote: > Try a Google search, it looks like there are ODBC drivers for Paradox ( > http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Paradox+ODBC ). I've tried lots of combinations with "dolphin" and ("odbc" or "paradox") but did not try "odbc" and "paradox" ... might be that I'm getting too old for this stuff :-) > If > so you could use the DBConnection in Dolphin, see the old Education Center > ( > http://www.object-arts.com/Lib/EducationCentre4/htm/databaseconnectivity.htm > ) for more info, or the ADO wrapper in Dolphin, see the MS documentation > ( http://www.microsoft.com/data/ado/default.htm ) for more info. Thanks alot for the pointers, they're very helpful. s. |
In reply to this post by Stefan Schmiedl
A little off topic, but I recently had to read dBase files from a legacy
app and took the direct approach of using an all smalltalk approach (no odbc, dao etc ..) (This work was performed in VisualWorks) I used a VW port of ftp://st.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/Smalltalk/Squeak/goodies/XBaseFile.st to directly read and write to the dbase files. A quick look at the paradox file specs : http://www.byronref.com/rmb/pxspecs.htm , and you should be able to read the files with a couple of days work. Just my two cents ... Edward Stow On 29 Mar 2003 15:59:03 GMT, Stefan Schmiedl <[hidden email]> wrote: > Hi there, > > I'll have to do some maintenance on some Delphi app extracting > information from Paradox tables and I don't want to relearn all > of that static typing stuff and what not ... > > So, what would be the best way to access (heh!) Paradox tables > from a (headless, Customer only wants lots of command line switches :-) > Dolphin application? > > What would I have to do to deal with the BDE? > Does ODBC work on recent Paradox tables? > Maybe ReStore? (hey, I even got a license for this :-) > > Thanks, > s. > -- Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/ |
On Mon, 31 Mar 2003 23:42:17 GMT,
Edward Stow <[hidden email]> wrote: > A little off topic, but I recently had to read dBase files from a legacy > app and took the direct approach of using an all smalltalk approach (no > odbc, dao etc ..) (This work was performed in VisualWorks) cool ... > > I used a VW port of > ftp://st.cs.uiuc.edu/pub/Smalltalk/Squeak/goodies/XBaseFile.st to directly > read and write to the dbase files. > A quick look at the paradox file specs : > http://www.byronref.com/rmb/pxspecs.htm , and you should be able to read > the files with a couple of days work. neat. I'll take a look at this, too. thanks, Edward. s. |
Free forum by Nabble | Edit this page |