If you’re ever in need of a datamodel, then this website could be the place to start. Models of like everything, even a datamodel of the new Shrek 2 movie!
Jul 312004
Jul 312004
The dbExpress drivers for Sybase work perfectly. Enabling/querying seems very fast, although I haven’t really created anything decent. Let’s design the databasestructure first.
Jul 302004
In the dbExpress drivers you can download from SDN, two changes are needed. One in dbxconnections.ini:
DataBase=ASA 9.0 Sample
instead of DataBase=ASA 8.0 Sample. Not mandatory, just for the ethics 😉
The other change should be made to dbxdrivers.ini:
VendorLib=dbodbc9.dll
instead of VendorLib=dbodbc8.dll. The new version of SQL Anywhere Studio has no dbodbc8.dll.
Jul 302004
…occupies only 100MB of diskspace. I selected all features. When I install Oracle (9 or 10) it is about 2GB (with sample database), and that does NOT include a personal DB like MSDE or support for PDA’s. Sounds good sofar.
Jul 292004
Just today I stumbled upon Sybase SQL Anywhere. Of course I had heard of Sybase before, but I never looked at it because of its price. But that’s ASE, the Enterprise edition. For smaller companies and/or developers, there is SQL Anywhere Studio. As far as I can see now, SAS for Windows costs about US$399.
What remains is DAC’s for Delphi. It seems there are dbExpress drivers, but the document doesn’t tell me if they will work with Delphi 6 (they refer to Delphi 7 and Octane). Let’s hope so.
There are third party DAC’s, but they are not as common as DACs for SQL Server, MySQL or Oracle.
SQL Anywhere Studio includes a personal database (like MSDE/SQL Server Express), ASA (the client/server-version of the database) and UltraLite, to be deployed on PDA’s.
The Developer Edition of SQL Anywhere Studio is free! I’ll have a try with that and see if it’s any good. If the mailserver turns out to be a usable product and I will be using it myself (of course) I can always buy a non-developer license.
Jul 282004
Deepak has a interesting blogentry about Open Source software. One of the things he says made me think. If supplying support is the moneymaking business of the future, why would any commercial company deliver good (as in bug-free) software, or even pro-actively solve problems before they bite the customers?
In my opinion I think it’s best to ask a reasonable price for your software, and have some sort of support-agreement/subscription system. Like, you get 90-days of installation support, and 5 free supporttickets. The way SuSE does it: the no-support version is cheap, and the more support you want/need, the more expensive it gets. But basically it is the same version of the software you get.
Another thing: use free available software (freeware, opensource, whatever) if the level of support (you can get/you can provide) is in line with the business-needs where it used. Go for vendors that give you 24/7 support in business-critical situations. Use common sense. That sounds like a stupid advice, but you all know a manager to whom this advice applies to!
Jul 272004
Jul 272004
The mailserver is slowly (very slowly, I’ve been reading blogs too much!) progressing into something. See this screenshot:
Jul 272004
Jul 272004
More Borland news: they are giving away Together for free. Okay, okay, they created a special edition, that can be downloaded for free. It’s a 60MB download that can be found here. The press release about this Borland-Together-for-the-masses is here.
I’m not sure why there is no integration with Delphi, at least the Together productpages don’t mention it.