On 18/06/2010, Henry Vermaak wrote: >> >> And amazingly everybody managed just fine for 15+ years (in the OS/2, >> DOS, Win3.11 era) before RDBMS became popular on desktop systems. If > > The first rdbms was released in 1968. Even dbase is now 30 years old.
Please re-read my original message (quoted for your convenience). I know when RDBMS were developed, but I clearly stated "became popular on desktop systems" meaning: used by desktop applications. Not everybody has a Mainframe at home - now or back in the 80's. Mainframes being the original systems that ran RDBMS. Desktop systems ran perfectly with binary files as storage for many years. Pascal was at its high point and very popular for reading such files. I remember back in the days of Fidonet, when message forums were flooded with *.pas files containing structure information text file documentation for reading various binary storage files. Binary files were very easy to use, and upgraded to newer formats just as easily as your current application having to update the table structure in a database (normally done at application startup or via an upgrade tool). But please note, my argument here is not against using a database for data storage (I actually don't know how this thread got twisted to that topic). Embedded systems have there place, but as soon as you have multiple clients or users accessing a database file, I think it more appropriate for a full RDBMS installation. Firebird being one of the top choices simply because it is the easiest full RDBMS to deploy - a mere 10MB install and no admin knowledge or maintenance required afterwards - unlike MySQL, MS-SQL-Server, DB2, Oracle, PostgreSQL etc. As for the debate about which format to use for simple application settings. INI being the obvious choice and de facto standard for years on multiple systems. Why anybody would want to use XML or a SQL database table for that just boggles the mind. And I fully agree with the other poster about Firefox and its Bookmarks change. I also wanted to restore my bookmarks.html file the other day on a newly installed system, but now Firefox uses SQLite for such simple storage, so the solution wasn't immediately obvious. It was dead simple a few versions back - simply copy the old bookmarks.html file over the new one. Now Firefox fell for the classic over-engineering mistake, and they had to extend their UI to include a Import function so you can import from a backup file, or from a selected HTML file or from a SQLite database - a lot more complex than it used to be. Anyway, I replied to the original poster of this thread relating to an embedded database option for Lazarus, so I consider this thread closed. The original poster can now experiment with Firebird or SQLite and choose one based on his current and future needs and requirements. -- Regards, - Graeme - _______________________________________________ fpGUI - a cross-platform Free Pascal GUI toolkit http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/ -- _______________________________________________ Lazarus mailing list [email protected] http://lists.lazarus.freepascal.org/mailman/listinfo/lazarus
