Andre,

I would not use IBX for your application. You are describing a system
that is what I call money. Your direct income (via membership fees and
debt balancing) is monitored and maintained by this system, as such, I
would never rely upon a beta product as one of it's key components. IBO
is a stable product, well tested, and well, cheap. It is your
decission, but, you will find the port from BDE to IBX to be alot more
difficult than the equivalent job using IBO.

Ok,

Next thing is, since I have never seen your postings before, I should
introduce myself.
I am what you call a absolute beginner with Interbase. I have found
that I am learning more about IB and how it can be manipulated every
single day I work with it. Every once in a while I offer a few bits of
wisdom as a way of saying thanks to all those who helped me in learning
Interbase. I have absolutely no affiliation with Inprise or Interbase
other than the occasional conversation with Dale or Ann and having a big
enough ego to make myself heard.
Currently, I maintain a database system that was once the largest of
it's kind, although now I know of systems that dwarf it. (We have over
300 GB of active data).
We created our own replication/load balancing system with fail over
support because we are in a 24x7 environment where the database is money
to us. From what you have told me so far, you would not need such a
complex system.

I know you origionally went from a btrieve system with multiple remote
servers to a central server. You did this to lower the maintenance and
skill set of the employees at each location.
I also know that you must have a enormous amount of development cost in
your current client software as well as you database schema.

I am going to propose a series of different solutions to your problems.
What I ask is that we keep all discusion of this on this list. That all
consultants, developers, wise-cracking hacks and anyone else involved
joins this mailing list and confines all comments to this list. No off
list mailings or discussions. If we are going to find the best solution
and not go down a blind alley, all discussion must be open.

If you agree to this, please have each one of the relevant parties join
the list, and send an email introducing themselves (this includes anyone
from Inprise SA who wants to voice an opinion on this).

I know that this list is monitored by some of the best database
engineers in the world and that each one of them will offer their
support as long as they are fully aware of the situation.

Let me know what you think,

best regards

Dalton

> We have called in Inprise South Africa who have also come up some good
> comments. One of the was Delphi 5 and IBX components thus
> removing the BDE.