Dear Claudio,

Thanks for the invite to the new IB-Conversions emailing list
and the fast response to the email.

>
> > 3. Interbase uses || for string concat, SQL Server uses +.
>
> Interbase is ANSI-SQL almost completely. As always, uncle Gates

prefers to

> use his "enhanced" versions

Thats true -- but we have to ask ourselves this -- is the aim of
Interbase to be the "purest" database, or make it easy so that the
more people join up, the better. I'd like to point out that Oracle
and Sybase also support "+".

I think that the new Open Source Interbase initiative is excellent --
it is attracting developers like me who wouldn't have considered it 6
months ago. And the easier it is to port to Interbase the better!

The new dialect approach is a very good idea. I would suggest a
dialect for MS Access/SQLServer compatibility. If Interbase had 90%
compatibility with MS Access and had a Access Upsizing Wizard,
Interbase would convert lots of users when Access started to have
scaling problems.

Currently Access users are going for MS SQL Server when they hit
scaling problems.

Similarly, a MySQL compat mode would do wonders to Interbase's market
share.

Forget Oracle, Sybase, Informix -- the market share is too small and
if you prepared to pay those prices, they wouldn't be interested in
Interbase in the first place.

> > Will the collation kit support Visual C++? We don't own a copy of
> > Borland C++.
>
> IB itself is compiled with MS product in the Windows platform

This is proof that Microsoft is too dominant for its own good! Even a
borland product uses MS Visual C++!

Regards, John Lim