Nataraj wrote:

>As said before, i have to maintain a 100 outlets of medical shops which
>was developed using 16bit Delphi,BDE and IB 4. I used to work in Delphi
>until version 4. But presently I have lost touch. i wish to redesign the
>medical software which is quite buggy. Maybe due to its ancient BDE and 16
>bit design.

The IB provided with Delphi 1 was maybe strictly single-user (local IB)?
Maybe it could be percieved to be multi-user, but with frequent corruption
problems because it was used beyond its specifications?
I used Delphi 1 with the IB version provided, but only as single user.

>The project was undertaken for the government by a big mommoth,
>monolithic goverment agency by name Electronic Research and Development
>Corporation (ER&DC). Perhaps at that time Delphi was the whiz kid in
>town. But eventually the ER&DC had to fall out with the government.They dont
>support the system anymore.

Delphi 1 was a whiz kid. It still is, just somewhat grown up!
(Delphi 1 saved me from PowerBuilder 4 !!)

> ...

What I have found is that the medical.gdb ,the database ,has been designed

>well. All features of referential integrity and stored procs have been used
>extensively. But i feel the catch is the software devloped in Delphi and BDE.

This (the BDE) may be part of the problem.

>Please suggest me the best enviroment to develop a good system. I prefer
>to do it in Linux. Is there a need to go for a OO enviroment like Delphi?

My personal advice is: get a recent version of Delphi (version 5 or 6, even
3 may be ok). Choose your middleware - anything but the BDE: IBX, IBO or
FibPlus will be much better. My personal favourite is IBO - it is not
(necessarily) free, but you will not be disappointed.
If you can get the Enterprise version of Delphi: great. But, if only the
Pro version is within your budget this is ok as IBO (maybe FibPlus as
well?) can work with Delphi Pro.

>Or would an API interface of IB suffice?
>I would like to develop in at least 4 months.

Choosing the API would probably mean a much longer development cycle.


Regards,
Aage J.