At 01:36 PM 14/11/2003 +0000, you wrote:

>Hi, my name is Adrián Deccico form Argentina.
>
>In the next days I must develop a system for hospitals with 1 to 100
>concurrent clients that will manage medical data. I am thinking in IB
>or Firebird and I´m searching info and also hoping you could give me
>your expert advice choosing the correct database with the correct
>connection method.

Which IB? If you are referring to IB 6.0.x, then you should not consider
it. It is three years old, never advanced past late beta status, and it is
not maintained or supported.

>The security of the database it is a critical point. So it is really
>important to the data not to be edited out of the system.

This is a management concern for any software installation. If your
customer permits the wrong people to access the server then the data are at
risk. Firebird 1.5 provides better ways than IB to protect databases, but
nothing can protect them if the system is carelessly deployed.

>Other important points are
>
>-level of support to the database, if the database only needs
>periodical backups it would be really good.

In a medical system, avoiding regular backups does not make sense at
all. People's lives may depend on the health and integrity of the database
and the quality of the backup system. Hard disks die. Power systems can
be unreliable. Earthquakes happen. Human beings find amazing ways to
spoil data. All hospital systems I have ever worked on have required
rigorous, well-tested disaster recovery strategies. Regular backup is at
the core of such strategies.

>-I will develop it with C++ Builder what components for the connection
>should I use? I reading that IBX or DbExpress could be a good choice.

DbExpress is a lightweight option that does not support all of the features
of IB/Fb. If that is acceptable to you, then there is a DBX driver for
Firebird available commercially at moderate cost (www.upscene.com).

For both IB and Fb, there are better connectivity options than IBX,
although not free. IB Objects (www.ibobjects.com) and FIBPlus
(www.devrace.com).

IBX is an unwise choice for Firebird because it does not support the
bug-fixes and enhancements that are done to Firebird. It is a Borland
product and updated source code is not available to the public.

heLen