<<I think it is best to be accurate.>>

Me too and the some of the following is woefully inaccurate.

<<BDE came before Interbase in Borland terms.>>

Nope. Not true. I was working at Borland on InterBase when the BDE hove into
view and
knew the developers of the BDE well. Not that this had any effect on how the
BDE
interacted with InterBase, since the goal of the design of the BDE was to
support
multiple database platforms using lowest common denominator behaviour. In
InterBase's
case this had the effect of making it look like and behave like any other
database, and hiding
a number of its better capabilities and features.

<<Borland acquired Interbase when they bought Ashton - Tate and Philip Kahn
described that purchase as the worst deal ever (I paraphrase - his actual
comments were stronger and I wish I'd kept the email :) )>>

Actually he was quoted as saying that InterBase was the jewel in the crown.
I was at Cognos working as a senior post sales consultant specialising in
relational database
technologies when the acquisition took place. And still have some of the PR
that "Borland"
gave to Cognos to assure their customers that InterBase was going to be safe
in their hands.
Cognos was a major reseller of InterBase along with its Powerhouse 4GL tool
at that time.

<<After acquiring AT Borland faced mounting pressure from M$ and I feel they
made other mistakes (including paying insufficient attention to Interbase)
which eventually caused PK to move to other pastures.>>

He was ousted by the Board, but thats another story.

Isn't it nice to have an insider around who can correct these sort of things
:-)

Regards
Paul