jochua_05 wrote:

> Hello,

Hi.

> Iam a newbie to delphi and firebird as well. What component or how do
> i access firebird thats comes free?

You have several options, according to the Delphi edition you possess,
what you want to do and what goals you want to achieve.

Few scenarios to pick from:

FIRST:
You're using Delphi 6/7 Personal edition, but you don't want to spend
money to buy components because either you program as a hobby or
because you're evaluating Delphi as programming environment.
These cases fit extremely well with Unified Interbase which is now
part of the JEDI project or available at http://www.progdigy.com/UIB/ .

SECOND:
You're a Pro edition user, but don't want to mess around testing
several components or don't want to spend money because you
don't know yet if you're willing to use Firebird.
Then your best choice could be to use Interbase Express components
shipping with Delphi - but you won't obviously be able to use
"firebird-only" feature set. You'll also need to rename fbclient.dll to
gds32.dll(since that's the name of the Interbase client library).

THIRD:
You are all handy and dandy, but want to be able to use Firebird
from other programming languages as well, because you have
several of them and want to be able to use FB from several
sources. Then you can go onto the firebird download page where you'll
find many different libraries to connect to Firebird(like ADO, ODBC, and
others)

That said, there're several commercially supported components, like
Jason Wharton's IBO, DevRace FIBPlus and other solutions.

I don't think the list is exhaustive, but I guess it helps
quite a bit in better understanding your needs.

If you also want a hint on what db administration program you might use,
then you will want to have a look at IBExpert products, which can be
considered a de-facto standard for Firebird.

HTH,

> jo

Andrew