How big and complicated is your software, and how long do you expect it
to still be in use/development?

It sounds like a wise move to change from InterBase 6.0 to Firebird 1.5
or InterBase 7.5 (at my workspace we never used InterBase 6.0 due to all
the problems we heard about, we changed from InterBase 5.6 to Firebird
0.9.4).

I've never tried accessing an InterBase 6.0 database through Firebird
2.0, it may or may not work. Normally, it is recommended to take a
backup through the old system (InterBase 6.0) and restore it on the new
(Firebird 2.0).

(In the next paragraph I'm to a certain extent guessing, don't take this
part as being a fact without checking)

Considering that Firebird 2.0 introduces a new ODS (online disk
structure), I doubt the restored database will work with the BDE. You
should consider getting rid of the BDE anyway. I think it is a long time
since Borland last updated the BDE and new features in both Firebird and
InterBase will not work. It should still function to a certain extent
with a dialect 1 database in Firebird 1.0 and probably Firebird 1.5, I'm
uncertain whether a dialect 3 database will work at all.

I know of at least one person (Lester Caine, he watches this list
occasionally) that had such troubles with the BDE around year 2000 that
he almost gave up InterBase before discovering IBO (www.ibobjects.com).

You don't describe your actual problem too detailed (and I don't
understand 'takes too long to write to binary', it may also be that it
is just some problem with one or more queries that can be quickly solved
whether you change database and/or the BDE or not, or that your system
doesn't take proper care of transactions (virtually everything in
Firebird happens in a transaction. The BDE tries to hide transaction
handling from you, something that is a bad idea in Firebird/InterBase).
Check the database statistics, particularly noticing if there is a big
gap between the oldest transaction, oldest active transaction and the
next transaction. If there are particular queries that cause problems,
post them to this list together with their plan and a short description
of the uniqueness of the fields involved and we'll see if they can be
improved.

If you decide to change to Firebird, I would recommend buying 'The
Firebird Book: A Reference for Database Developers' (ISBN 1-59059-279-4)
by Helen Borrie. It is the only English book on Firebird that I know of,
and it is a good one.

HTH,
Set

mahletestsystems wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Apologies if I don't know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm pretty
> new at this.
>
> I work for an major automotive company, working with testing and
> diagnostic systems. We've recently gotten complaints from some of our
> customers saying that our current database software (InterBase 6.0)
> takes too long to write to binary. We've been trying to correct this
> issue by testing various other database software (i.e. InterBase 7.5
> and FireBird).
>
> My problem is this: I can't seem to get BDE Administrator to allow me
> access to the software. I have the database, have connected it to the
> FireBird server, and downloaded and installed the ODBC driver in BDE
> Administrator. It allows me to create an Alias for the database, but
> when I attempt to access it, I get an error message that says "Invalid
> configuration parameter" in both BDE (Error 12550) and the actual
> diagnostic software that I'm testing.
>
> I'm using FireBird 2.0 on a Classic server (I think).
>
> If anyone has any idea how I could correct this issue, I would greatly
> appreciate any help. Let me know, please, if more info is needed.