Hi all,

I am studying the migration of a big and complex medical software and
have some basic but important question.
- I chose to use Delphi2010 + Firebird + DBExpress;
- If I understood well, Delphi works with utf16 while Firebird works
with utf8;
- My software saves its own data (medical exams) into binary files (I
need this for portability issues) and I am using String as the main
string type (I am using Streams and a small routine to save the size of
the String with it and the same to read it);
- I intend to use Firebird with DBExpress to save common data used by
each user;
- Some of this data is saved both on the binary files and the FB tables;

My doubts:
- Do I have to worry about the utf8 x utf16 difference while
reading/writing on both bin files and database? How?
- When I use Field.AsWideString, does DBExpress give me a utf8 string?
Can I store it on a String variable without any kind of convertion?
- Is there any pitfall concerning the use of Code Pages that I have to
worry about at this early stage of code migration? Wich one? (Do I have
to explicitly set any code page or something like this?)

I read all the posts I could find and also many articles, but I am still
a little confused about this. I am afraid of taking a path that I would
regret later.

Thank you for any help.
Luis Rocha