At 05:18 PM 30-11-00 +0000, you wrote:

>I'm new to DB servers but have a bit of experience working with
>Access and good old dBaseIII and IV (for DOS of course). The version
>of IB I'm running is IB Server 5.5 that came with Delphi 5 Pro.
>Installation was smooth and I walked through the tutorial but now I'm
>eager to import some data. I tried to find a FAQ but no dice.

Try the sql2gdb tool at ibphoenix, as suggested elsewhere. I believe it
has had quite a bit more work done on it since it was first posted.

I've done exactly the conversion you describe, some time ago, using the
Delphi datapump. It was painless. It was a matter of loading a
TStringList with the table names and having the app iterate through and
create/pump the new tables. After that, I extracted the metadata for the
new (rough) database using WISQL and amended things to complete the
job. If you want a more friendly isql tool, I recommend the free ib_wisql
from www.ibobjects.com download area.

I had written the handlers for the Access app so that the code could be
moved into InterBase triggers and SPs with little or no modification, so
even "server-siding" the metadata was no big deal.

However you do it, please do examine the structure of the Access database
closely before you start and watch out for things like
Object names > 31 characters
This one you cannot work around.
Object names that are SQL or InterBase reserved words (see p. 187 in the
Language Reference)
You cannot work around this in v. 5.x. In v. 6, you can use double
quotes when defining the objects.
Data types that don't have direct equivalents (see the Data Definition Guide).
Autoinc type - Interbase doesn't have it - it provides generators to create
unique surrogate keys and you need to make this happen yourself, with triggers.

Stay close to this list so we can help with any problems you bump
into. Get hold of the manuals if you don't have them. I believe the 5.x
docs are on the Delphi 5 CD; otherwise you can download them free from the
borland site.

The beta docs for v.6 are still available - if you can't get them from the
borland site or www.interbase.com, you can get them from the URL in my sig.

I reiterate the advice given elsewhere to avoid IB 5.5 - go up to 5.6 or v.6.
Did you realise you cannot deploy a 5.x database without buying licensing?

Cheers,
Helen






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