Hi Jason,

I remember the first time I used IBO a few years back for a short time. The
company was into Interbase development (small software house) and were
still undecided if they should commit to IBO or stay with the BDE. Well I
downloaded it and played around a bit. It was really daunting! There are
sooo many options and, like it was said before, that can be scary. Don't
know how the introductory literature is now but that was sorely lacking for
a long time.
Ease of getting into something will keep people from trying out new things.
I would have left it there if I hadn't read a good opinion about it in a
magazine and had a personal positive feeling about it (I like to go by
intuition).
But the start wasn't easy. After working with it for a bit I discovered the
power and freedom it gave me. It still wasn't easy but I could get going
and after a short while I preferred the IBO components (especially the
grid) to the borland versions. I was also REALLY impressed by Jasons
support! So I got that company to register and started developing with them.
Well the company and I soon parted ways and although I kept a mild interest
in IBO I didn't really get around to using it until a while ago. This time
for personal use under the trustware license. Getting into it the second
time wasn't much easier. About half a year ago the docs were better but
still not enough to keep me from feeling insecure and unsure when starting
out. But if I program with Interbase and I have a choice I would always
choose IBO.

Reasons: Power, Freedom and Support. The freedom part means I can do almost
anything I want that interbase will allow with IBO(actually anything I
wanted so far). And I can configure the components in a lot of ways to act
and react the way I want.
The power are things like global settings at connection level that keep me
from doing something 20x when once should be enough. Since I haven't had
the time to explore IBO fully I'm sure there are a lot of discoveries left
to be made.
I don't think I have to say anything more about the first class support :]

IBX is nice for something small, where I don't need power or freedom to
such a degree. In exchange I get ease of use. And ease of use for a
beginner is something that is lacking in IBO.


Ideas for promoting Interbase:
I think it's been mentioned before, but I want to stress it here anyway(and
maybe you're doing it already with the new community part).
Put 2 things on your web pages.
Make a Customers list, especially if you have big companies or prominent
customers, names that others will recognize. Both quality and quantity can
count here. Humans feel more secure if they know others have made the same
choice and they are not alone. Especially if those others are known to be
or seem to be competent.
Second, success stories might also be a good idea. This is where the
advantages with IBO can be stressed. Or if not a success stories just short
comments from people who have used IBO and what their opinions about it
are. (Maybe both?)
Humans are very emotional beings, often more than they like to belive. It
would be nice if something could stand on it's merits alone but bias always
exists and for something to even get the chance to prove itself the
emotional barrier can be the live or die of that decision.

Another thing I can't stress enough is, make it as easy as possible for a
new person to use IBO. The lower your barrier of entry is the more people
will. For instance automatic installers aren't something for everyone but
some developers are lazy with such things and don't want to bother. If it's
not a lot of work for you or you can automate it then offer a choice :)
The more tutorials and step by step guides there are the faster someone can
get up to speed. One interesting Idea migth be to have a guide that tells
you everything you don't need, so you can ignore that in the beginning and
focus bettor on what you do need.

And the last thing I want to mention last but is one of the most important
is documentation. A thing this complex can fly or die with the
documentation. I'm glad to say that this is getting better and better. The
FAQ part (or a HowTo) is especially important to something this complex I
think. Being able to use other peoples solutions is a huge time saver and
can help understand IBO better as well. Good docs increase the value IBO
immensly and the better the docs the higher the real (non monetary) value
of IBO.

Thanks Jason for doing a great job (I don't post often so I though I'd just
throw this in here as well)

--
--Chris