At 01:42 PM 8/08/2003 +0000, you wrote:

>Well, I use the BDE-alias for conveniency not really for converting.
>My app. is new and uses IBO's Tdataset components (because I am used
>to that, and I am using Infopower-controls).
>BUT I do also use an older reporting-utility connecting to the db via
>BDE, so I can't right now get rid of it!
>One more thing is that the user has 3 (or more) similar databases
>which is distinguished by the BDE-alias. Therefore it seemed
>reasonable to just let TIBOdatabase get the servername, path and
>database from BDE, which I thought was the *only* implication of
>using Aliasname. What kind of trouble can it cause, I don't know of
>any (so far).

Then, as long as you are deploying the app to a system where the correct
idapi.cfg is available, it should be OK.

The trouble which occurs repeatedly is that people use this "feature" on
their dev. system and then totally forget that they did when they deploy
their binary. Then, of course, the idapi.cfg isn't there (or it's
different) and their users get connection errors.

As a matter of interest, what's the old reporting utility? Does it use the
BDE directly or does it just need TDataset connectivity? Just curious,
really. I still use QuickReport, yet all of my apps are native IBO. I
just have one magic TIBOQuery for a report, which gets its data from an
ib_cursor via AssignSQLWithSearch...

Another thing - do you know about db aliasing in Firebird 1.5? This
enables you to avoid storing the real path in your application code
altogether. It can't even be "sniffed" on the wire.

Helen