BDE Replacement

rbuser

Hello,

I am using Delphi 6 and Report Builder 7.02. I'm currently writing a small
ReportBuilder viewer app and I would like to move away from using BDE as we
have in the past. The problem with switching to ADO is that, according to
this thread (), I'll have to edit every report template. That is just not
feasible because we have a large customer base with many existing reports.
What about using a third party BDE replacement? Would this allow us to get
around having to edit all our report templates?

Thanks,

Glenn Thimmes

nicocizik

Hi Glenn,

If you are not using the actual BDE classes, you will need to convert your
templates to some extent to get them working with another connection suite.
As it turns out, we have had many customers in the past that have done this
successfully with little extra development. Take a look at the article
below on how to manually convert from BDE to ADO. The same would apply for
any other type of connection. Also, if you have numerous templates saved on
a DB somewhere, you can use the following technique to access that template
text on the fly.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/EditTemplatesAsText.zip

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Tech Tip: Convert BDE Template Dataviews To ADO
-------------------------------------------------

Currently when DADE is used to create dataviews, the DatabaseName is stored
as part of the query definition. (This is consistent with Delphi's approach
to specifying a database connection for a Query object).

When you created the reports originally, the daDBBDE.pas BDE DADE plugin was
used. Now you want to use ADO. You've already changed the
Designer.Datasettings but this had no effect on the old reports. They still
try to use the BDE connection. Changing the Designer.DAtaSettings only works
for new dataviews that are created, because the new query dataviews are
using the daADO.pas ADO DADE plugin.

In order to convert the templates from BDE to ADO, at the minimum you have
to change the database name and the DADE plugin class names that are stored
in the templates. When a BDE dataview is created, its class type is a
TdaBDEQueryDataview. When an ADO dataview is created, its class type is
TdaADOQueryDataview. These class types are stored in the template. These
have to be changed before the template is loaded into a report.

First, compare a BDE report template to an ADO report template which both
connect to the same database table. Save a BDE and an ADO based report
template to separate ASCII text files. Now compare the dataview definitions.
Change the TdaBDEQueryDataview class name to TdaADOQueryDataview in the BDE
template. Change the BDE alias to your ADOConnection object. Then compare
the table name and field names of the BDE template to the ADO template and
change them accordingly, removing the .db extension on the table name is
necessary. Now load the converted BDE template in your ADO end user
application.

The first step is to make a backup of all your templates before continuing
with a programatic approach. You can convert the templates programatically
by loading the ASCII template files to a TStringList object. Then loop
through the lines of the list and change the text programatically. You can
loop through the files in a directory using ppFileUtils.pas calling the
GetFileNamesForDirectory procedure to load the file names.

If you have binary report templates, you'll also be able to convert these
with an extra couple of steps. You can load the binary template file into
ASCII format, modify it, and then save it back to binary as shown in the
example link below. Keep in mind the conversion is performed without loading
the report template into a TppReport.

http://www.digital-metaphors.com/tips/ConvertBinaryTemplateToASCII.zip


--
Regards,

Nico Cizik
Digital Metaphors
http://www.digital-metaphors.com