Differences between ado and bde

0
votes

What is the Differences between ado and bde?

2
delphiadobde
We took to calling it the Borland Dongle Engine - it's a dongle you have to install before old apps will run. – Ian Boyd

2 Answers

5
votes

As far as Delphi is concerned, ADO calls into the Microsoft supplied database drivers. BDE calls into the Borland supplied database drivers. Both ADO and BDE do a good job at basically the same thing. The BDE has not had any significant changes over the past several years, but then neither has ADO. Both have the ability to call into 3rd party ODBC drivers so can be extended.

If I were to start a new project, I would recommend using ADO over the BDE. ADO is used by a much larger universe of programmers, is supported directy by the OS vendor, and is much easier to deploy since most of the requirements are already in place. (the exception maybe specific database drivers, but you will run into that with BDE also).

Over 8 years ago, I ported one of my BDE applications completely to ADO and was never sorry. The pain was well worth the added flexiblity and ease of deployment.

2
votes

Simple,

BDE is dead. Period. Ask any Codegear/Embarcadero guy and they will say that BDE is there for backwards compatibility only and is not supported anymore.

ADO is a Microsoft technology, works well in many scenarios and is very flexible.