Delphi Client/Server includes everything from Delphi Desktop, plus the
following:
- SQL-Links 2.5, which includes native client drivers for Oracle,
Sybase, Informix, and InterBase, and includes full royalty-free
redistribution rights to those drivers, and which costs $995 if bought
separately;
- The Local InterBase Deployment Kit, $495 (*);
- ReportSmith/SQL, $300 (**);
- "Team development support" -- interoperation with PVCS (obviously,
this is no use to you if you don't own PVCS), not available separately;
- The visual query builder, which creates SQL statements for you, also
not available separately;
- The VCL source code, which is available separately for $100.
(*) Local InterBase is a single-user SQL database engine. The version
included in Delphi Desktop is intended to be used by developers who want to
write SQL applications that can be seamlessly migrated to client/server
environments, but without buying their own (expensive) server platform.
However, Delphi Desktop does not include redistribution rights. If you want
to distribute a single-user application that uses Local InterBase, you have
to pay extra for the deployment kit.
(**) The version of ReportSmith bundled with Delphi Desktop specifically
detects and excludes any server-based ODBC drivers from its list of
acceptable connections. Yes, you heard that right. Even though you've got
third-party ODBC drivers, and even though you can talk to these drivers
just fine from the Delphi environment, ReportSmith still won't work. If you
want to do this without buying Delphi Client/Server, you can buy
ReportSmith/SQL separately for $300. As an alternative, if you happen to
already own a copy of Visual Basic, you can use the Crystal Reports VBX
just fine from within Delphi.
1.6 Can you write multi-user database applications in Delphi Desktop?
Using regular, non-client/server Delphi, I have developed an application
that talks to a Sybase server using ODBC drivers. I didn't have to go to
any serious trouble getting it to work, and data access speed is quite
acceptable, better than it was under Visual Basic.
Steven Lamotte says: "I think the benefits of the
native SQL drivers relate mostly to speed. It may be true that ODBC allows
you to do most everything a server permits, but your SQL commands still
have to be processed by ODBC. I once wrote a program to compare Sybase SQL
Server access with C++ using ODBC and using OpenClient (the native SQL
interface for SQL Server) and the results were that the native interface
version performed several times better than ODBC."
1.7 What is the history of Delphi?
Delphi is the descendant of Turbo Pascal, which was first released in 1983
for the CP/M operating system. Turbo Pascal was ported to MS-DOS in early
1984. During the early history of the IBM PC, Turbo Pascal was arguably the
most popular language for serious development work--mostly because it was a
real compiler, including the program editor and everything, that cost
$19.95 and would run on a 128k machine. Borland introduced Turbo Pascal for
Windows in 1990. The latest release of Borland Pascal (as it is now
called), not including Delphi, was version 7.0 in late 1992.
Delphi had an unusually long deveopment cycle--somewhere between 18 months
and two years, depending on who you talk to. Various beta-test and
prerelease copies have been circulated, including several hundred "early
experience" copies which were given away at the trade show Software
Development '95. Delphi was officially announced in the US on Feb. 14,
1995, and the first release-level copies were shipped on Feb. 28.