Firebird DBX4 Driver

(Versão em Português)

I have a recent experience with the Firebird API and the DBX4 API for Delphi 2007, and I wroted a DBX4 Driver for Firebird Database. It supports all field types of this database.

Front paper in the Active Delphi Brazilian magazine, 53. Edition. "...In this paper, Thiago Souza shows a driver that is appearing strongly, the TBODBXFB. This driver does a clean access and without errors to Firebird Database and can be utilized in the RAD Studio 2007."
Whow, I don't think the driver is so mature, but I still correcting the errors reported by users.

I have made very few a litle more tests in real apps converted from Delphi 7. If you catch some error, please send to e-mail below.
I have a application in a production state using the driver. I don't have bugs relateds to it.

I don't have solicitations for new features, so, I don't have a roadmap too. But I'm aware of requests for new features and bug fixes.

I will continue to provide the drivers as a freeware, without sources. If you need the source code or support for the drivers, please contact me. I need to continue maintaining the driver because I have applications in production using it.

The driver can be used only with Delphi2007, DBX4.

1. When execute an application with use the driver, the debbuger tells about a breakpoint in the ntdll.dll, famous in the internet like INT3. If happens with you, check the option 'Ignore non user breakpoints' of your delphi (Thanks to Leonel Togniolli) or add this unit to the project.

2. The driver don't work with .Net apps. I haven't idea about why, but it is a Access Violation.
The driver now works with .Net.

3. If you enable the trace You will see that some parameters don't be evaluated.

4. "Runtime Error (at: 1:4131): Error on line 0, position 0: The system cannot locate the object specified." Verify if the file DataExplorer.exe.config exists and if them is correctly. Some RAD Studio updates breaks them.

5. "Cannot find the entry point... @Dbxtablestorage@TDBXDefaultRowStorage@CopyColumns$qqrv ... in library ... DBXReadOnlyMetaData100.bpl" The packages of version 0.2 is builded with December update of Code Gear installed. You have installed them?

6. "Access violation" when program open a TSQLConnection, in a deployment environment (Without Delphi/RAD Studio): Fail in the driver deployment. Read the section 'How to deploy the driver'.

01/11/2008 - Addition of support the UTF8

01/11/2008 - Addition of support the AutoCommit

01/11/2008 - Correction of problem with size De Campos (Property size of the TFields)

01/11/2008 - Correction of problem with required fields (Required Property of the TFields)

01/11/2008 - Correction of error ' SQL error Error SQL code = -501 Attempt you reclose closed cursor' when opening explicit transactions in the code

17/09/2008 - Released the Delphi 2009 version

17/09/2008 - Fix Access Violation when working with VarChar fields

22/07/2008 - Fix storage of ARRAY fields (Thanks to Sertak Akyuz)

21/07/2008 - Fix storage of TIME fields (Thanks to Douglas)

21/07/2008 - Fix "Update affected more than 1 record." when updating records (Thanks to Arthur ACCL)

21/07/2008 - Fix usage of TSQLStoredProc for procedures without parameters or without resultset

08/06/2008 - Fix an Access Violation when calling DBXCommand_GetRowsAffected with DDL commands (Thanks to Eduardo Tec-Soft)

08/06/2008 - Support to TSQLStoredProc added (Thanks to John Hodgson)

08/06/2008 - Support to TSQLDataSet added (Thanks to Pablo Bueno)

14/05/2008 - Fix IDE Freeze within Windows Vista when open the connection (Thanks to Cesar Romero)

14/05/2008 - Fix an Access Violation when open two connections, one with Interbase driver and another with TBODBXFB. This applyes to DataExplorer in IDE too.

14/05/2008 - Fix error when close SQLQuery after a Transaction Commit. (Sequence: Close/Open/Commit/Close/Open)

04/03/2008 - Incorrect VARCHAR field size returned from the driver

04/03/2008 - Fix Read Commited Transaction to use isc_tbp_nowait instead of isc_tbp_wait option.

27/02/2008 - Infinit Loop when close connection (TSQLConnection.Close) (Thanks to Luiz Henrique Auer)

27/02/2008 - Access violation when not specified DriverName=TBODBXFB in TSQLConnection.Params. (Thanks to Luiz Henrique Auer)

14/02/2008 - Added support to .Net platform

14/02/2008 - Added support to Data Explorer

14/02/2008 - Fix transactions errors (Thanks to Luiz Henrique Auer)

14/02/2008 - Fix code related to ftDate parameters

14/02/2008 - Fix installer to detect the dbExpress .ini folder

14/02/2008 - Others minor fixes

30/01/2008 - Make a installer

30/01/2008 - Corrected keys in the dbxdrivers.ini file (Thanks to Luciano Pimenta)

1. Add the unit TBODbxDynalink to the project file. This unit loads the driver at runtime. Another way is check the option 'Build with runtime packages' and add the TboDbxNative package in the list.

2. Deploy the dbxdrivers.ini and dbxconnections.ini files:

2.1 The dbxdrivers.ini file needs to be deployed and to have two sections: [Installed drivers] and [TBODBXFB]. See this file read to be deployed.

2.2 The dbxconnections.ini file can be empty, but the DBX4 Framework needs them.

2.3 This files can be put in program folder dir or in the path defined at HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Borland\BDS\5.0\DBExpress\, in the entries 'Driver Registry File' and 'Connection Registry File' (This is a DBX4 behaviour).

3. Put the tbodbxfb.dll file in the program folder dir or in the system path.

In the 0.6 RC 2 release, I need to use a TRIM function, to show fields/parameters in the TSQLDataSet and TSQLStoredProc correctly. The trim function is disponible in the most recent Firebird versions (2.0, 2.1), but not in Firebird 1.5. Run the following command to declare the default TRIM function in Firebird 1.5:
DECLARE EXTERNAL FUNCTION trim
CSTRING(255)
RETURNS CSTRING(255) FREE_IT
ENTRY_POINT 'IB_UDF_ltrim' MODULE_NAME 'ib_udf';

Forum: groups.google.com/group/tbodbxfb
Thiago Borges de Oliveira
thborges at gmail

22088 since 25/01/2008.