Event:Inprise / BorCon 98 About:Presentation Paper Author:Markus Kemper Who:Interbase Presentation Group Topic:Introduction to InterBase Presenters:Markus Kemper and Brett Bandy Revision:Final Revision An Introduction To Interbase "You just bought Delphi, C++Builder or JBuilder and you've found InterBase! What's next? An InterBase support engineer will address some commonly asked product pre and post sales questions as well as some implementation issues raised by new InterBase developers." Objective My objective in writing this paper is to provide answers to many of the frequently asked InterBase questions. Reading questions and answers could be quite boring. I have attempted to consolodate the common questions into more comprehensive topics derived from them. As well, I hope to make the reader familiar with InterBase so that a new user has a good working knowledge of the product before beginning their first InterBase development project. Preface This paper is not a 'how to use' InterBase document. It is geared towards making new InterBase users aware of some of the important things to pay attention to. This paper is intended for the beginner or intermediate InterBase programmer. I make reference to Inprise's 'Borland' brand of Rapid Application Development RAD tools because I am assuming that you will be using them for upcoming development projects. Terms I think it is important to briefly define some terms. By describing them we can establish a base upon which to approach the topics within this paper. InterBase: InterBase is an ANSI SQL 92 compliant Relational Database Management System. InterBase Software Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of Inprise Corporation. Pre sales: The definition of pre sales is occasionally a tricky subject. The boundaries of pre sales type questions can be difficult to pinpoint. Often the related questions are non technical and tend to be repetitive. Regardless of their nature they are vital for both the success of our customers and InterBase itself. I am the Technical Sales Lead for InterBase. It has been a great experience for me in that it has forced me to wear the customers shoes and tromp around in the little known universe called InterBase. There will never be the perfect doc/example set, the all encompassing FAQ or maybe not even a totally bugless product but, there will always be the opportunity to improve all of the individual components that make up a software package. The development success of new and existing InterBase programmers is directly related to the quality of the documentation resources that InterBase Software Corporation provides. Pre Sales, to me, is any product related question not pertaining to example generation, syntax analysis, code evaluation, design aid or post installation trouble shooting. Pre sales could include subjects like; feature support confirmation, pricing, licensing, estimated systems sizing recommendations or other similar pre installation inquiries. Post Sales: The definition of post sales is much easier to define. By definition it is limited in scope to product inquiries made after purchase. Post sales issues can be lumped into product related questions like; configuration, installation, performance analysis. There is a fine line to be walked with regard to the point at which pre sales migrates itself into support or consulting. It is a natural process. It just happens. A software vendor has the duty to document its product while at the same time an application software developer wants to be self sufficient. The time at which a product related issue qualifies for reasonable monetary compensation is outside the scope of this paper. Pre Sales Inprise Database Client/Application Development Tools Inprise Corp. formerly Borland International has a long standing reputation for producing the most advanced, productive and powerful compilers in the industry. Borland's flagship RAD tool, Delphi has paved the way and set the standard for its current fleet of enterprise strength development tools. Inprise currently has three distinct software development tools that it releases under the 'Borland' brand name. The most famous tool Delphi, is built upon the Object Pascal programming language. Version 4.0 of Delphi is soon to be released. Borland has always been a leader in the C/C++ compiler arena. With the push for more robust graphical development tools Borland has incorporated its powerful C/C++ compiler technology into the award winning RAD development tool C++Builder. The current release of C++Builder is version 3.0. In keeping with the wave of new and upcoming technology and the advent of Sun Microsystems' Java programming language, Borland has delivered again with JBuilder. JBuilder is currently on release 2.0 and is setting a precedence in the market of Java based development tools. Inprise Development Tool Editions Inprise offers four different editions of each of its 'Borland' development tools. The editions are: 'Enterprise', 'Client/Server', 'Professional' and 'Standard'. Each of these aim to meet the needs of a wide range of software developers and their development tasks. Every edition, with the exception of the 'Standard' release of the Borland RAD tools comes with a free copy of the InterBase Server. A big misconception amongst new InterBase users is that there is a difference between the 'local' and 'multi-user' servers. InterBase is InterBase. Aside from the number of users available and the network capabilities, the product is exactly the same. The functionality of the InterBase Server shipped with the Borland tools is determined by the license included with each edition. Tool Edition InterBase Capability Enterprise 1 User Local InterBase Server License (IERDQ) " 5 User InterBase Server License (IERDSQ) Client Server 1 User Local InterBase Server License (IERDQ) " " 5 User InterBase Server License (IERDSQ) Professional 1 User Local InterBase Server License (IERDQ) Standard InterBase is not included InterBase Database Management and Development Tools All of the tools that ship with the InterBase product line can be found in the \bin sub directory under the InterBase root directory. The InterBase 'root' directory is determined during the installation process. InterBase installs in the following default directories. Platform Default Location Windows \ Program Files \ InterBase Corp \ InterBase Unix based / usr / interbase Novell \ sys \ interbas InterBase Tools NOTE: The documentation references below pertain to InterBase version 5.x. ISQL ISQL.exe - stands for Interactive SQL. It is a general purpose command line tool. It allows for Database Definition Language DDL creation and manipulation, data retrieval, data insertion, update and deletion as well as some limited debugging and performance tuning capabilities. (Operations Guide, page 200) Windows ISQL WISQL32.exe - is the GUI implementation of the command line tool ISQL.exe. (Operations Guide, page 18) Server Manager IBMGR32.exe - is a GUI based server and database management tool. The Server Manager encompasses the functionality of most of the command line tools. All InterBase Servers either v4.0 or greater are accessible by the Server Manager. This tool allows for database backup / restore, user administration as well as some other database related tasks like; validation, shutdown, repair and configuration. (Operations Guide, page 12 - 18) Communications Diagnostics COMDG32.exe - is a vital tool. This tool is used to test connections between InterBase Windows Clients and InterBase Servers. The Communications Diagnostic tool supports all valid InterBase protocols against all InterBase Servers version 4.0 or greater (Operations Guide, page 19, 87 - 95) License Manager IBLICENSE.exe - is, by name, rather self explanatory. The License Manager tool is used to manage (add/remove) licenses on an InterBase Server. This tool is only supported for version 5 InterBase Servers. (Operations Guide, page 19, 57) Registry Configuration REGCFG.exe - is used to configure some InterBase registry settings, InterBase Server process priority as well as control the Guardian Process run modes. (Operations Guide, page 70 - 75) GBAK GBAK.exe - is the most important tool in the bin directory. This tool is used to backup and restore databases. Backups are necessary to protect against unexpected data loss or file corruption. GBAK is also a great way to archive old databases. A backup copy is the only recommended way of preparing a database for machine transfer. By default GBAK generates a 'transportable' backup from a target database. This 'transportable' format allows a DBA to seemlessly backup databases and restore them on different InterBase Server platforms. This allows InterBase to provide a platform independent database solution. The GBAK functonality is surfaced in the Server Manager tool. (Operations Guide, page 156 - 163) GSPLIT GSPLIT.exe - is a tool new to InterBase version 5. This tool was created to solve a critical problem with regard to our support of unlimited database size. InterBase supports 'multi-file' databases. Operating systems enforce maximum file size limits (most commonly 2 GB). This presents a major problem when attempting to backup large InterBase databases. GSPLIT is to be used in conjunction with GBAK to create a 'multi-file' database backup from either a single or multi-file database. GSPLIT enables the backup of databases of practically unlimited size. (Operations Guide, page 163) GSEC GSEC.exe - is a command line tool used to manage (add/delete/modify) InterBase Server USERs'