Monday, April 27, 2009

Designing database applications

Database applications allow users to interact with information that is stored in databases. Databases provide structure for the information, and allow it to be shared among different applications.
C++Builder provides support for relational database applications. Relational databases organize information into tables, which contain rows (records) and columns (fields). These tables can be manipulated by simple operations known as the relational calculus.
When designing a database application, you must understand how the data is structured. Based on that structure, you can then design a user interface to display data to the user and allow the user to enter new information or modify existing data.

Using databases
The components on the Data Access page, the ADO page, or the InterBase page of the Component palette allow your application to read from and write to databases. The components on the Data Access page use the Borland Database Engine (BDE) to access database information which they make available to the data-aware controls in your user interface. The ADOExpress components on the ADO page use ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) to access the database information through OLEDB. The InterBase Express components on the InterBase page access an InterBase database directly.

Depending on your version of C++Builder, the BDE includes drivers for different types of databases. While all types of databases contain tables which store information, different types support additional features such as

Database security
Transactions
Data dictionary
Referential integrity, stored procedures, and triggers

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