So, what happened to it ? Why is Delphi not as popular as it once was ?
For that matter, remember a tool called Powerbuilder ? There used to be humongous demand for it. Now, I don’t see it anymore.
I’m not entirely sure why Delphi isn’t as popular as it once was. I’m guessing that Borland lost interest, and the programming world just moved on past. The Borland Database Engine is miles behind the times these days, and the BDE was why I was using Delphi.
I loved how it all boiled down into a single executable file though. I could write something and distribute a single exe that created an INI file for configuration. No registry, no installation, no fuss, no muss. :)
I’m still using some programs that use the BDE, but when I need to connect to MSSQL 2005/2008(for example) I now need to create an ODBC pointer to the data source, and then use the BDE to point at the ODBC DSN. I don’t think the BDE has been updated since about ten years ago.