Advantage Database Server

I see J.D. Mullin from the Sybase iAnywhere Advantage Database Server (ADS) team is blogging about installing and using the ADS components with Visual FoxPro. I first learned about the Advantage Database at Southwest Fox, more at German DevCon, and have learned a lot more about this product since the conference. They are bringing some serious benefits to the FoxPro Community with the components they are releasing with version 9 of their product currently in beta.

Andy Kramek blogged about his experience with Advantage several weeks back: Advantage Database Server V9.0 released as Beta

If you read Andy's post you will see there are several things Visual FoxPro developers can leverage from this package. The component I think will really excite VFP developers is the ODBC driver which is compatible with VFP 9 database containers. This is something developers have screamed for since VFP 7 hit beta. Microsoft effectively orphaned VFP developers who used ODBC to access VFP data through products not compatible with OLE DB. The Sybase iAnywhere team is solving this problem. I also think the server product they are testing now will solve a serious security problem with DBF files without the need to upsize your database to a backend server.

I was discussing the features with some developers this past weekend and the issue of pricing came up. I checked today with the Advantage team about the cost of the ODBC driver since we talked about it. I have some good news: The ODBC driver is going to be absolutely free. All clients (including ODBC and OLE DB) come with the free Advantage Local Server (ALS) product.

If you want to see the driver installation and setup, J.D. Mullin (from the Advantage Database team) is blogging and has a short screencast about the product. Check it out here:

Getting Started with Visual Foxpro

J.D. shows how you can easily set up a remote view to access the database through a connection via a DSN. You can also use SQL Passthrough and CursorAdapters too. Simple and clean. I am looking forward to using this product soon.