I know that Unicode allows the database to work in any language/can store data in any language.

But what does it actually mean to me?

I am a long time DBISAM user and it works fine for me. I develop only for English speaking people.  What I'm getting at is does it matter which I use are there any advantages or disadvantages to using Unicode or should I just go with it.  Will I notice the difference???

I have just downloaded ElevateDB and got the server and the manager running and it looks interesting !

I guess this has been asked before but searching for Unicode is a bit vague.

Thanks


Peter

My general take is that it depends on your future plans.

If you are or will be using D2009 and later, trying to avoid UNICODE is
fighting the IDE, even if you will stick to English and do not have to
work with ANSI or ASCII based hardware and firmware.

Windows has been UNICODE for a while and if you plan to stick around
for a few years more you will probably have to switch at some point
anyway.

If you switch you will find text at 2 bytes per code point (character)
uses more storage space.
If you move from pre-D2009 to a more recent IDE you will probably see
some new compilation warnings and hints.  But your code may even
compile with little or no changes until you address the issues raised.

The biggest issues I ran into concerned my needs to use UNICODE for
language support, while having to work with ANSI, ASCII and UTF8 third
party devices and systems.  If my applications had been self-contained
it would have been fairly painless.

Peter


My take is similar to Malcolm's but different

If you move to D2009 or later you will have no choice. Your apps will HAVE to be unicode and you will have to handle it correctly. You might as well go unicode for the database as well. In general older versions of Delphi translate to/from unicode as the code calls Windows APIs. I'm not sure how far back that goes.

When unicode was first introduced in D2009 some people did speed test comparisons and found little/no difference between unicode / non-unicode versions so you can probably be sure that your app will run roughly as fast whichever way you go.

What differences will you see? Size mainly, as Malcolm says unicode takes up more space.

Like yourself I work in English (I can almost understand it) and don't need unicode. I'm still on D2006 and probably will be for some time. At least until it breaks, or can't be transfered to a new PC or Delphi has an upgrade with features that make me go WOW!

Roy Lambert

Thanks

Mostly my work is with business logic. Multi User database and front end. Its mostly financial and I really dont do any stuff that requires API calls.  I tend to buy in components as I need them rather than fool with the source code.

I am moving to 2010 but only for new stuff. I only have a small set of tools that I use regularly (lots that I dont....) so I will just buy what I need.

My old stuff can stay in Delphi 7 until the next version of windows breaks it, by which time I will be upto speed on 2010. Not planning to go XE at the moment as I read that a lot of vendors are not upgrading tools for XE.

Thanks for your replies.

Peter

Peter,

> But what does it actually mean to me?

I switched to Delphi2010 from Delphi5 (very big jump) and it took me
just one or two days to get everything manages.
If you don't use oder third party compenents which make problems to
compile with Delphi2009 and later, that should be no problem.

Until now I am using the non-Unicode versions of EDB though. No need for
me to change because the only language I use is German.
You won't have any problems using Delphi2009 and later together with the
ANIS-version of EDB.

Last week I got a new job by a Russian customer and (beeing happy that
Delphi2010 was running) I installed the Unicode version of EDB as well.

Like Tim confirmed: you can even use Unicode and Ansi versions of EDB on
one computer. No problems.

Regards Uli