I just wanted to let everyone know that we have decided to start phasing out
support in ElevateDB for older versions of Delphi and C++Builder.

The first phase-out will be support for Delphi 5 and C++Builder 5, and will
occur on Feburary 28th, 2008.

After that point, the next phase-out will be support for Delphi 6 and 7, and
C++Builder 6, and will occur on April 30th, 2008.

This decision is being made for several reasons:

1) To cut down on the build times for each build and/or release.
2) To help better support the newer CodeGear IDEs.
3) To reduce support issues caused by bugs or inconsistencies in the older
IDEs, compilers, and/or RTLs.

We appreciate your understanding in this matter.  As always if you have any
questions, please let us know.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

"Tim Young [Elevate Software]" <timyoung@elevatesoft.com> wrote in message
news:810058D8-243F-4A63-B2C0-532890CBDAC9@news.elevatesoft.com...
>I just wanted to let everyone know that we have decided to start phasing
>out support in ElevateDB for older versions of Delphi and C++Builder.
>
> The first phase-out will be support for Delphi 5 and C++Builder 5, and
> will occur on Feburary 28th, 2008.
>
> After that point, the next phase-out will be support for Delphi 6 and 7,
> and C++Builder 6, and will occur on April 30th, 2008.

Wow. I just reloaded Elevate newsgroups today to post a question and read
this message. I have been working with Dinosaur-Database for the last 10
months and missed my Elevate news reading.

So after this date Elevate DB will only be available for D2007? It is my
understanding that using anything after D7 and before D2007 is quite
non-productive, so I stuck with D7 personally.

-Johnnie

> After that point, the next phase-out will be support for Delphi 6 and
> 7, and C++Builder 6, and will occur on April 30th, 2008.


I'm with Johnnie: Wow.

Together with the now-more-than-implied dropping of Kylix, that
simplifies our choice of databases in absolutely the *most* unexpected
direction of all. EDB had pretty much been a *foregone conclusion*; now
it can't even be considered as we're committed to D7 (and earlier
versions for certain clients) and K3 for the foreseeable future. (Heck,
we're "committed" to more versions BEFORE .Nyet (D8) than after!)

I expected that you'd be clarifying your position on support for things
like Kylix (while I'm struggling to finish several projects), and was
planning to ask you about expected future support for it before
considering working with the source code...  It seems I have my answer
already.

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the update.

So Elevate DB be available for the following versions:

 - Developer Studio 2006
 - RAD Studio  2007 (Delphi 2007 & C++Builder 2007)

Many thanks Stuart.

John,

> It seems I have my answer
> already.

Hmmm, you really think that Tim or any other developer for that matter,
should support old IDE's for ever. I am with Tim for 100% in his decision to
drop support for the older IDE's.

And as far as D2007 is concerned, I find it very good (with 3 updates) and
have no need to go back D7. Granted, it aint perfect (mostly the Help issue)
but I truly find it better than D7 in just about any other aspect. And don't
think for a second that D7 is perfect, cause it has its quirks also... I do
have D7 help to help in the lack of D2007 help though  

In my opinion ElevateDB is better than DBISAM, at least I like its structure
better, and I very much like Tim to be focusing on further improvements as
well as the Enterprise version, rather than spend (dare I say waist) his
time on IDE's which are really quit old and, again in my opinion, are
superseded with the best IDE to date: D2007 (added with MMX and GExperts).

Fons

Fons,

> Hmmm, you really think that Tim or any other developer for that
> matter, should support old IDE's for ever.

Definitely not, especially as someone with some understanding of both
economics and software. (And I've expressed that elsewhere on these
newsgroups.) But this is a lot shorter than "forever!" Note that
*we're* also developers!

However, as you're already seeing from some responses, (though again,
Tim will have better data) a lot of the tools market, particularly this
segment, caters to those who have very good reasons NOT to upgrade.
(BTW, there are later versions in-house here too.) After all, those
buying the newest IDEs etc. can also choose from a very large group of
DBs, including new ones built in, like
http://www.codegear.com/products/blackfish. The developers environments
and tools market just keeps getting more "interesting" and tools
developers must go where the market goes. Luckily there are appropriate
choices for all of us; it's just disappointing that our DB choices will
need to fragment and diverge from here.

Interestingly, one can flip that question around: Do we really think
that developers want to keep switching to new (and multiple! --for
different types of dev.) IDEs every 18 months, for the sake of some
other developers' incomes? Especially with reducing marginal value,
decreasing reliability, increasing complexity and dependence,
increasing prices (compared with other options--we buy Architect
level), and increasing chances of evaporation!!  (BORL below $3 again
last week...) I know a few teams who've had enough, and we were all
*long*-term Borland fans.


In addition though, the rapid (for us) change of visibility for this
database product family is unfortunate at best. But, when needed, we
can turn on a dime too.  Strangely--- I had been scanning the available
documentation from the website, and there were quite a few references
to Kylix, for example. There had been no explicit change of policy
(till now), no announcement that these older environments might be
dropped, and implicit support was seemingly evident in the docs... And
probably not surprisingly: support for those environments is/was a key
factor.


> I am with Tim for 100% in
> his decision to drop support for the older IDE's.

It would be interesting to know the results of a poll of Elevate's
customers on that subject alone. But Tim must have his finger on that
pulse enough to not need a poll.

My first impulse was to just recognize the decision had been made, and
move forward with other options, but when I saw Johnnie's response I
thought it might still be worth chiming in on the subject, in the off
chance that a small chorus would build, and that might change the
decision... however unlikely that may be.


> And as far as D2007 is concerned, I find it very good (with 3
> updates) and have no need to go back D7.

 As far as D7 is concerned, we find it very good and have no need
to go forward to D2007. Now that money can be spent on aftermarket
tools...


> And don't think for a second that D7 is
> perfect, cause it has its quirks also...

We know. And we know what they are... And it's also "infinitely" more
compatible with K3 than anything before or after. That alone is a deal
breaker for us.


> In my opinion ElevateDB is better than DBISAM, at least I like its
> structure better, and I very much like Tim to be focusing on further
> improvements as well as the Enterprise version, rather than spend
> (dare I say waist) his time on IDE's which are really quit old and,
> again in my opinion, are superseded with the best IDE to date: D2007
> (added with MMX and GExperts).

Excellent. It's for developers like you that Tim is moving forward, and
you probably outnumber us. I not only wish you all the best, I'm
downright sorry I can't be going along for the ride with the group.
That was the assumption for about 2 years.

With any luck, since we like Elevate, Tim, and these newsgroups, we'll
be back at some point down the road. But being absolutely definitely
unequivocally dependent on D5, D7 & K3 for those projects... (and
generally allergic to .Nyet) we don't even have a decision to make here!

Hi Tim,

I think there are lot of people still using D7 (including me), and april
2008 is too soon to phase out?

Just my opinion.

Regards,
Hüseyin


"Stuart Kelly" <stuart@nospam.com> skrev i en meddelelse
news:2E68F609-26B8-43AB-8902-2756AFE86145@news.elevatesoft.com...
> Hi Tim,
>
> Thanks for the update.
>
> So Elevate DB be available for the following versions:
>
>  - Developer Studio 2006
>  - RAD Studio  2007 (Delphi 2007 & C++Builder 2007)
>
> Many thanks Stuart.
>

I can appreciate the reason for the change and don't suppose there's much
you can do about it, but unfortunately this will cause problems for us.
Although we do have Delphi Studio 2006, we still have a couple of critical
applications that are based on Delphi 7.

The most recent versions of some vcl tools that we use aren't
compatible/stable enough on 2006, so we opted to revert back to Delphi 7.
We are hopeful that it will be possible to upgrade in the relatively near
future, but fear that the April deadline might come too soon for us.

Cheers,
Jack

D2007 with MMX, does someone have a link, what is MMX being referred to
here?

Walter


"Fons Neelen" <fons.neelen@xs4all.nl> wrote in message
news:57933853-AE8B-42B9-BD7D-B01EFB893C56@news.elevatesoft.com...
>
 SNIP
>
> time on IDE's which are really quit old and, again in my opinion, are
> superseded with the best IDE to date: D2007 (added with MMX and GExperts).
>
> Fons
>

John,

> Definitely not, especially as someone with some understanding of both
> economics and software. (And I've expressed that elsewhere on these
> newsgroups.) But this is a lot shorter than "forever!" Note that
> *we're* also developers!

Well, I am more an accountant than I am a developer. But apart from the
economics I also believe that supporting old IDE's for a small number of
customers is not fair for the larger group that have newer IDE's. And maybe
Tim can still support D7 as it is still heavily uses, but previous versions
is a definite no-go as fas as I am concerned. And even D7 users need to
consider seriously to change to D2007. Granted, I took me some time getting
used to it too, but I do not want to go back to D7 now, no way!!

> However, as you're already seeing from some responses, (though again,
> Tim will have better data) a lot of the tools market, particularly this
> segment, caters to those who have very good reasons NOT to upgrade.
> (BTW, there are later versions in-house here too.) After all, those
> buying the newest IDEs etc. can also choose from a very large group of
> DBs, including new ones built in, like
> http://www.codegear.com/products/blackfish. The developers environments
> and tools market just keeps getting more "interesting" and tools
> developers must go where the market goes. Luckily there are appropriate
> choices for all of us; it's just disappointing that our DB choices will
> need to fragment and diverge from here.

Not that I do not understand all responses, cause I do, but that will not
change my opinion. Decisions need to be made which are necessary for the
product to move ahead. And no one can make every one happy - unfortunately.

> Interestingly, one can flip that question around: Do we really think
> that developers want to keep switching to new (and multiple! --for
> different types of dev.) IDEs every 18 months, for the sake of some
> other developers' incomes? Especially with reducing marginal value,
> decreasing reliability, increasing complexity and dependence,
> increasing prices (compared with other options--we buy Architect
> level), and increasing chances of evaporation!!  (BORL below $3 again
> last week...) I know a few teams who've had enough, and we were all
> *long*-term Borland fans.

No, I do not think all developers should switch to newer IDE's every 18
months, but the first one that is phased out is D5 and that is how many
years back - must be at least 5 years!!  I rest my case. Like I said, maybe
D7 can still be support, but that is it. And money wise, well, I am in a
fortuned position that I can afford to update frequently eventhough I make
hardly any money out of my own software. Still, even then I skip a new IDE
now and then.

> In addition though, the rapid (for us) change of visibility for this
> database product family is unfortunate at best. But, when needed, we
> can turn on a dime too.  Strangely--- I had been scanning the available
> documentation from the website, and there were quite a few references
> to Kylix, for example. There had been no explicit change of policy
> (till now), no announcement that these older environments might be
> dropped, and implicit support was seemingly evident in the docs... And
> probably not surprisingly: support for those environments is/was a key
> factor.

I am 100% Windows. And as far as I know, Kylix has been dead years ago, so
eventhough the announcement for Tim might be sudden, one cannot be that
surprised that support now ends. The signs were there all along.

> It would be interesting to know the results of a poll of Elevate's
> customers on that subject alone. But Tim must have his finger on that
> pulse enough to not need a poll.

From the recent e-mail we all received, he gathered the info from the
downloads, which is pretty good info to base this decision on.

> My first impulse was to just recognize the decision had been made, and
> move forward with other options, but when I saw Johnnie's response I
> thought it might still be worth chiming in on the subject, in the off
> chance that a small chorus would build, and that might change the
> decision... however unlikely that may be.

One can (and must) always try  

>  As far as D7 is concerned, we find it very good and have no need
> to go forward to D2007. Now that money can be spent on aftermarket
> tools...

Yes, you are free to decide for yourself ofcourse, but all decisions do have
consequences.

> We know. And we know what they are... And it's also "infinitely" more
> compatible with K3 than anything before or after. That alone is a deal
> breaker for us.

Since I am Windows only, I take your word that it is. And I understand why
you want to stick with D7.

> Excellent. It's for developers like you that Tim is moving forward, and
> you probably outnumber us. I not only wish you all the best, I'm
> downright sorry I can't be going along for the ride with the group.
> That was the assumption for about 2 years.

Thanks. And yes, I do look forward to see ElevateDB move forward in being a
really great database. For mine type of app this is *the* database for me.
Period.

> With any luck, since we like Elevate, Tim, and these newsgroups, we'll
> be back at some point down the road. But being absolutely definitely
> unequivocally dependent on D5, D7 & K3 for those projects... (and
> generally allergic to .Nyet) we don't even have a decision to make here!

Well, .NET is not for me either. Why are you so dependent on D5 and D7,
apart from the Kylix connection? Most of the time this is because 3rd party
components are not updated to newer IDE's and they have been bought without
source code. Otherwise, I cannot really think why one need to use an older
IDE, cause Delphi is pretty good when it comes to backward compatibility.
Then again, my apps are pretty straightforward and I never had any problems
running it in a newer IDE. And as far as 3rd party components are concerned,
I always choose wisely and try to limit the number of 3rd party code. And
for most of them I do have source code. Granted, for ElevateDB this aint the
case - but will in the future.

Fons