Migrating Clients

Go Up to Migrating to InterBase

It is good practice to recompile and relink the application and make note of field names, data type use, and so on in the new application. When you recompile, state the dialect explicitly:

 SET SQL DIALECT n;

Important:
If you have databases that use any of the new 2020 keywords as object identifiers and you are not migrating those databases to dialect 3, you might consider not migrating any older version clients. If you migrate them to 2020 dialect 1, you lose the ability to access those keyword columns. See InterBase Keywords.

When you recompile an existing gpre client, you must recompile it with the gpre -sql_dialect n switch.

There are several paths that allow you to create dialect 3 clients that access all new InterBase features:

• In Delphi, make calls to functions in the InterBase Express (IBX) package.
• To write embedded SQL applications that address all InterBase 2020 dialect 3 functionality, compile them using gpre -sql_dialect 3.

Migrating Clients: Summary

Client	How to migrate
Older applications such as InterBase version 5 applications	Dialect is 1; there is no way to change the dialect. A version 5 client application becomes version 6 dialect 1 client whenever the InterBase 2020 client is installed on the machine with the client.
isql	Issue the following command-line option: -sql_dialect n Or issue this command: SET SQL DIALECT n;
GPRE	Issue the following command line option: -sql_dialect n Or issue this command: EXEC SQL     SET SQL DIALECT n;
BDE	All applications use SQL dialect 1. To access InterBase dialect 3 features from Delphi, use the IBX components.
InterClient	InterBase 6: All applications use SQL dialect 1. InterBase 7 introduced InterClient 3, which is a dialect 3 client.
Direct API calls	When you call isc_dsql_execute_immediate(), isc_dsql_exec_immed2() or , isc_dsql_prepare(), set the dialect parameter to the desired dialect value: 1 or 3.

Advance To:

• Migrating Data from Other DBMS Products