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                     Dimeric Software

                    Product Information

                   Virtual Database (VDB)

                       FULL Version

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Thank you for purchasing VDB -- we hope you will find it as
useful and reliable as we do.  If you have any questions or
comments, please vist our website...

  http://www.Dimeric.com/

or send us an email...

  Support@Dimeric.com


Release Notes
-------------

2.1.16 - October 15, 2003

  --------------
  Changes in VDB
  --------------

    * VDB_ADO

      - Support params in stored procs.

  ------------------
  Changes in Utility
  ------------------

    * DSWebServer 

      - Add OnLog event to IWebServer.  
        Default action is to call DSLog.Log.Writeln.

    * DSGUIUtil

      - Added routine: GetNormalWindowBounds.

    * New units implementing a visual file difference display:
      DSDiffFrm, DSDiffViews, DSDiffColorFrm, DSDiffProgressFrm, 
      DSDiffSelectFileFrm.
      

    * DSConfig

      - Fix bug with string list feature.

    * DSMiniCalc

      - Move TCardinalXXX from DSCheckSum to DSGenUtil.

      - Add @Format, @NiceDateTime, and @NiceDate.

    * DSPropertyBag

      - Fix reverse compare to not swap arguments.

    * DSSmartRecListView

      - Make the compared list items available to the public.

      - No longer keep a reference to the underlying list 
        (i.e. no List or SelectedList properties). Replace with methods.

      - Added ReverseSort property to TSmartRecListItems.

    * DSDeployClient

      - Automatically retry if the server restarted.

      - Handle deployment of read-only files.

    * DSSortUtil

      - Fix overflow problem in CompareIntegers.

    * DSContext

      - Allow context contents to be accessible from 
        PopCommit / PopRollback.

      - Define ManualTransactionControl method.

    * DSSmartRecord

      - Define the IsCalculated property in IPropertyInfo.

    * New units to support Apache2: DSApache2 and DSApache2Plugin.

    * DSStringUtil

      - New routines: CompareTextAndNumbers and CompareStrAndNumbers.

      - New routines: NiceDateTime and NiceDate.

    * DSTypedStreams

      - New routine: DeepCloneObject.

    * DSGenUtil

      - Fix bug in StrToCardinal128.


Documentation
-------------

This product includes context-sensitive help that
integrates into the Delphi IDE, as well as three separate
files:

  Streams and Persistence.rtf - Detailed introduction to the
    streaming sub-system of DSTools (DSStreams.pas and
    DSTypedStreams.pas).

  MiniCalc.pdf - Detailed reference for MiniCalc, the
    expression parser/evaluator offered by DSTools (the
    MiniCalc.pas unit).

  VDB-Tutorial.pdf - A detailed tutorial for VDB.  This is
    the same information that can be found in the context-
    sensitive help (minus the reference section), but in a
    format that is more printer-friendly.

This product also ships with a demo application, named
VDBDemo.  This program illustrates how to perform many
common operations, all of which are implemented using both
VDB and BDE (for comparison purposes).  The demo application
is a good place to get started with VDB.


VDB Explorer
------------

VDB Explorer was inspired by Borland's SQL Explorer, but has
a subset of its functionality.  VDB Explorer works with any
database that is supported by VDB (not just BDE).  It also
has a few features missing from SQL Explorer:

 *) Ability to cut-and-paste in the data-aware grid.

 *) Ability to export the contents of the data-aware grid to
    a comma-separated text file.

VDB Explorer allows you to browse the tables in a database,
and to execute SQL statements against a database.  It comes
in handy when you need to export data to a plain text file,
or simply to test a VDB profile string.

You may define new profile strings for use with VDB Explorer
in the "VDBExplorer.ini" file.  It is also possible to add
and modify profile strings interactively within VDB Explorer,
but the user interface for doing this is rather quirky (this
will be addressed in an upcoming release).  The file
"VDBExplorer.ini" is only used by VDB Explorer -- your own
VDB applications should use their own INI files (or the
registry, or whatever other mechanism you prefer).  Please
make sure that VDBExplorer is not running when you edit the
"VDBExplorer.ini" file.


Deploying Applications Built With VDB
-------------------------------------

VDB features royalty-free application deployment.  You may
distribute free of charge applications (EXE files) and
libraries (DLL and BPL files) built with VDB and/or DSUtil.
You may not distribute VDB or DSUtil source code (PAS, INT,
DCU and DCP files).

See the software license (License.txt) for more information.