Ramblings

At work, we use ADO exclusively to connect to MS SQL Server, and I’m interested in exploring some of the things you can do with dbExpress and metadata, so I am trying to figure out how to create a connection on the fly, without setting up a new connection through Delphi, to be stored in the dbx ini files. I recently read a newsgroup post about deployment problems with Delphi 2009 needing dbxconnections.ini and dbxdrivers.ini, but I think eventually, it will be fixed.

So, drop a TSQLConnection and a TSQLQuery on a form, set SQLQuery1.SQLConnection to SQLConnection1.

To connect to the database:

uses
   DbxMsSql; // required to register the driver

SQLConnection1.DriverName := 'MSSQL';

SQLConnection1.Params.Values['hostname'] :=
   'HostName\SQLExpress'; // instance name
SQLConnection1.Params.Values['database'] :=
   'databasename';
SQLConnection1.Params.Values['os authentication'] :=
   'True'; // if you want Windows Authentication

SQLConnection1.Connected := true;

then the SQLQuery1 can be used very similarly to a TADOQuery