BDE (Borland Database Engine)

BDE is the abbreviation for the Borland Database Engine, the heart of Firebird/InterBase®. IBExpert uses this database engine to access and retrieve data. It allows multiple sessions, each one being treated as a “virtual” user.

Originally designed as the engine to deal with both dBase and Paradox, it was extended to serve as middleware to remote connectivity with relational databases through a set of libraries known as Borland SQL Links. Given that, BDE supports both record-oriented commands and SQL syntax. The name BDE is used to refer to the package that consists of the core technology (that includes the IDAPI Infrastructure and the common Query engine) plus the three IDAPI drivers/engines (for Paradox, dBase and Text formats) plus the ODBC Socket that makes any ODBC driver into an IDAPI driver for BDE applications. It's important to say that because BDE connects to several engines through SQL Links, it cannot recognize or take advantage of every feature in each specific relational engine, so the support for some Firebird/InterBase® features is limited or it doesn't exist.