Q: You have released SQLHammer, and what has happened to BlazeTop?

A: SQLHammer is a project realizing exactly the same ideas and technologies as BlazeTop. At the same time SQLHammer has more efficient implementation of these ideas. That's why we have decided to stop developing BlazeTop and acquire SQLHammer. This will enable us to concentrate on the development of a product with greater potential.

A: Of course it is up to you to choose. See below functions of each package:

• dbrtl70.bpl, designide70.bpl, rtl70.bpl, tee70.bpl, vcl70.bpl, vclactnband70.bpl, vcldb70.bpl, vclie70.bpl, vcljpg70.bpl, vclx70.bpl - main visual components. You can not remove them.
• BTSynEdit_D7.bpl, BTSynEdit7.bpl, EhLib70.bpl, ExtLib_D7.bpl, kbmMemD7Run.bpl, RVDBPkgD7.bpl, RVPkgD7.bpl, VirtualTreesD7.bpl - includes some additional libraries of visual components such as EhLib, SynEdit, etc.
• BTFrameworkRt70.bpl - includes interfaces used by internal BlazeTop components.
• ibBTDBIntfRt70.bpl, ibBTFirebird2Rt70.bpl, ibBTInterbase6Rt70.bpl, ibBTInterbase7Rt70.bpl - includes components realizing direct access to InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil.
• ibBTComponentsDt70.bpl - main components and their editors, which realize BlazeTop for InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil. In other words these are components describing domains, tables, procedures and other things.
• ibBTAssistantsDt70.bpl - additional components built into the component palette and enable you in particular to read this FAQ in BlazeTop IDE. At present they contain such objects as What's New, BlazeTop Direct, FAQ, BlazeTop HTML Help, Bug Track, Wish List, BlazeTop License, BlazeTop Readme and Links.
• BTPrintDt70.bpl - includes report printing realization on metadata, data, etc.

You will not be able to delete first three sets of packages as they are BlazeTop IDE. This IDE does not know yet what it will deal with. And you should not delete ibBTDBIntfRt70.bpl, ibBTFirebird2Rt70.bpl, ibBTInterbase6Rt70.bpl, ibBTInterbase7Rt70.bpl and ibBTComponentsDt70.bpl as they include main functionality of work with InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil. Actually these packages may become different later when InterBase and Firebird branches will divide. So these packages are necessary to be installed for work with InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil.

You can delete ibBTAssistantsDt70.bpl of you do not need to read FAQ, What's New, etc while working. And if you do need report printing, simply delete BTPrintDt70.bpl.

A: If you worked with Delphi, maybe you have already guessed how. The main menu contains the Component item with the Install packages item. Press Add in the appeared dialog writing a path to the package you need to install. We recommend you to place additional packages in the default directory "\BlazeTop\Lib\".

And vice versa, pressing the Remove button after choosing a package in the list, you will easily delete it. It is important not to delete main BlazeTop's packages, otherwise it will lack some important basic functionality.

A: As we have already mentioned, BlazeTop's architecture differs from that of other development/administration tools in its dynamic packages, and they easily make BlazeTop fit to any of your requirements. And BlazeTop has no overflowing functionality. All of us know for sure that any great products are becoming more and more cumbersome, acquiring hundreds of buttons when you need only 15 of them! And these products use more and more resources, and it takes them more and more time to load. At the same time there occur more and more errors because of complex relations between growing code parts. And one day you understand that you can use these products no more...

One of the most important BlazeTop's differences we consider its functionality in the form of pluggable dynamic packages. They are not simple plugins that add more items to the main menu. Due to their object architecture, they can be deeply integrated into BlazeTop. Actually even basic BlazeTop functionality is realized on the basis of packages so there is no much difference between the main functionality and additional functions. So it's up to you which packages to install. If you do not need printing, simply do not install the package responsible for it. If you need visual query builder, you add a corresponding package. And you have no unnecessary functions!

The second important BlazeTop's difference is its interface similar to that of Delph IDEi. As any of database objects and most additional tools are realized as components, you can edit their properties in Object Inspector. Programmers are accustomed to this due to Delphi, Visual C++, Visual Basic, etc. And BlazeTop is the first database administration and development tool with such capability. We are sure that many other tools will certainly adopt this approach because it is very handy:

You will also find many other BlazeTop's analogues of Delphi IDE. Each object is a component. Opening them you can edit their properties in Object Inspector or Object Editor (in most cases it is similar to Delphi Code Editor):

You will see that some complex object properties call additional property editors (for example, the Value property of the generator), and an open object is placed into Object Explorer (as if you have put a component on the Delphi form), and you can call for it different component editors there (for example for the object "Database" such editors as "Recompute Selectivity of All Indices", etc are available). All these things make the IDE easy-understandable and handy especially if you tried Delphi or C++ Builder.

Of course these are only a few of numerous differences. You will get to know about all of them while using BlazeTop or reading manuals. The last but not the least BlazeTop's difference is its mobility toward functional stratification of InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil. Their differences are more and more numerous and they might even touch upon client libraries soon. We would like to remind that gds32.dll already has such a change in InterBase 7.0 in order to support longer object names. This will require writing of separate applications for InterBase, Firebird or Yaffil versions and database administration/development tools will not be an exception. And BlazeTop will show its advantageous principle of work with dynamic packages, because it considers InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil to be three different servers. Firebird and Yaffil are separate servers just as MySQL or PostgreSQL. Even now BlazeTop dynamically links up components for access to Firebird and InterBase 7.0. And no considerable changes will prevent BlazeTop from working with all the three servers well.

A: The answer may differ depending on your standpoint, so we will give it little by little. First of all, for most users BlazeTop is a visual InterBase/Firebird/Yaffil development and administration tool. In other words it is IDE, which enables you to create databases, edit objects and data, execute and optimize queries, backup databases, control users and their rights on data and database objects, etc.

Secondly, BlazeTop is a family of products under the same name. Each of them is intended for its own database system. Probably you already have BlazeTop for InterBase, Firebird and Yaffil and work is underway on BlazeTop for MySQL. And we are also planning to write branches for other database servers.

In the third place, BlazeTop is an object environment, which can intergate into itself various functions due to the robust mechanism of dynamic plugins. Architecture of BlazeTop IDE is similar to that of Borland Delphi and C++ Builder. BlazeTop is a do-it-yourself so it can be easily adjusted to users' needs and provides them with necessary functionality. For example, if you do not need metadata printing function, you can simply remove the package responsible for this. And you will have both, saving of RAM and decrease of IDE loading time. And vice versa, if you need an additional function, you should only find a corresponding BlazeTop package or write it yourself. It is as simple as creation of components and editors of components in Delphi. If you have ever written components, you will quickly write necessary packages for BlazeTop.