I started with Turbo Pascal 3, went to TP5, Bought TP6 called Borland the next day and downgraded to TP5.5. Bought Delphi 3, and now have Delphi 5 Enterprise. I sort of lost interest in writing code about 4-5 years ago for two reasons;

1. Spent all day writing ASP & SQL for someone else.
2. PC Techniques magazine went away.

I've got a few programs in the shareware market that are solid performers but are in need of serious updating. I love Delphi or did when it was Borland (before Borland bought DBase and all the other crap), I'd like to salvage as much of my D5E code as possible but I doubt I can. I plan on upgrading to Delphi 2010.

My next software release needs to interact with a database. I'm very proficient with MS Sql and like to put all of the database code in stored procedures.

What is the best database choice that interacts well with Delphi, allows stored procedures and is so easy to deploy that even the Geico gecko could deploy it?

10/25/2009 18:53 PM EST
Re-Opened After Reading Install Docs for Delphi 2010

I downloaded a trial version of Delphi 2010 and unzipped the install. I've been reading the install docs included in the package. I started with the install.htm inside the zip package.

install.htm wisely tells you to see the following two articles:

1. Installation Notes: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39754
2. Release Notes: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/39758

the release notes state the following...

MSSQL driver requires the installation of the SQL Native Client. SQL Native Client 2008 is required for dbxmss.dll. SQL Native Client 2005 is required for dbxmss9.dll

I checked my machine to see if SQL Native Client is installed. Nope. I wasn't done reading the docs so I made a note to install SQL Native Client.

I googled dbxmss.dll and dbxmss9.dll and found a very interesting thread on the Embarcadero forums. read thread here.

After reading this thread and some careful thought I don't think I will be using Microsoft SQL Express. I can't rely on my customers having the right drivers installed. So, I'm back to looking for a different solution.

If I'm selling a $40 product to the general masses I need to have a bulletproof solution that doesn't require my brand new customer to update their machine before my software will work.