Cope With Tech - by Eric John Emberda

Firebird SQL Database has been existing for so long already. However, not many have created a free and open source Firebird tool or IDE that is really easy to use. Developers are forced to use commercial ones because the free and open source in my opinion are not user-friendly at all. It's just ironic that a very good free and open source DBMS lacks decent free and open source IDE. I would like to create one and post it at sourceforge but I'm not that skilled yet. Hopefully soon. In the meantime, let's just enumerate the existing Firebird Tools currently being used by developers. 1. FlameRobin 2. EMS for Interbase and Firebird Lite 3. IBExpert 4. Lazarus 5. Firebird Maestro Of these, I like the EMS IDE.

C# express doesn't include a report designer or viewer. Reports however, is very much needed when creating a business software. Since C# express doesn't include a report designer, we need to find other means. One is to use a free report such as MyNeoReport. This however may not work under many circumstances. The other alternative would be to use a proven report engine and designer-Crystal Report. Crystal Report has been used by many developers (in our city). However, using a free programming language and IDE, and a free database is very limiting. Not much information can be gathered on the net either (with regards to reporting as of this writing). Here's a way to use Crystal Reports using Firebird database and C# Express as software development IDE: Pre-requisites: C# Express 2005 EMS SQL Manager 2005 for InterBase & Firebird Lite Crystal Reports 10 Create the following database: Name: TestDB1 Tables: TESTTABLE1 Columns:  ID - PK, INTEGER,AUTOINCREMENT DES...