For the past 3 years, NetFile has relied upon the Interbase Objects component suite for lightning-fast, rock-solid access to client data. No other Interbase data access product comes close to matching IBO's feature set, flexibility, reliability and speed. Additionally, the uncompromising quality and attention to detail provided by IBO's principal architect, Jason Wharton, make IBO the natural choice for any developer utilizing Interbase.

IBO is simply the most indispensible component set used by our development team!
David Montgomery
Netfile

It amazed me how fast I could hammer together an Interbase client. The controls were a snap to use, way better than the stock stuff from Borland. What slowed me down the most was trying to figure out how to use TIB_Query, because it does so much.

Working with Access was like driving a go-cart on a freeway. Working with Paradox in a network environment was like playing in a band with an alcoholic: Some brilliant moments followed by the inevitable crash. MS-SQL is a bureaucracy you purchase. D5, IBO, and Firebird so far has been a dream team.
George Helmke

For test we use DbGrid to show data. BDE with TTable is working fine. dbExpress have bug when RefreshRecord is used and you can only use ClientDataset for updating data. SQLDirect doesn't support Refresh (record) yet. You have to refetch all data to see changes made by triggers. IBX is moving record position always to last position in grid. IBX also doesn't have so much flexibility as IBO does.

We found that we don't need to use persistent fields any more and we can also have data dictionary outside of application with IBO. We found that we can have now applications without Lookup fields so we can speed up things a lot. So IBO gives you a lot more than BDE does. You can tune TIBOQuery as much as you like. You can't do anything like that with IBX. I can say that IBO is for professional use and IBX is very far from that.
Rado Antloga

You may be reluctant to toot your own horn about support (since you provide a TON of it), but the IB community really needs to know about it. Add the support provided by Helen & others and it's second to none.
Wes Peterson
LexCraft Data Services

I really believe that Jason is correct in strongly advocating IBO. Those newbies who heed him will be fortunate, and will avoid the dead end that one will ultimately encounter with IBX. IBX may seem easy at the start, but once you get into the thick of things, you will find that you will somehow have to stitch so many pieces of the puzzle yourself.... So much for RAD. But with IBO, one would almost always find that once you get into the thick of things, Jason had already worked things out for you.

You are so lucky to get straight into IBO without passing by IBX. Others are forewarned to do the same if they want to hit the Interbase road running...
Joseph Alba

Those of us who found IBO at the right time are not going to waste time even installing IBX. So we keep our heads down and keep a clean development base.

For those who have years of Delphi 4 and earlier code, they are reluctant to move to Delphi 5, for good reason, it takes a long time to change. I am C++ based and delayed moving from OWL based stuff until Builder 3 had been out a while, so that I did not start a move until Builder 4 was due. I had not finished that move when Builder 5 came out, and only really moved on to that because of the problems getting BDE working in Builder 4. Borland have done themselves no favours in the way they have managed updates, BDE has NEVER worked properly.

I switched to Codebase and have systems running in OWL that have run for years and did not even need changes for Y2k. I was forced back to BDE because of the switch to Builder, and it was only after a second try with IBO that I started to get back to stable applications, after a break of some 3 YEARS trying to get Builder/BDE applications stable ( no growth! ).

I 'lost' 7-8 months of possible IBO development because my intial attempt to switch was not sucessful. The problem at that time turned out to be all the crap I had added to make BDE stable. Once I started again with a clean IBO application everything ran nicely, but I am still trying to UNDO 3 years of crap!
Lester Caine
L.S.Caine Electronic Services

When I ran across IBO about 3 years ago, it was "love at first sight". It worked quickly and easily. It also had a lot of the functionality that I was struggling to implement on my own. Grid sorting by clicking the title bar sounds easy but is more trouble than it looks. IBO did it virtually automatically.

I had also put a lot of time into making an interactive "Icon" that would turn red when data was in edit mode. Again, sounds simple but is actually quite involved. I was very pleased when I started using IBO and found that the transaction bar did all that completely automatically.

When I first got Delphi 5, I revisited IBX, and found the same problems as before. I didn't waste any more of my time with it after that.
Paul Gallagher

To mix IBO with IBX doesn't work too well to my knowledge, as far as I remember I got some data refresh/update problems. The only thing that gave me some trouble was the QuickReports. There are probably solutions to that too, but I didn't have too much time to search for 'em.

I really like this suite a lot, gives me more flexibility and less source with less effort. Which I guess is the main subject of course.
Svein Petter