Migrating old Delphi 7 code to Delphi XE - unicode really needed?

Question

I have an old application running BDE under Delphi 7, and have now bought Delphi XE. I see a lot of people say the main problem migrating the code is changing to unicode. And possibly a database supporting unicode.

But, do I really have to do this? Can I not just stick to BDE and some "good old string format"?

I am hoping to get away with a quick swap to Delphi Xe here, not necesarily using all new features etc etc....

Rgds PM

Answer 1

The data fields that connect your data to the database didn't change. A TStringField still has a Value property of type AnsiString, which matches the old behaviour.

When you inspect all the warnings the compiler will spit out, you might come away with little effort and keep the BDE alive.

Besides that I suggest replacing the BDE with a more recent solution in the foreseeable future - not only because of Unicode.