Item 

Description 

Name  

Specifies the name of the database. This name refers to the database component from within the code of your application.  

Alias Name  

Specifies the BDE alias for the database. Choose a database aliases from the drop-down list. This list contains all aliases currently registered with the BDE. If you do not want to connect to a database that is registered as a BDE alias, you can set the Driver property instead. If you set the Alias property, the Driver property is cleared, as the driver type is implicit in the BDE alias.  

Driver Name  

Specifies the type of database represented by the database component. Choose a driver type such as STANDARD, ORACLE, SYBASE, or INTERBASE from the drop-down list. If the database server has an alias registered with the BDE, you can set the Alias instead. Setting the Driver automatically clears the Alias property, to avoid potential conflicts with the driver type implicit in the database alias.  

Parameter overrides  

Specifies the values of all login parameters when connecting to the database. The specific parameters depend on the type of database. To obtain a list of all parameters, as well as their default values, click the Defaults button. You can then modify the default values to the values you want to use.  

Defaults  

Sets the Parameter overrides to the default values for the driver type.  

Clear  

Removes all parameter overrides.  

Login Prompt  

Causes a login dialog to appear automatically when the user connects to the database. Uncheck the Login Prompt control to prevent the automatic login dialog. Most database servers (except for the file-based STANDARD types) require the user to supply a password when connecting to the database. For such servers, if the automatic login prompt is omitted, the application must supply the user name and password in some other manner. These can be supplied either by providing hard-coded parameter overrides, or by supplying an OnLogin event handler that sets the values for these parameters.  

Keep inactive connection  

Indicates that the application should remain connected to the database even if no datasets are currently open. For connections to remote database servers, or for applications that frequently open and close datasets, checking Keep inactive connection reduces network traffic, speeds up applications, and avoids logging in to the server each time the connection is reestablished. Uncheck Keep inactive connection to cause the database connection to be dropped when there are no open datasets. Dropping a connection releases system resources allocated to the connection, but if a dataset is later opened that uses the database, the connection must be reestablished and initialized.