While the TAS 5.1 and prior engines (including the engine for Advanced Accounting 5.1) were 16-bit programs and were released with 16-bit Btrieve components, the latest release of Pervasive.SQL (2000i) does appear to be fully backwardly compatible. This is apparently because the Btrieve API calls made since at least Btrieve 5.10a have been preserved through to this latest release by Pervasive and the calls made by the TAS 5.1 engine were standard and conforming.

For some TAS 5.1/ADV 5.1 based systems, this provides a tremendous option to preserve legacy systems yet take advantage of 32-bit components. While the Pervasive.SQL engines can read the older Btrieve format without any rebuilding, rebuilding of each data file (which can be accomplished relatively easily) is necessary to achieve the full benefits which include: (a) higher level of robustness and fewer incidences of file corruption and related problems especially on larger multi-user systems; (b) higher performance both locally as well as in connection with any/all remote access (for example via Terminal Server or Citrix); (c) ODBC level data file access if desired and easier access to the data in general from outside the system; and (d) third party/graphical program integration.

Unless provided as part of another licensed package (for example DBA), in order to make the change to Pervasive.SQL 2000i an end user must purchase an appropriate Pervasive license.

One anomaly relates to the use of TAS 5.1 with DBA. While the TAS 5.1 engine (TPC50.EXE) is 16-bit, the DBA engine (TP5WDBA.EXE) is 32-bit. Formerly a developer had to go thru a number of steps to be able to compile programs with the 16-bit engine using 16-bit Btrieve components and was unable to innately access data (via maintain database for example) from TAS 5.1 looking into a DBAMFG data directory. Restructuring of data files also could not previously be accomplished by TAS 5.1 using standard methods (TASMERGE). These problems can be made to disappear using Pervasive.SQL 2000i. While compiled RUN programs should still ultimately be run from the DBA engine, the file dictionaries and data files can all be used and accessed simultaneously from both DBA and TAS 5.1 using only a Pervasive.SQL 2000i engine.

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