I've been asked to setup an office with Yardi Property Management software, see http://www.yardi.com/professional.asp. This software uses Btrieve. See requirements at http://www.yardi.com/sysreqbtrieve.asp. I am an experienced computer technician and I have A+ and Network+ certifications, but I have no experience with Btrieve. However, I'm very open to learning new stuff.

My question is: Am I getting in over my head with Btrieve here? Is this software installation with Btrieve likely to require someone with Btrieve experience or can a computer savvy person with zero Btrieve experience wing it okay? I would also like to know if Btrieve must be purchased separately, or is it usually included with applications that use it?

Thank you,
Steve Smith
21st Century Computers

or can a computer savvy person with zero Btrieve experience wing it okay?

Btrieve is not really complicated, neiter to set up nor to maintain. I would
not expect many problems. Install it, make sure you have applied the latest
service pack and forget it. If you want you can increase the cache size
configuration on the server to improve performance.



Most vendors package Btrieve with their product. Don't know about Yardi.


The main problems with Btrieve are these:

1.) many vendors use very old Btrieve versions, which can lead to problems.
The Btrieve versions are:
6.15: very old but still distributed. I would not install a new system with
6.x or below
7: no longer officially supported but OK if you cannot use a newer version
2000: OK
8: OK (the most recent version)

2.) The client configuration is per PC. If two applications that use
Btrieve expect a different client configuration or Btrieve version then you
have a problem.

/Bernhard