Dimensional Data

In the modern age isn’t it true to say we are completely surrounded and immersed in technology of diverse forms? Much of it now is entirely cloud-based but there’s still a substantial proportion which employs a mix of both cloud and more physical hardware computing resources. However, the common thread amongst all of these technologies, even the most recent ones, is the certainty of them becoming obsolete. After all, even though all technologies evolve rapidly, they are eventually replaced by something which is either an evolutionary step thanks to advances in technological offerings or because new and more potent ways of providing a service or solving a problem emerge. To save a technology or application from fading into oblivion, its makers consistently upgrade it with new features and prepare it in anticipation of future trends and ways of doing things. As simple as this may seem, such a task can become arduous, especially if the application is complex and has a wider codebase. Additionally, many of the libraries and frameworks on which the application is built can go out of service or are superseded and need updates. To tackle the challenge of upgrading and modernizing an application, robust development studio solutions like RAD Server have powerful methods that streamline the process. Such methods help you gain a sense of the kind of changes you will have to implement. Additionally, they also guide you through the modernization tasks themselves. This article dives into what the modernization journey with RAD Server looks like and why can be essential for applications in the first place. Why Would You Need To Modernize Your Applications? The field of software development has a radically different landscape today to that of even five years ago. Applications now use their hardware resources much more efficiently thanks to advances in operating system abstraction and support. The wide range of programming languages enables you to create applications which perform complex tasks better than before and with optimizations in the code creation process thanks to a maturing of the development industry’s tooling providers and the supporting component eco-system. If your application is to survive in such a landscape, it will have to modernize and offer more than before. When it comes to web applications, advancements in what we have come to expect from a web browser and the rendering scaffolding which supports that have come by making them much more dynamic and robust. Developers can now create web applications at remarkable development velocity and, when done right, the same codebase can work on all kinds of devices thanks to the invention of techniques like adaptive rendering of user interfaces and virtualization of hardware differences to provide a generic API or set of properties and methods which address the lowest common denominator of hardware sensors and functionality . Modularity has also been achieved through microservices, and operations have become as serverless as feasible. The question of security and scalability has also become an integral part of the conversation around application development. With a rise in cybersecurity concerns, applications need to be secure throughout and use the best practices. Additionally, the applications also need to be scalable to accommodate a wider user base and deployment when necessary. Without these abilities, your application can lose its competitive edge and be eventually forgotten. What Is […]

Hello. This article is part of a series where we speak with professional software developers, ask them what it’s like to write code for a living, and perhaps gain a few insights into the software development industry along the way. Talking to us today we have fellow British Delphi fan Brian Barr. Brian is based in Norfolk, England nestled by the English East Coast which brought back many nostalgic memories to me of driving through the wonderful local countryside since my own late father used to live in that area. Brian has a fascinating background coding Delphi programs for use in the TV and radio industry even before the launch of Delphi 1. His Barrcode application reaches an astounding 50 million listeners and viewers products every week. Thank you for taking part in the interviews Brian! Thanks for the homework! 😂 What would be your brief evening news summary of who you are and what you do? Written Delphi programs for the TV and radio industry before Delphi 1 came out. Started writing in BBC Basic for the BBC Model B. Wrote digital playout systems for the biggest commercial radio stations in the UK. Now writes software for the major TV channels in the UK. How and/or why did you become a developer? I was a radio station engineer working with electronics, I needed to learn programming to write some automation systems to support diversely skilled staff. Do you think you will ever stop being a developer? If so, what would be next? Never Brian is not actually from Florida What made you start using Delphi/C++ Builder? As I recall, I saw Delphi 1 in a magazine. I needed to program on the Windows PC platform and Delphi showed much promise. If you could give some advice to a student who is considering a career as a software developer, what would it be? Research the subject thoroughly. Principles of programming are pretty universal – all languages have an IF statement and various loops. Get used to structuring your code so that when you are old, you can still work out what it does. Tabs… or spaces? Spaces – silly!! Don’t get me started on where the “begin” should be. What’s the best day you ever had as a developer? Too many – getting a major contract for Capital Radio in London – led to many more stations. What’s the worst thing about being a developer? When things go wrong – you feel responsible for the chaos. What’s the coolest development tip you know? When things don’t work – it’s always YOUR fault! Work from home, work from an office, work in an open plan / shared space? What do you prefer and why? Do you get to choose? Work from home. My time is my own, also the freedom to leave the keyboard when my brain aches. Tell us something interesting you think we might not know. Darth Vader IS Luke’s father!! Have you been to Silicon Valley? If so, how was it? If not, have you ever wanted to? Who wouldn’t want to program in the sunshine? Have you ever met any famous/well known tech figures? Who was it? How did it go? Because I was in a radio station, I met many “famous” people. Once was shown round […]

What is Pusher ? Pusher is a set of bidirectional APIs targeted on real time communication. The main use case of those APIs are : Real time charts (cryptocurrency values) Network games (synchronization of players) In app chat (application support) Real time results (basketball, soccer, baseball) Instant geolocation (products to home delivery) What are the main specifications of Pusher ? Pusher is a publish-subscribe messaging system that allows to exchange messages reliably and effectively. Pusher solves by design the problems of : Scale of number of messages and users The real time constraint of messages delivery. Pusher supports the concept of channels. A channel of communication can have 4 different type : Public Private Encrypted Presence What is a Public Channel in Pusher? Public channels should be used for publicly accessible data as they do not require any form of authorisation in order to be subscribed to. What is a Private Channel in Pusher? Private channels should be used when access to the channel needs to be restricted in some way. In order for a user to subscribe to a private channel permission must be authorized. The authentication occurs via a HTTP Request to a configurable authentication url when the subscribe method is called with a private- channel name. What is an Encrypted Channel in Pusher? An encrypted channel is similar to a private channel. However the content of the message is end-to-end encrypted  This encryption follows the specifications of the Secretbox encryption standard defined in NaCl and the message is encrypted before it leaves the server. Only authorized subscribers have access to the channel specific decryption key. This means that nobody except authorized subscribers can read the payload data, not even Pusher. End-to-end encrypted channels also provide end-to-end authenticity; that is your messages are protected from forgery, and that they are guaranteed to come from someone who holds the encryption master key. What is a Pusher Presence Channel? Presence channels build on the security of Private channels and expose the additional feature of an awareness of who is subscribed to that channel. This makes it extremely easy to build chat room and “who’s online” type functionality to your application. How can I integrate Pusher into my Delphi app? The first step is to create an “application” on Pusher.com First of all users need to subscribe to the Pusher network and create an application. Pusher will generate several ids and keys needed to use the Pusher system as follows: With all this data, the developer will be able to interact with the Pusher system. How do I connect to the Pusher network with the TsgcWSAPI_Pusher component of ESEGECE? The low-level communication with Pusher is based on web socket. As a result you can find a Pusher component in the websocket component suite of ESEGECE. You can download the component suite from here. The component installation is done by the compilation the bpl for the Delphi version. There are full instructions and it’s quite easy to do, even for novices. Now, in RAD Studio Delphi, create a new application and drop on the main form the web socket component TsgcWebSocketClient and the Pusher component TsgcWSAPI_Pusher. In the property of the pusher component we will need to set : sgcPusher.Pusher.Cluster := ‘eu’; sgcPusher.Pusher.AppId := myAppid; sgcPusher.Pusher.Key := myKey; sgcPusher.Pusher.Secret := mySecret; sgcPusher.Pusher.TLS := True; […]

Balancing data privacy and security with user experience is one of the most complex tasks for software developers.  Many projects have higher priority for business functionality and security-related tasks are lower priority which leads to an insecure system. Here are some reasons why putting security to the forefront of our designs and development are essential. The security by design methodology should be enforced in the product design and development stages to make more secure and reliable software. Rather than applying security at the final stages of the software, it is better to start the project with security awareness. Finding the issues related to the security of the project at the final stage of the development process might force the development team to expend further unplanned time to re-architecture or make dozens of changes.  One of the problems with poor security design on software is the exposure of sensitive data. For instance, the simple scenario is that the user enters his/her account and clicks an image to download it. What if that link is available to others and there is no authentication or resource protection? Something as simple as a compromised linking strategy can be difficult to fix after the fact and could eventually lead to a steep drop-off in user confidence and corresponding plummet in adoption of your app or service. When talking about security by design we need to define several terms. Classic information security usually includes confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Keeping information secret that should not be made known to the public. For instance, your healthcare record – Confidentiality When your information is safe and does not change by any third party, this is Integrity. For instance, votes for election. Availability implies that the information is at hand on time. For example, when there is a call for a hospital, they need to know the location and the address immediately. All 3 factors are mandatory if you are concerned about security by design in your project. Moreover, in recent years many governments and legal bodies have introduced rules which require traceability of data use, access and dissemination. This features in laws such as the European GDPR regulations. Traceability is another factor we must consider to ensure that if the data is accessed, that connection should be traceable. Security by design starts from the approaches that you do with your code. If you ask five developers to design software, you will get five different answers. But only a few of them ask how the objects interact with each other and how the system should be protected.  To create better software you should care about: Design patterns System architecture Activities and connection of classes Even writing if statement or utilizing for loop security These all qualify as part of the software design process. In the traditional software development process, security should be a top priority when developing and write code. So, everyone involved in the process should be trained and experienced in software security. At the very least developers need to know about the cross-site scripting attacks, vulnerabilities in low-level protocols, and the OWASP Top 10. By being aware of these, developers approach the development process differently, for example, they start to care about input sanitization, security configurations, or outdated components in their toolset. Dozens of tools and services are available that protects your entire […]

Delphi offers a modern, robust & enterprise-grade UI developer environment with Visual Component Library (VCL) for Windows only and FireMonkey (FMX) for cross-platform development. Delphi VCL offers the latest features and modern UI controls for your Windows app development.  Moreover, you can enjoy the native performance in your Delphi app, and accessing to hardware and latest features of Windows is quick with Delphi. In this article, we try to point out five main ways to modernize your apps for Windows 11. Users love when they can easily find what information the app is gathering and easy-to-understand privacy-policy notices. So, informing about all this and giving access to enable or disable telemetry settings is always welcome. The comprehensive design forms a more reliable product and environment for everyone. For instance, if your app is consists of lots of text content, it is more salutary to add an assistive screen reader that is also satisfactory for people with disabilities. Describe the UI controls or menus with beautiful and simple animations. Make your app scalable and responsive as much as you can. Provide font size changing option. Because you never know how your app represents in different sized screens. If your app welcome screen shows different information with several frames, make sure to give the option to redesign the frames. Delphi 11 IDE gives access to alter the layout On Windows 11, you can see most of the icons are updated with shiny and coherent icons. Besides, the new UI font called Segoe UI Variable makes the typography of your app more readable and softer. Src: Windows Docs Delphi VCL provides modern Windows UI controls with native performance.  By bringing beautiful and modern UI controls, your app looks shiny and up-to-date with Windows 11. Since Windows 11 itself has so many UI innovations, your app needs compatible with it! In addition to that, using lightweight and scalable animation in your app can increase user experience. Because everyone loves beautiful things. One of the popular ways of adding animations to the applications is using Lottie animation files.  Do you know how to add Lottie animation files to your Delphi app? Well, it is easy because of community contribution to the Delphi development ecosystem! Skia4Delphi is a cross-platform 2D graphics API for Delphi platforms based on Google’s Skia Graphics Library. Here you can watch the Desktop First session about Lottie and SVG in Delphi by Jim McKeeth Windows 11 introduced a wide array of UI elements and rounded corners to the desktop operating system. The usual sharp edges are now rounded and smooth corners which gives another feeling about desktop apps.  As you utilize Windows 11, the rounded corners on every UI control look great in both dark and light modes.  Here you can learn how to controls Windows 11 rounded corners with code: Delphi VCL has exceptional options to make your app look modern with VCL Styles. With dozens of different and unique styles, you can create modern-looking Windows apps in seconds by just applying styles.  How to design Fluent apps in Delphi – Acrylic material design? If you want to build your app by applying the Fluent design system, you can easily achieve it with the StyleControls VCL package. StyleControls VCL package uses classic drawing, system themes, GDI+, and VCL styles to make unique user interfaces. In recent years, we can see that some apps are designed for touchscreen mode also. For instance, when I use my 2-in-1 laptops, you need bigger […]