Dimensional Data

Modern hardware and constantly changing fashions in user interfaces can be tough to keep up with. Graphics cards available today are many times more powerful than even those from just a few short years ago. Even the platforms on which our applications run have become more diverse and it’s common for your users to have a combination of ways to interact with data; from desktop, web and mobile. The excellent TCoffeeAndCode webinar series is here to help In this TCoffee and Code session, Embarcadero MVPs Stephen Ball, Ian Barker, and Dr. Holger Flick (TMS Software) will discuss everything about windows ui toolkit and the latest Software UI trends. They tackled about three of the most common and most popular graphical user interface designs including the so-called Skeuomorphism, Neomorphism, and Flat UI. Skeuomorphism is a UI design that mimics their real-world counterparts in how they appear and/or how the user can interact with them while Neomorphism is one of the newest UI trends that features a minimal and real-looking design that’s sort of a new take on skeuomorphism. Everything you need to know about modern user interfaces The Flat UI, on the other hand, is also a minimalistic design that tends to use limited but bold colors for fewer distractions. The simplicity of this design also promotes efficiency and functionality. The session also covers other related topics including Fluent UI and Project Reunion. They will also discuss how the aforementioned User Interface designs are interrelated and how does device form impacts modern UI designs. With TCoffeeAndCode you get to ask the questions and get the answers you need – and it’s all free The team also answers multiple queries like how do components help with software UI trends and how much VCL styles help with this modern UI. They will also share their thoughts if it is advisable to get a professional graphic designer to help with the design or just let the developer design it himself. If you want to learn more about the latest software UI trends today, feel free to watch this TCoffee and Code session below.

In this post TCoffee and Code is back for another interesting conversation. Joining Jim McKeeth are his fellow Embarcadero MVPs Ian Barker, David Intersimone, and Marc Meumann of Steema Software to discuss everything about data visualizations, the importance of it, the components, tools, libraries, and other windows app development tools that you can use for visualizations. What is Data Visualization? In this video, we will learn about the generality of Data visualizations and we will get to witness some live demonstrations using various components and libraries. David Intersimone, for instance, shares how a TEDtalk from Hans Rosling (the founder of Gapminder) inspired him in his data visualization journey. By using visual elements like charts, graphs, maps, and data visualization tools provide an accessible way to see and understand trends, outliers, and patterns in data. As Ian describes it, “data visualization is the art of taking something useful and making it beautiful”. Visualization Components, Libraries, Tools, and Services Along with this webinar, David I also provided a blog post summary that contains all the information, tools, and useful links about data visualizations. Generally, the webinar discusses how to visualize data and make it look good. They provide an extensive list of components and libraries you can use for data visualization. These include but are not limited to VCL, FireMonkey, TeeChart, Canvas for drawing, Python4Delphi, and more. The same thing goes with tools like Gapminder and other reliable sources of data (World Bank, US Census, etc.) A Live Walkthrough of Visualizing Data Interestingly, the webinar guides us through data visualization using a live demo. We’ll get to see Steema Software’s TeeChart library and the list of components it has to offer. They also give us a quick overview of Gapminder tools for data visualization including the interactive Bubble chart from Hans Rosling’s TEDtalk. To learn more about data visualization, feel free to watch the webinar below.   

In this webinar conducted by Embarcadero Technologies, Jim McKeeth was joined by Marc Hoffman of RemObjects Software to discuss everything about WebAssembly and the use of RemObject’s Oxygene programming language to bridge with Delphi. RemObjects Software is a software company founded in 2002 that develops and offers a great number of libraries and windows tools for developers. What is WebAssembly? This webinar explains WebAssembly and how it differs from JavaScript. Jim McKeeth describes WebAssembly as “an evolution of JavaScript” while Hoffman considers it as an excellent alternative for JavaScript. Generally, WebAssembly is a new type of code that can be run in modern web browsers and provides new features and major gains in performance. WebAssembly or simply Wasm is designed to be an effective compiler for source languages like C, C++, Rust, and more. Oxygene Language This one-hour-long webinar tackles RemObject’s very own Oxygene Programming language and how it differs from other modern programming languages today. Interestingly, Oxygene is a unique programming language based on Object Pascal that can import Java, C#, and Swift APIs from the runtime of the target operating system. A Walkthrough to RemObjects Element Compiler The video will also walk us through RemObjects Element Compiler. Here, Marc Hoffman demonstrates the use of their Element Compiler tool for the WebAssembly platform where we will get a quick overview of its main structure. They will also answer various queries from their attendees. To learn more about WebAssembly and to how use it with Delphi and the Element compiler, feel free to watch this webinar below. Why not download a free trial of Delphi today?

Technology is rapidly evolving and before we know it, there will be a new set of innovative gadgets or machines available in the market. We are currently embracing a new digital age where artificial intelligence is no longer a product of various science fiction novels but a real-life technology. Everything you need to know about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Neural Networks In this new TCoffee and Code session, Jim McKeeth was joined by his fellow Embarcadero MVPs Boian Mitov, Craig Chapman, Serge Pilko, and Yilmaz Yoru to discuss everything about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Deep Neural Networks. We will also learn how all of these are changing the way we develop windows software. Does the rise of AI mean mankind is doomed? Here, they share their thoughts and opinions about the future of Artificial Intelligence and how it can drastically change the future. They also discuss how AI can manage to make coding relatively faster and how possible for this innovative technology to eventually replace all professions. They also made several references from Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics as well as the possibilities of robot singularities in the future. In addition to that, they will also differentiate the differences between an AI and AGI as well as various types of Classifiers. What are Deep Neural Networks? The discussion will also highlight Deep Neural Networks and how this technology managed to simulate how the human brain works. They will also discuss RPA or Robot Processes Automation and how this becomes an effective new approach for business software on how to use all AI technologies. To top it all, the team will also share their thoughts about Machine Learning and its future. To know more about AI and Machine Learning, feel free to watch the video below.

Jim McKeeth is back with another TCoffee and Code session, a virtual coffee conversation between expert developers where they discuss various topics about programming, development, and more. In this session, McKeeth will be accompanied by Miguel Moreno to discuss the beauty of integrating scripting and native codes. Unlike the previous sessions, this one will be driven around the questions thrown by the audiences from the basic scripting elements to the most advanced script engine solutions. This session will help us understand the beauty of native windows development. Combining Scripting with Native Codes The discussion highlights the advantages of integrating scripting with native codes. In the video they address questions like why would you combine scripting with native and why would you script things in the first place? They will also share their own thoughts on why would someone want to include scripting in their application. The conversation will also provide overviews of different scripting languages that most developers implicitly use today as well as the ups and downs of using them. Scripting Engine Another interesting topic from this TCoffee and Code Session is the use of the scripting engine. Generally, a scripting engine is one that allows you to run custom code a runtime interpreter where you no longer need to compile codes and is run directly either on an application or in a shell. They also highlight how these script engines became extremely beneficial in developing games because it gives programmers the ability to add custom features or custom functionality in their game. They will also provide us overviews and demos of some popularly used script engines like LUA, PyScripter, FireDAC, Python4Delphi, and more. Feel free to watch the video below to learn more. Why not download a free trial of Delphi today?

TCoffee and Code is an informal virtual meeting series launched in the Embarcadero Technologies YouTube channel where a group of expert developers discusses everything related to programming, encoding, software development, and more. Interestingly, in this particular session, Embarcadero MVPs Stephen Ball, Marco Cantu, and David Millington will talk about the most important element in programming – the programming language! Object Pascal and C++ Programming Languages There is a great number of programming languages available today but this session will highlight two of the most used programming languages, Delphi’s Object Pascal and the C++ Programming languages. Ball, Cantu, and Millington will walk us through the fascinating history of the aforementioned languages and how they rapidly evolved over the years and how these evolution brought drastic change in development on windows. They will also share their own thoughts about their most favorite features and how these languages are being used in RAD Studio today. Connecting Delphi and C++ Aside from discussing the notable features that have been added for both Delphi and C++ over the years and how these extensions made an impact on these languages, the team will also discuss the considerations or the possibilities of Delphi and C++ working together. RAD Studio, for instance, is a powerful IDE that is capable of compiling both Delphi and C++ in one project and allows you to embrace the best of both languages. If you want to learn more about these programming languages and which one suits you the best, feel free to join this one-hour-long TCoffee and Code session below.

ETL is basically an acronym for Extract, Transform, and Load, a general procedure that programmers and developers commonly perform by copying data from one or more sources and transfer it into a destination system that represents the data differently than the source. This procedure is considered to be one of integral parts of any windows application development. Today, data transfer and data integration are done through various modernized solutions providing users with easier and automated data transfer procedures using microservices, portals, or files. Generally, ETL is everything you do as a programmer. Data System Integration Joining Ian Barker in this TCoffee and Code session are his fellow Embarcadero MVPs Kelver Merlotti, Miguel Moreno, and Olaf Monien to discuss everything about Data ETL and visualization. The discussion includes data system integration which is generally the process of moving data among different subsystems to make them look and run as a single system. They also tackle different integration models and how each process varies from one another. The Benefits of FireDAC The session also highlights the differences between the two data subsystems; Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Data Subsystems. Unlike Homogenous, Heterogeneous data subsystem is built using different database management systems. This is where the FireDAC library comes into play. FireDac has a powerful flexible and extendable scripting capability that connects different database systems with the help of its built-in connectors and non-visual components. In addition to that, these experts will also answer multiple queries along the way. Don’t miss anything and feel free to watch the video below.

TCoffee and Code is a tremendously popular YouTube series presented by Embarcadero Technologies where expert professional developers engage in a virtual conversation and give the benefit of their experience on a wide range of technology and windows development subjects. Each session features a different topic where panelists can freely share their own thoughts and opinions. In this video, Jim McKeeth is joined by his a great collection of Embarcadero MVPs to discuss everything about Threading and Concurrency. Joining Jim in this 2-hour-long virtual conversation are Primož Gabrijelčič, Olaf Monien, Kelver Merlotti, Frank Lauter, and Dalija Prasnikar. They will also answer thread-related and multi-tasking queries from their followers. Thread programming can be extremely tricky yet immensely powerful at the same time. This session will teach us all the do’s and don’ts in making threads and how can we keep our application run smoothly and responsive while keeping the users happy. The discussion also highlights the differences between Threads and Tasks as well as the importance of Thread Safety to ensure that all threads behave properly and fulfill their design specifications without unintended interaction. This session also tackles multithreading, parallel programming, single-threaded program, and more. The team will also discuss the things we can do to address various synchronization issues and also the advantage of using the Parnassus Parallel Debugging Tool for both single-threaded and multithreaded apps. We also get to see actual Delphi encoding demos using TTask and Tthread classes. To know more about Threading and Concurrency, feel free to watch the video below. RAD Studio Delphi has all you need to create powerful programs for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS and Android. Why not download a free trial today?

After discussing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning from the previous TCoffee and Code session along with other Embarcadero MVPs, Jim McKeeth came up with a 1-hour-long webinar that will introduce us to OpenAI’s GPT-3. The OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research laboratory that aims to promote and develop a friendly AI in a way that benefits humanity as a whole. One of the company’s first commercial products is the API for the Generative Pre-trained Transformer or GPT (GPT-3 in particular), an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text. How does GPT-3 work? In the video Jim McKeeth demonstrates to us how exactly GPT-3 works. He will also walk us through some OpenAI API examples as well as recommended parameters for OpenAI settings like Response Length, Temperature, top_p, n (number of responses you want to regenerate), frequency_penalty, best_of, stop, and more. The webinar will also highlight equally important topics including the various API methods like Completions, Searches, Classifications, and Answers. The same thing goes with various frameworks and windows tools for developers. He will also differentiate the types of engines available and their respective prices. Real examples of how OpenAI works To top it all, we will also get to see different OpenAI examples as provided by their webpage including applications like the Movie to Emoji Converter, Language Translator, Spreadsheet Generator, SQL Request maker, and more. McKeeth will also teach us how to use GPT-3’s REST API where we will get to see him creating a simple yet functional application from it. To learn more about OpenAI’s GPT-3, feel free to watch this video below. If you want to try out some examples for yourself why not download a free trial of the latest version of RAD Studio Delphi today?

Microsoft Azure is a cloud platform with more than 200 products to find a solution to your problem. Among those, Cognitive Services are some amazing products that provide you with many AI functionalities. For example: Anomaly detector Content moderator Personalizer Language understanding QnA maker Text analytics Translator Speech service Computer vision Custom vision Face API Cognitive services multi-service account With these resources, any developer can incorporate AI into their applications without the need for deep learning of machine learning. All of these can be accessed via the REST API and the Windows IDE, allowing them to be used in any modern application. What is the Bing Visual Search API? With the Bing Visual Search API you can integrate image search functionalities into your application. Users will be able to search by supplying an image and the Bing search API will find images which are visually or thematically similar. Also, it can identify celebrities, places, items, and other related objects to the source image. You can even extract barcodes and text from images. It’s a pretty powerful resource. How can I get the subscription key to use the Bing Visual Search API? Goto Azure Portal and sign-in. In the portal, type “Bing” in the search box and select “Bing Search v7” from the marketplace. Now enter a name, subscription, and a resource group and create a new resource. Then go to the newly created resource and under the “Keys and Endpoint” tab, you will find two subscription keys. Use that key in the next step. How do I implement The Bing Visual Search API in Delphi? We can easily implement Visual Search API through the Delphi REST components. We can set up the API at design time using these components: TRESTClient TRESTRequest TRESTResponse Do the following.. Create a new VCL application and drop a TRESTClient component and set the content type as “application/json”. Then drop a “TRESTRequest” component and set the method to “rmPOST”. Also, drop a “TRESTResponse” component to get the response. Also, you need a TIdHTTP component to download images in the response. Our API URL is: https://api.bing.microsoft.com/v7.0/images/visualsearch/ Also, you need an image file to post with the request. So drop a TOpenDialog component to open image files. Add a button to browse for images. Now add some code for the OnClick event procedure TfrmMain.btnBrowseClick(Sender: TObject); var Picture: TPicture; begin if not dlgOpenImage.Execute then exit; strImgPath := dlgOpenImage.FileName; btnSearch.Enabled := strImgPath ”; Picture := TPicture.Create; Picture.LoadFromFile(strImgPath); imgSource.Picture := Picture; edImgPath.Text := strImgPath; end; In the search button, first, we add the “Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key” as a header parameter. Then we add the image to process as a pkFile parameter of the RESTRequest. Then we execute the request and parse the response. The response is in JSON format. We can use “TJSONObject” and “TJSONArray” objects to easily parse the response. Then we can download similar images and display them in our Delphi application. The full search button Delphi code to search by image should look like this procedure TfrmMain.btnSearchClick(Sender: TObject); var lparam : Trestrequestparameter; imgProcessed: bool; jsonObj: TJSONObject; jsonTags, jsonActions, jsonValue: TJSONArray; MS: TMemoryStream; Picture: TPicture; I, x, y: integer; image: TImage; begin for i:=0 to ComponentCount-1 do if (Components[i] is TImage) then if (Components[i] as TImage).Parent=scrlbxImages then freeandnil(Components[i]); memResponse.Lines.Clear; RESTClient.BaseURL := edAPIURL.Text; RESTRequest.Method:=rmpost; imgProcessed := false; try RESTRequest.Params.Clear; RESTResponse.RootElement := ”; […]