Dimensional Data

When it comes to computer games it’s often the most simple ideas which are the most addictive and compelling. Hitting on a winning combination of simplicity but in a way which engages the game player so well they keep wanting more is like writing that elusive musical chorus; the ear worm, the thing which feeds some deep pleasure center of our distractible brains. Software developers are the kindred spirits of musical maestros If you can come up with that must-have app formula it’s a golden moment and extremely satisfying for a software developer. After all, we want our programs and apps to be used and, even better, we want them to be loved. We developers are an odd bunch but the music industry is also full of that same kind of slightly left-field thinking. Like a song writer or musician harnesses that creative side of mankind while working within the science and rules of the musical keys, developers turn ideas into apps while they corral the capabilities and restrictions of the hardware device and operating system. Programming is an art…and a science. Xpand takes a simple idea and executes it beautifully The rules of Xpand are simple; conquer the board or leave opponent out of moves by filling fields until they expand to nearby fields where the opposition become overwhelmed. The gameplay allows you, the player, to pit your skills against a custom-written AI opponent who plays a surprisingly strong strategic game! The game uses touch to control where you place ’tiles’ or discs. Like similar games such as Reversi and checkers or draughts there are not a whole load of different moves. The skill is in the strategic choosing of cells or squares and anticipating your opponent’s next steps. There’s a great twist where ‘chain reactions’ are created and corner fields hold a special significance which becomes clear as you play along. You can choose to play against the computer/device’s AI opponent or against a real live friend. Another great game written using RAD Studio Delphi Xpand is just one of an increasingly substantial cohort of mobile games written using Delphi and the powerful cross-platform capabilities of the FireMonkey FMX framework to work its magic. Reusing the same code base the winning combination of FireMonkey and Delphi allows US developer Davor and Robi to offer Xpand on both iOS and Android devices with little or no code changes. Delphi is pretty much the original low code platform and it continues to meet this challenge even on today’s constantly xpanding range of platforms, devices and operating systems. Apple App Store Xpand Google Play Xpand Screenshot Gallery

The versatility and reliability of Delphi along with its ease of use and cross-platform capabilities means there are apps everywhere which are written using it. We’ve seen everything from fun games like the hilarious Good Cat Bad Cat to life or death utilities like the impressive E6B flight computer. RAD Studio’s powerful development environment when coupled with the comprehensive run time libraries and component ecosystem means the tough jobs are made easier and the fun apps can be fun to write too with the drudge of ‘scaffold’ code of other computer programming languages being almost entirely avoided. There are very few systems out there which really do mean “low code” in the way Delphi does and an even smaller selection of those are able to even get close to the cross-platform capabilities of Delphi’s FireMonkey FMX framework which lets developers write apps with apps able to run on Microsoft Windows, macOS, iOS, Android and Linux. Not only that, the cross platform apps achieve this with very few changes to the code. Score Note uses Delphi to do the hard work Keeping score is one of those task which can be made easier and perhaps even more fun by using an app to do it. Are you still looking for pen and paper to record your score while the game is in progress? With the Score Note app you can stop juggling messy pieces of paper or smudging chalk boards. Instead you can use your mobile device to keep score and leave the pen behind. The game score will be permanently saved (unless you delete it manually). You can save scores of multiple games in progress at the same time. Written by developer Max Lin Score Note is a great way to bring the art of score-keeping into the 21st century. Google Play Score Note Screenshot Gallery Reduce development time and get to market faster with RAD Studio, Delphi, or C++Builder. Design. Code. Compile. Deploy. Start Free Trial   Upgrade Today    Free Delphi Community Edition   Free C++Builder Community Edition

Processing of data is the soul of computing. Almost every single computer ever invented was designed so that human beings could take information in the form of data and manipulate it in one way or another either through visualizations or to use in other ways to make decisions about our lives, work and future. If data processing is the soul then the pieces of data itself are the bones we use to build the body of computing. In this article we’re going to take you on a tour of different ways to access, manipulate and master those building blocks. What do people mean when they call something a database? According to Oracle who specialize in the field, a Database is an organized collection of structured information, or data, typically stored electronically in a computer system. A database is usually controlled by a database management system (DBMS) which makes it easier to create, and generally control the database’s data and the programs which make the database work. Together, the data and the DBMS, along with the applications that are associated with them, are referred to as a database system, often shortened to just database. The evolution of the database The 1960s: Navigational databases such as the hierarchical database (which relied on a tree-like model and allowed only a one-to-many relationship), and the network database (a more flexible model that allowed multiple relationships), were the original systems used to store and manipulate data. Although simple, these early systems were inflexible. The 1980s: Relational databases became popular. The 1990s: Object-oriented databases became popular. The 2000s – Now: NoSQL databases came about as a response to the growth of the internet and the need for faster speed and processing of unstructured data. Today, cloud databases and self-driving databases are breaking new ground when it comes to how data is collected, stored, managed, and utilized. What types of databases are there? To make a better decision about the types of databases you need, first, you need to learn more about the different kinds of databases. Below are some common types of databases you may encounter either during your personal life or in your business, as collected by Indeed Editorial Team: Centralized database Cloud database Commercial database Distributed database End-user database Relational database NoSQL database Graph database Object-oriented database Open-source database Operational database Personal database Why use Python for working with databases? Python is perfectly fine for most applications for creating database clients. Python provides a vast set of libraries to work with an extensive variety of databases. Python is good for rapid prototyping. Read more here, to see “How Python is Ideal for Handling Data Intensive Tasks”: Delphi adds powerful GUI features and functionalities to Python In this tutorial, we’ll build Windows Apps with extensive Database capabilities by integrating Python’s Database libraries with Embarcadero’s Delphi, using Python4Delphi (P4D). P4D empowers Python users with Delphi’s award-winning VCL functionalities for Windows which enables us to build native Windows apps 5x faster. This integration enables us to create a modern GUI with Windows 10 looks and responsive controls for our Python Database applications. Python4Delphi also comes with an extensive range of demos, use cases, and tutorials. We’re going to cover the following… How to use SQLite, SQLAlchemy, pymongo, mongoengine, redis-py, and FireDac Python libraries to interact with databases All […]

Website metrics are very important for webmasters to analyze and judge the efficacy and usefulness of their websites. Typically the metrics will show the ranking information, indexing information, spam ranging and many more information to get an idea about the page. The downside is that many website metrics APIs have results pages which are either tricky to get to directly or you wish to consolidate and visualize the data in different ways to the pre-made versions. We’re going to show you how to add the ability to obtain the data behind the website metrics in your desktop and mobile apps so they can be more easily viewed offline and how to get that data to the point where it could be extracted into a database. Why are website metrics so important? According to the metrics, you can take decisions about the future direction the website’s content and the areas on which to focus or tweak. Also URL metrics are very important for link building. Links from outside websites are viewed by most search engines as a form of endorsement. The more good quality external links you have pointing to your site the more the search engines may consider your site notable or worth boosting in the search ranking. URL metrics is a clear indication of how your website and its content is viewed and consumed by the rest of the world and, with that, the relative importance searchers may place upon you. What is Moz? Moz is a good friend of SEO Engineers. They offer all in one tools for a successful SEO. It will help to find the barriers for indexing your site like broken links, missing important tags and many more issues. It will summarize all matrices into a charts and you will get an idea at a glance. They can track your ranking over time and show it in a chart. Backlinks are very important for SEO, with Moz you can get reliable backlink metrics. Ranking with the wrong keyword doesn’t do any good for your website. With Moz, you can do the correct keyword research. How to get URL metrics of your website? Moz provide an easy to use API for URL metrics. It will give you more than fifty metrics about the domain / URL you provide. They offer you a free trial with more than enough API request for small scale projects. They you just have to make a REST request with the API Access ID, Secret Key and the URL you going to get matrices. Both Request and response is in JSON format. How to get URL metrics to a Delphi / C++ Builder application? Delphi provide an easy way to get Moz URL metrics. You can generate GUI components by the FREE Embarcadero tool called “Embarcadero REST debugger” and paste it in to your Delphi or C++ builder application. It will copy REST components and components for memory database and you can paste those directly into your form. First, run the Embarcadero REST debugger and set the parameters as following. Note that: you have to set the Moz “Access ID” and “Secret Key” as username and password for BASIC authentication in Authentication tab. How to add REST components to your Delphi or C++ app Now you can check everything by sending a […]

For those fortunate enough to have access to a pool all that splash-time fun comes at the price of a not inconsiderable amount of effort. Pools, on the face of it, seem to be not a huge amount more than fancy holes in the ground filled with water. When you accidentally own a swamp The reality is though that water is a delicate little ecosystem which can very quickly go from a place of enjoyment to the source of a broad range of diseases. It takes a very finely tuned collection of chemicals which must be in just the right balanced quantities. If you get that balance wrong you might find yourself responsible for streaming, stinging eyes for your swimmers or be greeted one day by a green pond of foul-smelling swamp slime. Delphi to the rescue! New Zealand based company Select Chemicals Limited have cleverly used the cross-platform power of RAD Studion Delphi and the FireMonkey framework to create a totally beautiful yet practical mobile app which takes the hard work out of calculating the correct chemical balances to make sure that your pool oasis remains a place you retreat to – not recoil from! The app looks effortlessly beautiful thanks to RAD Studio themes SCL recently updated the app recently to use one of Delphi’s gorgeous custom professionally designed user interface themes. This, combined with Delphi’s ability to interact natively with the mobile device’s Bluetooth communications means the app is a great tool for its users without a huge learning curve for the developers. According to the developer, “The SCL Bluetooth Control is used to control a wide range of Smart products from Select Chemicals Ltd: SmartDoser – A versatile general purpose chemical doser, pHydroMate – A pH correction controller using a pH probe. PoolMate – A pool management controller dosing managing both Disinfectant and pH correction using a combination pH and ORP probe.” Google Play SCL Bluetooth Control Screenshot Gallery Reduce development time and get to market faster with RAD Studio, Delphi, or C++Builder. Design. Code. Compile. Deploy. Start Free Trial   Upgrade Today    Free Delphi Community Edition   Free C++Builder Community Edition

There are a huge number of desktop software development tools available on the market. However, not all of them can boost productivity effectively. So, choosing the right one can be tricky. In this post, you will find 7 of my favorite desktop software development tools. They have enabled me to enhance my productivity significantly. Let’s take a look at them. 1. Delphi Delphi is an advanced IDE for developing cross-platform applications on a variety of platforms, including Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, and Linux. It enables you to develop native apps rapidly. Thanks to the powerful designing tools and features. The visual designing menu enables you to drag and drop components to the pallet easily. Also, Delphi supports highly optimized compilers for quickening lengthy compiles. Besides, it helps you to code quickly and accurately by utilizing Code Insight™. Overall, it’s a complete desktop software development productivity tool. 2. RAD Studio RAD Studio is a powerful IDE for building high-performance applications in both Delphi and modern C++. It offers a comprehensive set of tools for streamlining and simplifying the desktop software development lifecycle. You can create user interfaces quickly by dragging and dropping components from Tool Palette to the form. Also, it auto-generates a significant portion of your application codes as soon as you start the project. Besides, UML modeling helps you to improve the performance of your app. So, with the RAD Studio, you get all the productivity features in a single place. 3. REST Debugger REST Debugger helps you to explore and integrate RESTful web services conveniently. You can use it to perform testing across the application development cycle. REST Debugger enables you to test and understand RESTful web services. You can dive right into REST data with filterable JSON blobs to analyze how everything is working. Also, you can copy and paste components from the REST Debugger to Delphi, C++ Builder IDE, and RAD Studio. You don’t have to write any code. So, it can boost your software development productivity. 4. FireDAC FireDAC is a powerful universal data access library. It provides you with all the features to build data-intensive applications conveniently. FireDAC offers high-performance data access. The Live Data Window mode enables you to navigate through large datasets quickly. With Cached updates mode, you can track correlated changes for different datasets easily. Also, FireDAC comes with a powerful data access engine, which you can use with the desktop applications directly. Besides, it supports a unified API for helping you to code without worrying about the subtle differences between different database management systems. 5. Low Code Wizard Low Code Wizard helps you to boost your productivity by generating the framework of an already working application with basic functionalities. So, you don’t have to start from scratch. Once installed, the tool runs a wizard, which guides you through the process of generating basic functionalities quickly. There are a variety of options to choose from, including User Account and Application routines. You can configure the Settings screen to change the theme to light/dark. Also, Low Code Wizard enables you to add more screens to your application with less code. 6. LiveBindings LiveBindings helps you to visualize live data efficiently. You get the creative freedom of presenting the information more intuitively. LiveBindings helps you to bind objects to dataset fields. You can […]

Your mobile phone is not the first place to spring to mind when you think of wine. Mankind has had some sort of relationship with wine for centuries, possibly even thousands of years according to some reports. The oldest drinkable wine is known as The Speyer bottle which dates back to Roman times. Anyone who has seen ancient Roman and Greek mosaics will have noticed their apparent pre-occupation with quaffing wines. Our fascination with this liquid entertainment crosses whole continents and cultures, touching almost every form of society and diversity. Our need to protectively contain the fragile and delicate flavors has given rise to a whole host of different containers ranging from the amphorae beloved of the ancients and Bacchus to the barrels of medieval to late industrial times through the bottles and cases which line the shelves of our modern grocery aisles. Ancient wine, modern mobile app These containers had, and have, such a diversity of sizes, shapes, materials and volumes the vintners felt compelled to give them names in order to differentiate them from one another. The names are such an eclectic mix that they often are almost un-guessable as to how much of the boozy liquid they can hold. Is a Jeroboam bigger than a Rehoboam? How many glasses can you get out of a Jennie? (Spoiler alert: it’s three) Wine Unit, helping us know the Balthazars from the Nebuchadnezzars The beautiful Wine Unit, from Belgian developer MICRI Consult, exists to immerse us into this world of wine to your modern mobile device and assist us in selecting and understanding the containers which protect the precious liquid to ensure the full flavor of a far-flung Terroir drifts unharmed on that fulsome bouquet. Written using RAD Studio Delphi the app contains four groups of wine containers: bottles, unusual bottle sizes, barrels and containers. Within each group, the bottles, barrels or containers are compared against each other and you also get their volume in different units. Using the robust cross-platform FireMonkey FMX framework to harness the reins of the mobile device it frees up MICRI Consult to focus on making the app functional and yet beautiful to look at. Google Play Wine Units Screenshot Gallery

What is Cryptography? According to Kaspersky, Cryptography is the study of communications security techniques that allow only the sender and intended recipient of a message to view its contents. Cryptography is closely associated with encryption, which is the act of scrambling ordinary text into what’s known as ciphertext and then back again upon arrival. Modern cryptography exists at the intersection of the disciplines of mathematics, computer science, electrical engineering, communication science, and physics. Applications of cryptography include electronic commerce, chip-based payment cards, digital currencies, computer passwords, military communications, etc. 3 Types of Cryptographic Algorithms According to Kessler, 2021, these are the three types of Cryptographic Algorithms: Secret Key Cryptography (SKC): Uses a single key for both encryption and decryption; also called symmetric encryption. Primarily used for privacy and confidentiality. Public Key Cryptography (PKC): Uses one key for encryption and another for decryption; also called asymmetric encryption. Primarily used for authentication, non-repudiation, and key exchange. Hash Functions: Uses a mathematical transformation to irreversibly “encrypt” information, providing a digital fingerprint. Primarily used for message integrity. Why use Python for Cryptography? Python provides powerful Cryptographic libraries as we will explore them in this article. Python is good for rapid prototyping. Read more here, to see “How Python is Ideal for Solving Mathematically Heavy Problems”: Delphi adds powerful GUI features and functionalities to Python In this tutorial, we’ll build Windows Apps with extensive cryptographic capabilities by integrating Python’s Computer Vision libraries with Embarcadero’s Delphi, using Python4Delphi (P4D). P4D empowers Python users with Delphi’s award-winning VCL functionalities for Windows which enables us to build native Windows apps 5x faster. This integration enables us to create a modern GUI with Windows 10 looks and responsive controls for our Python Computer Vision applications. Python4Delphi also comes with an extensive range of demos, use cases, and tutorials. We’re going to cover the following… How to use hashlib, hmac, secrets, PyCryptodome, and One-Time-Pad Python libraries to perform Cryptographic tasks All of them would be integrated with Python4Delphi to create Windows Apps with Cryptographic capabilities. What are the pre-requisites for using the cryptography libraries? Before we begin to work, download and install the latest Python for your platform. Follow the Python4Delphi installation instructions mentioned here. Alternatively, you can check out the easy instructions found in the Getting Started With Python4Delphi video by Jim McKeeth. Time to get started! First, open and run our Python GUI using project Demo1 from Python4Delphi with RAD Studio. Then insert the script into the lower Memo, click the Execute button, and get the result in the upper Memo. You can find the Demo1 source on GitHub. The behind the scene details of how Delphi manages to run your Python code in this amazing Python GUI can be found at this link. Open Demo01.dproj. 1. How do you perform cryptographic tasks with hashlib? The hashlib module defines an API for accessing different cryptographic hashing algorithms. To work with a specific hash algorithm, use the appropriate constructor function or new() to create a hash object. From there, the objects use the same API, no matter what algorithm is being used. Since hashlib is “backed” by OpenSSL, all of the algorithms provided by that library are available, including: md5 sha1 sha224 sha256 sha384 sha512 Some algorithms are available on all platforms, and some depend on the underlying libraries. […]

Windows 11 is coming. It’s a fact – and it’s a gorgeous visual tweaking of the Windows desktop, start menu, taskbar and even the rendering of things like your application’s window borders and “non client area”. It’s Microsoft’s new glorious shooting star launching itself at the unwary peoples of the world from out of the clouds… and it’s going to wipe out the dinosaurs. Are you one of the technology dinosaurs? The new Windows 11 “Hello” screen – not massively different from Windows 10 Microsoft’s beautiful unfurling flower of Windows 11 wowed those of us watching that slightly shaky live Windows 11 launch video feed. It had lots of eye candy. Hidden among the schmoozing of rounded corners for all apps and semi-transparent acrylic everywhere were a few signs that Windows 11 is going to also be a coming Armageddon for lots of older PC hardware and a good few existing applications too. The Windows 11 widget panel replaces the pariah that is Windows live tiles Windows 11 is visually stunning Search in Windows 11 I’ve been waving the Fluent UI flag at anyone who would listen for a few years now. We’ve talked about Project Reunion and UI 3 in a few places. Well, with this latest announcement, Project Reunion gets renamed to the slightly less inspiring “Windows App SDK”. There’s a name produced by a group-think committee if I ever saw one. Apart from being about as exciting as an Arizona weather forecast it’s also unhelpfully close to the existing “Windows SDK”. There’s going to be some great moments in podcasts and webinars where presenters discuss “using the Windows SDK” and then having to clarify they actually meant “Windows App SDK which used to be Project Reunion”. The new Windows 11 app launch screen LOTS of semi-transparent acrylic in Windows 11 along with a centered task bar (I’m not a fan of this I have to say) as well as a much less cluttered look which is an achievement since that was one of the key selling points of Windows 10. Windows 11 has a new app store – how will that affect my Windows and mobile apps? The all new Windows 11 app store Tucked in between the massive amounts of semi-transparent acrylic “widget” panels that replace the existing Windows Live Tiles – which were almost entirely shunned by all developers not directly employed by Microsoft – there was an announcement more directly affecting developers using RAD Studio Delphi and C++ Builder. Microsoft are launching a completely re-vamped Windows App Store. The new Windows 11 App Store appears to be a total re-think on Microsoft’s original aims for the Windows Store when it first debuted. In the past the old Microsoft Store had fairly limited success. It’s possible this was due to the way apps had to be packaged for it, the technology your apps needed to employ and the whole delivery mechanism. This new app store is going to be a real game-changer. Microsoft are allowing virtually all packaging mechanisms and, boldest of all, it will contain Android apps which will run natively in Windows 11 without any apparent changes. This new “Windows Subsystem for Android” seems to borrow from the lessons learned with the astounding success of WSL, the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Amazon, your […]

Do you harbor a secret inner desire to be the next Professor Robert Langdon zooming around exotic tourist destinations and the world’s most beautiful landmark cities solving anagrams and saving The World from ancient secret societies? If so, you’d need to enjoy unscrambling fiendishly difficult word tangles to reveal their original form. It’s not easy, but anagrams have existed as pastimes and diversions for as long as society has been able to read and write so we humans must enjoy the challenge. An Android Anagram solver, written in Delphi Don’t worry, luckily your burgeoning aspirations at becoming world anagram champ have a little help from Arizona-based developer ASW Software. Lead by Anthony West, ASW have produced a beautiful Android app which rapidly helps you solve anagrams without having to go to the trouble of obtaining a Professorship in Linguistics. Floccipender is an optimized word descrambler with a simple interface which allows for super-quick solving of scrambled text. Written in RAD Studio Delphi using the powerful cross-platform FireMonkey FMX framework the app looks great and, thanks to the native code generation of RAD Studio, works at the full speed of the user’s mobile device. More on Floccipender Floccipender can solve single word anagrams, scrambled word games and newspaper quiz page anagrams. Here’s what ASW have to say about Floccipender: “the features include the ability to force the app to use all of the letters that are scrambled, or you can specify the minimum word length and Floccipender will find all words that can be created from the scrambled text. The results of the descrambled text is provided in less than a second as Floccipender has been optimized to unscramble words in just a matter of seconds“. Less than a second…on a mobile device. That’s pretty impressive! Website Floccipender Google Play Floccipender Screenshot Gallery