Dimensional Data

Are you familiar with the concept of OCR? Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to easily convert images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text? Take a look at the two images below, with just a few lines of code we will make our Windows, Mac, Android or iOS application able to “read” those texts! Whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document or the text on signs and billboards in a landscape photo this process of extracting text from images is called Optical Character Recognition or Optical Character Reader (OCR). We can easily use Google OCR machine-learning AI in our Delphi applications The option for “Text Detection” is part of the Vision API that we can use to detect and extract information about multitple Texts in an image. For each text detected Google returns both a list of words identifed with text, bounding boxes, and textAnnotations , as well as the structural hierarchy for the OCR detected text. Google Cloud’s Vision API offers powerful pre-trained machine learning models that you can easily use on your desktop and mobile applications through REST or RPC API methods calls. Lets say you want your application to detect objects, locations, activities, animal species, products, or maybe you want not only to detect faces but also their emotions, or you may have the need to read printed or handwritten text, this and much more is possible to be done for free (up to first 1000 units/month per feature) or at very affordable prices and scalable to the use you make with no upfront commitments. How do I get my RAD Studio Delphi applications to detect text in images with an API? We can use RAD Studio and Delphi to easily setup its REST client library to take advantage of Google Cloud’s Vision API to empower our desktop and mobile applications and if the request is successful, the server returns a 200 OK HTTP status code and the response in JSON format. Our RAD Studio and Delphi applications will be able to either call the API and perform the detection on a local image file by sending the contents of the image file as a base64 encoded string in the body of the request or rather use an image file located in Google Cloud Storage or on the Web without the need to send the contents of the image file in the body of your request. How do I set up the Google Cloud Vision Logo Detection API? Make sure you refer to Google Cloud Vision API documentation in the Text Detect section (https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/ocr) and also Document Text Detection optimized for dense text/handwriting (https://cloud.google.com/vision/docs/pdf), but in general lines this is what you need to do on Google’s side: Visit https://cloud.google.com/vision and login with your Gmail account Create or select a Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project Enable the Vision API for that project Enable the Billing for that project Create a API Key credential How do I call Google Vision API Text Detection endpoint? Now all we need to do is to call the API URL via a HTTP POST method passing the request JSON body with type TEXT_DETECTION and source as the link to the image we want to analyze. One can do that using REST Client libraries available on […]

When your users are trying to access things like their health-plan information, the responsiveness of your apps can often be key. There is nothing more frustrating than clicking on a button in a mobile app and then waiting for what seems like a lifetime to get some sort of response. This is doubly important for healthcare apps like HumaSmart since your users are often attempting to obtain pertinent information to present to a healthcare provider to, for example, prove they have the necessary coverage to obtain treatment. It’s stressful enough if you’re feeling unwell – we software developers don’t want to add to that by having apps which wallow through click after click to get to what the poor user wants. That’s why the high speed and rock-solid reliable performance of Delphi applications is such a critical component of a successful mobile application. Humanitas De Venezuela Website Your app could make a real difference to people’s daily lives HumaSmart allows their users to search for an collate their healthcare information and interact with the national service provider Humanitas of Venezuela. With the Humasmart App, which is written with RAD Studio Delphi using the versatile cross-platform FireMonkey framework, users can access their health plans with Humanitas Administradora de Riesgo information and services in a quick and easy way on their cell phones and other mobile devices. What does the HumaSmart app do? According to the development notes from Humanitas the app provides: Details on family members included on the users health plan along with details of the coverage types Request your letters of endorsement and reimbursements. Quick access to Humanitas Administradora de Riesgos’ hotlines (Telephonic Medical Guidance Service, Home Medical Care and Ambulances). Consult status and details of all the user’s cases and process additional documentation or reconsiderations. Communications about the health plan, as well as health and wellness newsletters. Direct access to emergency care calls. Quick access to Humanitas’ social networks It’s an excellent integration with Humanitas’ APIs and services and a great example of what can be done with Delphi. Website HumaSmart Google Play HumaSmart Screenshot Gallery

Ronald Krause has been using Pascal Delphi ever since Turbo Pascal 3.0. His showcase entry VitaMonitoring was a fantastic addition to the Delphi 26th Showcase Challenge and we got to interview him regarding his Delphi experiences. When did you start using RAD Studio Delphi and have long have you been using it? I started with Turbo Pascal 3.0 and have been using Delphi ever since. There were ups and downs on this road, but today Delphi is in a good shape. What was it like building software before you had RAD Studio Delphi? I started using Delphi with Version 2.0. Before that was the Stone Age of software development. Just google “Real programmers don’t write Pascal” if you want to know what it was like. How did RAD Studio Delphi help you create your showcase application? The application is built with Delphi and AtoZed Intraweb. Together a perfect tool for creating web apps. What made RAD Studio Delphi stand out from other options? We have build several web apps with Delphi and the Intraweb components. The experience was good, the knowledge was there. Our apps are multi-language. We built a pretty good translation system using RTTI that is quite superior to others I have seen. And there are more goodies. What made you happiest about working with RAD Studio Delphi? The incredible speed of the compiler. Our Apps builds faster than some interpreters start up. The execution speed of the app is alike. What have you been able to achieve through using RAD Studio Delphi to create your showcase application? Compared to the given requirements our app is very flexible. So we hope it will exist quite some time before it needs to be rewritten from scratch. Its goal is to build a stock of long-term observation data for agriculture. I trust in Delphi to be around in 15 years. So the main achievement is probably a kind of sustainability. What are some future plans for your showcase application? A REST API to integrate it better into other applications. Thank you, Ronald! Check out his showcase entry through the link below.

What is Blockchain? The best way to describe blockchain is a distributed database, and it is shared across many computer in a network. Block refers to the fact that data and state are stored in sequential batches or “blocks”. Chain refers to the fact that each block cryptographically references its parent. A block’s data cannot be changed without changing all subsequent blocks, which would require the consensus of the entire network. All computer on the network are known as Node. What is Ethereum? In the Ethereum universe, there is a single, canonical computer (called the Ethereum Virtual Machine, or EVM) whose state everyone on the Ethereum network agrees on. Everyone who participates in the Ethereum network (every Ethereum node) keeps a copy of the state of this computer. Additionally, any participant can broadcast a request for this computer to perform arbitrary computation. Whenever such a request is broadcast, other participants on the network verify, validate, and carry out (“execute”) the computation. This causes a state change in the EVM, which is committed and propagated throughout the entire network. Requests for computation are called transaction requests; the record of all transactions as well as the EVM’s present state is stored in the blockchain, which in turn is stored and agreed upon by all nodes. Cryptographic mechanisms ensure that once transactions are verified as valid and added to the blockchain, they can’t be tampered with later; the same mechanisms also ensure that all transactions are signed and executed with appropriate “permissions” (no one should be able to send digital assets from Alice’s account, except for Alice herself). You can read more here  What we can do using Delphi? Ethereum and its community embrace open source. You can find community projects – client implementations, APIs, development frameworks, testing tools – in a wide variety of languages. Fortunately, Delphi already has an open source project that can be used to create decentralized applications (dapps) that take advantage of the benefits of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology. Check https://github.com/svanas/delphereum Do you want sample code related to this? Please wait for my article in the second part.

The pain of finding the right file Let’s be honest: Searching for files in the file explorer or on your desktop can be very annoying. Especially if you are looking for a certain picture of – let’s say – your last holiday trip to Italy. Luckily, previews are a thing for a while now! The busy software user expects your program to present him or her a little preview of the file content when selecting an item: Imagine users scrolling through a directory full of Excel files, for example. Do you expect them to open each one individually to check if it’s the right table they are looking for? No, not really. You want your users to feel more comfortable because your software offers a quick preview of document contents in the tiny window on the right side. Does this sound good to you? Comfort features are a must have for professional software, but easier said than done. Programming your own file preview feature can be very time consuming and expensive. Especially if you are running a smaller project and cannot rely on shared code. An alternative to building your own complex functionalities is reusing the native Windows functionalities used in the Windows file explorer. So, is there any way to go back to the native Windows functionalities? This is where our ShellBrowser comes in: We offer you developer components for creating file thumbnails and previews with an ease, enabling the use of native Windows functionality. Let us take a closer look! Thumbnails – what are those again? First, we should make clear the differences between a thumbnail and an icon. An icon is a pictogram – or to put it more simply: a tiny picture – that represents a data file in your file system or on the desktop. On Windows, most file types have their own icons alongside different file extensions. Let us give you an example: Examples for icons A thumbnail, on the other hand, represents files not by their file type but by their individual contents. Usually in modern software, image files are represented by a small version of the image itself and not by an icon. There is a trend towards showing documents like Office files or PDFs as thumbnails, too. Here’s an example: Examples for thumbnails How can ShellBrowser help? With ShellBrowser Delphi Components, we offer a variety of components that use the native “ThumbnailProvider” functionality of Windows. Embedded in RAD Studio, ShellBrowser lets you use thumbnails for image files in your software very easily. Depending on individual file or program configurations, you can also let previews of MS-Office documents, PDFs and many more be shown. Our ShellListView components help you to toggle the thumbnail view on and off: Toggle between icons and thumbnailsIf you only want to present thumbnails for a single file at a time, you may choose the TJamThumbnailImage. Another key benefit of using the ShellBrowser components is the asynchronous loading of thumbnails. Doing so, we ensure responsiveness and stability of your software – even if the loading process may take some time, especially when displaying thumbnails in very large folders, the usability of your software is not affected. Thumbnails even if the system can’t provide one Although thumbnails are an absolute standard for software usability nowadays, even the Windows Explorer […]

I know the best way to traumatize a software developer who has been using Delphi for some time. You just show them this image: The BDE Administration Manager. So many ‘happy’ hours trying to resolve “PDOXUSERS.NET is in use” messages and learning all about the purpose of arcane settings like SharedDir and NETDIR. Shudder. If you wanted to store a database accessed via the BDE on a network drive there was a whole bunch of things you’d have to do to make sure it didn’t get corrupted. Despite this, developers became experts at repairing Paradox database corruption. Things were pretty bleak, although it its defense this was a time when almost everything we have come to take for granted today was still in its nascent stages; dial-up was common (and erratic) and almost everyone had at least one AOL CD as a drinks coaster. Why did people use the BDE if it had so many problems? Well, the short answer was: it worked. In fact, once you got it configured it worked pretty well and was extremely easy to use. It allowed you to link to various databases like DBase and Paradox in a simple way. So simple that Paradox became a de facto non SQL database technology along with DBase which had problems of its own. SQLite the universal toolkit Along into that pre-Windows arena sidled SQLite. It was designed from its inception as a simple database which would allow SQL-like commands to be executed against a set of tables contained in a single ‘flat’ file. It had – and still has – limitations and quirks like AUTOINC columns not being the same as ROWID columns, or the fact it has no native DATETIME or BOOLEAN types. Oh, and like PostgreSQL, a name which still trips me up when I have to say it out loud, the SQLite name is annoying. Seequal light; shouldn’t it be pronounced “seequal ite”? Despite this it has become massively popular. What’s the secret native Delphi alternative to SQLite? Hiding in plain sight is a pretty impressive database system which almost completely replaces SQLite for desktop apps written in Delphi and C++ Builder. This database is Absolute Database from Technology Partner Component Ace. Why isn’t Absolute Database more well-known? For whatever reason Absolute Database hasn’t captured the imagination of Delphi developers in quite the same way as other systems. I’m not entirely sure why this is. In my ‘day job’ we use Absolute Database for a desktop product – which can also be multi-user and with the data stored on a network server. That desktop product has close to 10,000 individual installations. Like any flat file database people do crazy things like experience powercuts in the middle of data being written or some malicious malevolence called “Windows Updates” clobbers the server and reboots slightly less gracefully than the Windows API documentation would suggest is the case. On app start-up the Absolute Database database silently recovers and automatically repairs any damage, no user intervention required. It’s tried and tested for us. Out typical client profile for the desktop version of our products are small to medium-sized businesses and the ubiquitous ‘mom and pop shop’. We do have client-server products too which use full-blooded RDBMS like MySQL and PostgreSQL but the product line using Absolute Database […]