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In early 2015, HTTP/2 was introduced as the new standard by IESG. This standard makes your application faster, simpler, and more robust. In this article we take you through the differences between HTTP/1 and HTTP/2, the benefits and some key terms. Why should I use HTTP/2? Converting from using HTTP/1 to HTTP/2 brings the following benefits: HTTP/2 reduces latency by enabling full request and response multiplexing. Efficient compression of HTTP header fields. Support for request prioritization. Multiple concurrent exchanges on the same connections. An unsolicited push of representations from servers to clients. What is SPDY? SPDY was an experimental protocol, developed at Google and announced in mid-2009. The primary goal with SPDY was to try to reduce the load latency of web pages by addressing some of the well-known performance limitations of HTTP/1.1. Since 2012 the new experimental protocol was supported by the Chrome, Firefox, and Opera web browsers. A rapidly growing number of sites, both large and small, were deploying SPDY within their infrastructure. In effect, SPDY was on track to become a de facto standard through growing industry adoption. After a lot of discussion within the working group, the SPDY specification was adopted as a starting point for the new HTTP/2 protocol. If you want to read more about this click here for the full story  What are the key differences between HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2? The most significant changes between HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2 are : There is a new binary framing layer which dictates how the HTTP messages are encapsulated and transferred between the client and server. The HTTP semantics, such as verbs, methods, and headers, are unaffected, but the way they are encoded while in transit is different. Unlike the newline delimited plaintext HTTP/1.x protocol, all HTTP/2 communication is split into smaller messages and frames, each of which is encoded in binary format. All communication is performed over a single TCP connection. For the official “RFC” document describing HTTP/2 you can go to the following link: https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc7540#section-4 What are the performance differences between HTTP/1.x and HTTP/2? The really great thing about Delphi is we can already use the latest technology so that server applications with the HTTP/2 protocol can be implemented by developers. One of the Embarcadero Technology Partners, namely ESEGECE, has created a HTTP server component which implements the HTTP/2 protocol. Let’s compare the performance difference between the HTTP/1 and HTTP/2 using ESEGECE’s components. You can download a trial version here: https://www.esegece.com/websockets/download Here’s a video taking you through the demo: As you can see HTTP/2 has a speed of at least 50% more than HTTP/1.x RAD Studio Delphi gets your applications from idea to reality with maximum speed and efficiency. Why not try it for yourself today?

WebSockets are gaining more and more strength with the implementation in most browsers, including for mobile devices. This article introduces briefly, the concept of WebSockets, and creates a chat app using a websockets component for Delphi, by Delphi component provider Esegece. What are Websockets? The WebSockets protocol allows the creation of a client-server communication channel with bidirectional transmission where both sides (client and server) can transmit data simultaneously. WebSockets came to fill the shortcomings of the HTTP protocol for this purpose, which by the way, is unidirectional (transmission occurs only from one end to the other). The most common uses for WebSockets are, among other things: home brokers (where quotes are updated all the time), social network feeds, chat apps, collaborative tools, and even multi-player games What are the differences between HTTP and WebSockets? WebSockets are a great choice if there is a need for a connection to remain open for a long time for constant data exchange. In summary, the benefits over HTTP are Low Latency, Persistent Connection and Full-Duplex (bidirectional transition). A WebSockets Delphi component To create our chat app we will use the WebSockets component. Here we are using the eSeGeCe Delphi WebSocket component. You can check its benefits here. Also, you can check some implementations here and the documentation here. To start the work, you need to download the eSeGeCe Delphi WebSocket Components and the Indy Components. These two and a video of how to install them, you can check here. How to create a WebSockets Delphi client for a chat application Let’s start with the client-side. After installing the components, get a TsgcWebSocketClient component along with two TEdit a TMemo, and a TButton. The two TEdit controls will be used as name and message fields. The TMemo control will be the field that displays all messages. In the TsgcWebSocketClient properties, you need to change just the host and port. Add ‘localhost’ to the host and 5416 to the port. Looking at the code, there are two main parts. The connection and the messages. For connection and disconnection, you can add the following in the OnShow and OnClose methods of the form: procedure TFrmClient.FormShow(Sender: TObject); begin sgcWsClient.Active := True; end; procedure TFrmClient.FormClose(Sender: TObject; var Action: TCloseAction); begin sgcWsClient.Active := False; end; procedure TFrmClient.FormShow(Sender: TObject); begin   sgcWsClient.Active := True; end;   procedure TFrmClient.FormClose(Sender: TObject; var Action: TCloseAction); begin   sgcWsClient.Active := False; end; To receive a message is very simple. The OnMessage event of the TsgcWebSocketClient, already comes with the text sended by the server. You just need to get it and put on the TMemo component: procedure TFrmClient.sgcWsClientMessage(Connection: TsgcWSConnection; const Text: string); begin mmLog.Lines.Add(Text); end; procedure TFrmClient.sgcWsClientMessage(Connection: TsgcWSConnection;   const Text: string); begin   mmLog.Lines.Add(Text); end; Sending a message over a WebSockets connection using Delphi To send a message is also, very simple. You can use the OnClick event of the button: sgcWsClient.WriteData(edtName.Text + ‘: ‘ + edtMessage.Text); sgcWsClient.WriteData(edtName.Text + ‘: ‘ + edtMessage.Text); Creating a WebSocket Delphi Server for a Chat Application For this WebSocket Delphi Server Example, we will need the TsgcWebSocketHTTPServer component, and at least, a TMemo. In the sgcWebSocketHTTPServer properties Options, mark the HTML files. Also in Fallback/ServerSentEvents/Retry, set to 3 and set the port to 5416. Here we also have two main parts, when looking in the code: the connection, and the messages. You […]

Georgi Todorov Gerasimov has been using Delphi for many years. He has a showcase entry submission (FPS-SE) at the Delphi 26th Showcase Challenge and we got to talk to him about his great Delphi experiences throughout the years. You can purchase and download his application over at File Protect System website. When did you start using RAD Studio Delphi and have long have you been using it? We have been using RAD Studio/Delphi for years. The moment Delphi XE entered the market, we started to work on a project for post quantum encryption of sensitive to critical information, which we named File Protect System – FPS. What was it like building software before you had RAD Studio/Delphi? Before the advent of RAD Studio/Delphi we faced many problems in the development of specialized REST servers. Another serious problem that our team has faced in that time was testing the end-user applications, which were utilizing web based interface. How did RAD Studio Delphi help you create your showcase application? With the advent of RAD Studio XE7/Delphi all R&D processes passed to a qualitatively new level. The technical abilities that provided us technologies like Datasnap, Tethering, Indy, FastReport, FireMonkey, etc. allowed us to speed up development processes and to raise the efficiency and reliability of our software products. At the moment we are reorganizing our working processes in order to start working with RAD Studio 10.4 Sydney. What made RAD Studio Delphi stand out from other options? One of the main advantages of RAD/Studio Delphi is the presence of unique instruments that allow quick implementation of attractive by its nature interface solutions. Another significant advantage is the high quality of the visual components and the exceptionally good compilers. What made you happiest about working with RAD Studio Delphi? It is a pleasure to work with RAD Studio/Delphi because this is an IDE that allows the developers to get a view of the project as a whole. When we get the result, every member of our team is satisfied, and that gives us the ambition to continue our development and grow. What have you been able to achieve through using RAD Studio Delphi to create your showcase application? RAD Studio XE7/Delphi helped us to finalize successfully the first versions of the File Protect System – FPS. We were able to create application that provides the end user with the ability to protect its own files and electronic messages. Something more, the application we developed allows the user to transform every single electronic device (including mobile ones) into high performance encryption system What are some future plans for your showcase application? File Protect System will continue to evolve in the future. At the moment our team is working on the integration of server-based solutions for post quantum protection of corporate structures that are using DB systems like Oracle, MS, MySQL, and DB2. Along with this we are working on our mobile solutions and DLP (Data Loss Prevention) modules that expand the functionality of File Protect System (FPS). Something more, we are continuously evolving our integrated mail client BS Mail, which is becoming popular as a stand-alone application for critical information transfer. Thank you for taking the time to talk to us Georgi. Take a look at his entry showcase below and see what kind of […]

What is Scientific Computing? According to Golub and Ortega in 1992, Scientific Computing is the collection of tools, techniques, and theories required to solve mathematical models of problems in Science and Engineering. A majority of these tools, techniques, and theories are originally developed in Mathematics, which are many of them having their genesis long before the advent of electronic computers. Computation becomes crucially important in situations such as: The problem at hand cannot be solved by traditional experimental or theoretical means, such as attempting to predict climate change Experimentation may be dangerous, e.g., characterization of toxic materials The problem would be too expensive or time-consuming to try to solve by other avenues, e.g. determination of the structure of proteins Nowadays, Scientific Computing is acknowledged as the “third pillar of science”, standing right next to theoretical analysis and experiments for scientific discovery. Why use Python for Scientific Computing? Here are the 6 reasons to use Python for Scientific Computing: Python has built-in support for Scientific Computing. Python is a highly extensible language. Python has very good input/output (I/O) options. Python has strong support for task automation. Python has bridges to MATLAB or Octave. Python can use a web front end. Delphi adds Powerful GUI Features and Functionalities to Python In this tutorial, we’ll build Windows Apps with extensive Scientific Computing capabilities by integrating Python’s Scientific Computing 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 Web Scraping applications. Python4Delphi also comes with an extensive range of demos, use cases, and tutorials. We’re going to cover the following… How to use NumPy, SciPy, SymPy, scikit-learn, Theano, and Cirq Python libraries to perform Scientific Computing tasks All of them would be integrated with Python4Delphi to create Windows Apps with Scientific Computing capabilities. Prerequisites 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 I enable NumPy inside Python4Delphi in Windows? NumPy is a popular Python library used for scientific computing applications. NumPy is an acronym for “Numerical Python”. NumPy is the fundamental package for array computing with Python. NumPy’s operations are divided into three main categories: Fourier Transform and Shape Manipulation, Mathematical and Logical Operations, and Linear Algebra and Random Number Generation. To make it as fast as possible, NumPy is written in C and Python. Besides its obvious scientific uses, NumPy can also be used as an efficient multi-dimensional container of generic data. Arbitrary data-types can be defined. This allows NumPy to seamlessly and speedily integrate with […]

The workflow behind the selling and buying of vehicle parts is convoluted and tricky to navigate. It typically involves lots of photos of metallic objects so that the buyer – or seller – can more easily identify whether or not the part is the right one. Photomate works in conjunction with the Car-Part.com website and their Checkmate inventory management system to ease the process of taking those identifying photos and uploading them to the correct places to create online listings. The app greatly simplifies that entire workflow process. RAD Studio Delphi powers Photomate Photomate is written using RAD Studio Delphi where it uses the power of the Firemonkey FMX cross-platform framework to integrate with the mobile device’s built-in camera and sensors to perform its magic. What does the Photomate developer say about their app? According the developer, “The photos you take in Photomate are sent to the Checkmate inventory management system, and then uploaded to online listings. When you include photos in your online listings, you help your customers feel more comfortable browsing and purchasing parts from you. With Photomate, you have the opportunity to select which parts of your inventory need photos to ensure that all of your online listings have images.” Unique features listed for the app include Select specific parts in your inventory that need photos, and assign these parts to Photomate Assign specific parts to specific employees, creating individual “to do” lists Communicate between managers, employees, and coworkers with comment fields Take photos or use images already in your device’s photo gallery Select the best image to serve as the part’s thumbnail for online listings Set any image to be “private” (sent to Checkmate, but not posted online) Send images to Checkmate to be included in inventory details and uploaded to online listings on Car-Part.com, Car-Part Pro, Trading Partners, eBay, mobile searches, and individual recycler websites Google Play Photomate Screenshot Gallery

The workflow behind the selling and buying of vehicle parts is convoluted and tricky to navigate. It typically involves lots of photos of metallic objects so that the buyer – or seller – can more easily identify whether or not the part is the right one. Photomate works in conjunction with the Car-Part.com website and their Checkmate inventory management system to ease the process of taking those identifying photos and uploading them to the correct places to create online listings. The app greatly simplifies that entire workflow process. RAD Studio Delphi powers Photomate Photomate is written using RAD Studio Delphi where it uses the power of the Firemonkey FMX cross-platform framework to integrate with the mobile device’s built-in camera and sensors to perform its magic. What does the Photomate developer say about their app? According the developer, “The photos you take in Photomate are sent to the Checkmate inventory management system, and then uploaded to online listings. When you include photos in your online listings, you help your customers feel more comfortable browsing and purchasing parts from you. With Photomate, you have the opportunity to select which parts of your inventory need photos to ensure that all of your online listings have images.” Unique features listed for the app include Select specific parts in your inventory that need photos, and assign these parts to Photomate Assign specific parts to specific employees, creating individual “to do” lists Communicate between managers, employees, and coworkers with comment fields Take photos or use images already in your device’s photo gallery Select the best image to serve as the part’s thumbnail for online listings Set any image to be “private” (sent to Checkmate, but not posted online) Send images to Checkmate to be included in inventory details and uploaded to online listings on Car-Part.com, Car-Part Pro, Trading Partners, eBay, mobile searches, and individual recycler websites Google Play Photomate Screenshot Gallery