Dimensional Data

Developer Michal Mutl has a powerful network scanner software and network discovery tool available for Windows and it is built in Delphi. According to the site it “is a free multi-threaded ICMP, Port, IP, NetBIOS, ActiveDirectory and SNMP scanner with many advanced features. It is intended for both system administrators and general users who are interested in computer security. The program performs ping sweep, scans for opened TCP and UDP ports, resource shares and services. For devices with SNMP capability available interfaces are detected and basic properties displayed. In addition you have to edit results, save/load results to/from CSV and print network device list and any data in any section can be exported to CSV. It can also resolve host names and auto-detect your local IP range.” This is really a powerful tool to discover the topography of your network and investigate computer security. It is a great example of the breadth of capabilities available to a developer in the Delphi environment. On top of all of the powerful features the app really looks great as well with a theme switcher built in. Website https://www.mitec.cz/netscan.html Screenshot Gallery

Robo-Analyst is a powerful financial software that gives an instant analysis on more than 16,000 stocks, funds, and cryptocurrencies and it is built with Delphi. According to Robo-Analyst their advanced software analyzes and interprets the most widely-used indicators; with a Daily, Short-term and Long-term outlook. The software explains the analysis simply on the chart and in text to help investors make a quick, informed decision. End of day and intraday analysis is available for cryptocurrencies such as BitCoin and Etherium plus stocks such as Amazon, Google, Facebook, GameStop, BlackBerry, AMC, and many more. Everything is automatically analyzed on one screen; Market Condition, Market Timing, and Technical Analysis on any stock and many cryptocurrencies. Robo-Analyst says it can benefit beginners and experts alike. The creator of Robo-Analyst spent years in R&D perfecting the Robo-Analyst software algorithms. Originally it was built in Delphi 7 but was recently upgraded to the latest version of Delphi. It uses Delphi technologies such as WebBroker, RAD Server, and FireDAC combined with other languages and technologies such as React, PHP, and AngularJS. This a great example of Delphi at the core of a business with other front end and back end technologies supporting it. Website https://www.robo-analyst.com/ Screenshot Gallery

Join Embarcadero Delphi MVP Ian Barker for this must-watch session as he follows up his very popular previous webinar on how to give your apps the Fluent UI look and feel. This new webinar features heavily on the Delphi code, form design, and components you can use to really give your VCL and Fire Monkey apps the much sought-after Fluent UI look and behavior.

uniGUI Web Application Framework is a full-stack web application development tool for Embarcadero Delphi. uniGUI is empowered by Sencha Ext JS advanced cross-browser JavaScript library. uniGUI allows developers to develop visually compelling web applications directly in Delphi IDE. Topics: uniGUI, Sencha Ext JS, Databases, mobile interface, Linux, HyperServer, scalability, stability, remote deployment

In this webinar, Embarcadero Delphi MVP Ian Barker writes and deploys an app that targets Windows, macOS, and Linux from one set of code using just Delphi 10.4 and the FirePower components from Woll2Woll software. Roy Woll (from Woll2Woll) will be taking part in a live Q & A session with Ian after the demonstration to answer your questions plus attendees can get a coupon for a discount on the Woll2Woll components demonstrated.

What is ETL? You may come from another programing language or you might have started a new business and want to gather data to include in your new software system. Or perhaps you might want to backup your data so it can be converted to a different data formats. In fact, any situation where you want to get data from one source and put in another place. ETL come in to action in such cases. ETL stands for Extract, Transform and Load. You can read more about ETL and its process from here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extract,_transform,_load ETL can be the Monday morning of computing Quite often ETL can be a painful task which involves lots of manual and repetitive work. A typical situation is one where we have loads of data gathered together in a collection of Excel spread sheets. The task might be to include that data in your database to use in a desktop or web application. Extracting data from an Excel sheet manually is often very time consuming. Then you have to transform data into a format which destination data sources can understand and use to load data into their own datasets. How can Delphi save you time on ETL? Delphi has great support for handling ETL tasks. We have several components in Delphi specifically designed to simplify the ETL process. In most cases you just need to drag and drop some components to your form, set some properties and with perhaps a very small amount of code to glue it together the task is done. Lets take a look at some components you can use in your ETL process. FireDAC TFDBatchMove LiveBindings Enterprise Connectors TRESTClient SOAP Client What is FireDac and how can you use it? FireDac is a universal data access library which you can use in both VCL and in multi device Firemonkey applications. It has extensive support for both SQL relational database management systems and non SQL data sources. FireDAC also includes the necessary components to move data from one source to another source. Here you can see it in action. In this example we use “TFDBatchMove” component to move data from an RDBMS to a Microsoft Excel file. We also show the reverse with the data transferring in the opposite direction back from Excel. Also, you can see that there are only two lines of code to make it all happen! How do we bind components to other components or data sources using LiveBindings? LiveBindings are the visual way to bind components components and components data sources. You can control properties of a component using another component without any code. You can use the Live Binding designer or the Live Binding Wizard to so. It’s just a drag and drop of a connection to bind components and data sets. A Live Bindings example Let work through an example to demonstrate LiveBindings. First, create a new VCL project and add a TFDMemTable and add some data to the memory table. Then add a TDateSource and connect it to the memory table using the data set property. Then, add some labels, a TSpinEdit, TEdit components until we your form resembles the form below. Now add a TDBNavigator and connect it to the data source. Give some memorable names for all components so we can identify those […]

To add cost-effective image analysis to your applications, this article will walk you through Azure API, how to obtain a subscription key to access Azure API, and how to make requests to Azure REST API using an IDE software with REST Client Feature. What is an Azure API? Azure is a cloud computing platform offered by Microsoft with more than 200 available services. Azure provides various client libraries and a REST API to access those services. There’s a free tier to get you up and running which allows you to access several services free many of which remain free as long as you don’t exceed some quite generous monthly limits. We are going to use the “Cognitive Search” service to perform Image analysis. The Cognitive Search service is an always-free tier so you should never need to pay for it. How do we get a subscription key to access the Azure API? To access the Azure REST API, we need a subscription key. A subscription key is a key assigned to a ‘resource’. So we need to create a resource first. To create a resource, you need an active Azure Subscription. Please visit this link to create a subscription: https://azure.microsoft.com/free/cognitive-services/ Once you have the Azure subscription set up you have to create a Computer Vision Resource. Make sure you have selected the correct geographical region because you cannot change this later. Visit this link to create the resource: https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.CognitiveServicesComputerVision To get the Subscription key of your resource, open the resource and go to “Keys and Endpoints”. There you can see two keys and the location which needs to make our REST API call. How to make a request to Azure REST API using Delphi REST Client? Calling the REST API from Delphi Client is easy. You just need to set few parameters and you can execute it even in design time. Let make a DEMO application. First drag and drop these components in to a forum. TRESTClient TRESTRequest TRESTResponse Also, place some input controls to get the API URL, subscription key and the image URL. Place a TButton to start the request. The content type of the REST Client must be “application/json“. Now set the client and response properties of the TRESTRequest component to the client and response components we placed earlier. Also set the method to “rmPOST“. The code for the Start button looks like this: procedure TfrmMain.btnStartClick(Sender: TObject); var lparam : Trestrequestparameter; imgProcessed: bool; jsonObj, jsonStatus: TJSONObject; begin memResponse.Lines.Clear; RESTClient.BaseURL := edAPIURL.Text; RESTRequest.Method:=rmpost; imgProcessed := false; try RESTRequest.Params.Clear; RESTResponse.RootElement := ”; lparam := RESTRequest.Params.AddItem; lparam.name := ‘Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key’; lparam.Value := edSubKey.Text; lparam.ContentType := ctNone; lparam.Kind := pkHTTPHEADER; //This one is Important otherwise the ‘==’ will get url encoded lparam.Options := [poDoNotEncode]; lparam := RESTRequest.Params.AddItem; lparam.name := ‘data’; lparam.Value := ‘{“url”:”‘ + edImgURL.Text + ‘”}’; lparam.ContentType := ctAPPLICATION_JSON; lparam.Kind := pkGETorPOST; RESTRequest.Execute; if not RESTResponse.Status.Success then showmessage(RESTResponse.StatusText + ‘ ‘ + inttostr(RESTResponse.StatusCode)) else begin memResponse.Lines.Add(RESTResponse.JSONText); end; finally end; end; This code will add new parameter to the TRESTRequest and set the subscription key. The subscription key must pass as an HTTP header and the name should be “Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key“. The value parameter is the subscription key we copied earlier. Also it’s important to include the option “poDoNotEncode“, otherwise it will encode the key. Also the base URL of the TRESTClient needs to […]

The art of software development is a moving target. Just a handful of years ago most Windows apps were flat slabs of gray with uninspiring color schemes drawn from a color palette which could be best described as “all the colors of a cement works”. Those that were not part of this mono-tonal subscribed to a more “burn your eyes out” range of ultra-yellows and a color clashing scheme which users could only view behind the safety of sunglasses. The theme was either gray bleakness or garish migraine. Luckily things have moved on. Beautiful theme styles, top quality and free too! Similar to Windows themes, VCL styles make it easy to radically change the appearance of your VCL applications, giving your application that extra level of polish and professionalism. Thanks to the Per Control VCL Styles introduced in 10.4, a single form can take advantage of multiple styles giving you maximum customization and control. RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++Builder ship with a selection of VCL styles, with additional premium styles available in GetIt, or from DelphiStyles. Learn how to give your apps a high-quality modern look In this webinar replay join Alexey Sharagin, the creative genius behind DelphiStyles, to learn everything you ever wanted to know about working with VCL styles, including how to customize and make your own. Properties of TStyleManager to adjust VCL styles for forms, dialogs, and menus Specifics of High-DPI support Benefits of using VCL Styles in application Per-control styling support details Creating and customizing styles with the Bitmap Style Designer tool Using styles from GetIt and DelphiStyles.com

Modernizing your app is vital if you want to remain competitive in today’s very crowded market. The process of modernization is actually pretty straight-forward but there are some easy pitfalls – things you might miss – and they can make the difference between time well spent or time wasted. RAD Studio is a modern Windows application too! RAD Studio itself is obviously an application and like any other it has to constantly evolve to ensure it keeps up with design and usability trends as well as working with new and emerging technologies. The RTL; Delphi’s runtime library, also is continually being enhanced and added-to so that it keeps making your life easier as a developer by simplifying the addition of powerful new features to your apps. Modernization? Let RAD Studio do the hard work for you. The strength of RAD Studio Delphi is its ability to add this supercharge to your code while keeping it as simple as possible. After all, the “RAD” in RAD Studio means RAPID application development and it’s the reason why we choose to use RAD Studio to build modern robust applications in the fastest times possible with the minimum of effort. The smart way to modernize is making RAD Studio Delphi do the hard work for us. The Windows UI Library provides official native Windows UI controls and other user interface elements for Windows apps. It maintains down-level compatibility with earlier versions of Windows 10, so your app works even if users don’t have the latest OS. In this video Embarcadero MVP Holger Flick takes us through a series of easy and yet powerful things we can do with RAD Studio Delphi to bring our apps up to the next level.

Developing a great application is not a “one and done” activity. In order to retain your hard-won users and remain competitive it’s essential for you to keep up with the trends in modern application design. New operating system versions can bring substantial changes to the expected look and behavior of your app. Not only that, when features are added such as notifications, alerts, user interaction models, your customer base will expect your application to take those changes on-board, embrace them and use them in ways they have come to expect by using other applications. RAD Studio makes it easier to keep up with new innovations in operating systems and devices It’s a constantly moving target but lucky for you RAD Studio and Delphi are also continually improving and adopting new technologies and functionality to help make your life easier and your applications at the cutting edge of design and UI. Here’s a great tutorial on how to modernize your legacy applications Stephen, Mary, and Al from the Migration Center are back to show you how easy and worthwhile it is to update your Delphi legacy projects to the latest devices, techniques and usability paradigms.