Dimensional Data

Whether you are a beginner or an experienced programmer, it is always important to build good software. Some developers tend to end up with messy code due to deadline pressure which often results in an erroneous program. Poor codes will often result in bugs and developers might end up spending more time fixing the issue than writing the code. To build a good software, you need to have a good set of windows app development tools but more importantly, you should know how to write a better code. In this video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021, Embarcadero MVP and owner of GDK Software, Marco Geuze, will introduce us to the so-called SOLID Principles that could help developers and programmers write better codes. What are the SOLID Principles in writing a better code? The concept of SOLID Principles is created by Robert C Martin who is also the brain behind other best-selling books about software engineering. Interestingly, SOLID is an acronym that stands for the five principles that developers can use to write better, more understandable, more flexible, and more maintainable code. The “S” stands for the Single Responsibility Principle which states that classes should have a single responsibility and thus only a single reason to change while “O” stands for Open-Closed Principle stating that classes and other entities should be open for extension but closed for modification. The “L” stands for the Liskov Substitution Principle, a concept originally based on Barbara Liskov which states that an object and a sub-object must be interchangeable without breaking the program. The “I”, on the other hand, is about the Interface Segregation which states that clients should not be forced to depend upon interfaces that they do not use while “D” is about the Dependency Inversion Principle indicating that high-level modules should not depend on low-level modules but both should depend on abstractions. How to Apply these principles in Delphi? To clearly understand the concept of the SOLID Principles, Marco will deep dive into each principle and will explain how each principle works through a series of step-by-step demonstrations. He will be using the RAD studio to show us how exactly to apply these principles in Delphi. To learn more about SOLID Principles and to see how to apply these when developing Delphi applications, feel free to watch the 1-hour-long webinar below.

Some of you might be wondering if it is possible to create games using Delphi. The answer is YES. In this video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021, Patrick Premartin will share with us all the tips and tricks on how to utilize the components of Delphi’s FireMonkey framework and use it as a game engine. Generally, a Game engine is a library or set of components that are available to create games. However, unlike other windows program development software like Unreal Engine, Unity, and GameMaker Studio, a game engine offers a less complex and beginner-friendly procedure. In fact, some gaming elements can work with a game engine even without writing a single line of code. How can I use FireMonkey and Delphi to create games? In this video, Patrick will walk us through the process of using Delphi FireMonkey as a game engine. While there are several game engines that are coded in Delphi such as the popular Castle Game, Gorilla 3D and Apus, this webinar will emphasize on utilizing FireMonkey’s components and how to effectively use them for your games. Patrick will share with us the reasons why developers should consider using FireMonkey to code games. Aside from the fact that FireMonkey draws everything on screen by default, all the visual components of this framework are styled and they can also be changed without coding. Here, you can use properties, events, timers, threads, multi-resolution images, bitmaps, classes, and everything you need to code games. Not to mention that it offers both 2D and 3D components as standard features. How to manage the visual and non-visual Firemonkey components Interestingly, this one-hour-long webinar will not just share with us the important details about the game engine but will also show us the actual application of these components to various games. Here we will learn how to manage music and sound effects using the TMediaPlayer component of FireMonkey, managing background sounds and scenes with TImage and other notable properties like TRectangle, TCircle, TPath, etc. It will also highlight the use of some non-visual components to change some property values as well as the use of other components to manage sprites, animations, and collisions. We will also dive into some 3D game components along the way. To discover how to use FireMonkey as a game engine for your games, feel free to watch this webinar below.   

Delphi is demonstrably one of the easiest programming languages to learn. Despite the apparent simplicity of the program source code, Delphi is a modern, extremely capable, high-level programming language that works well for both beginners and professional developers. In this video from DelphiCon 2021, we learn how to use Delphi as a No-Code Development IDE software. Patrick Prémartin demonstrates how you can create a simple database app with Delphi using its drag and drop features without any coding involved. How can we use use RAD Studion Delphi as a No Code Development IDE? This one-hour-long webinar introduces us to Delphi and all the fundamentals that we should know about the programming language. The session highlights some of Delphi’s libraries as well as the visual and non-visual components for designing user interfaces. Prémartin showcases a series of step-by-step demonstrations on how to draw user interfaces using various components that work even without writing any code. Is it possible to create a database app without writing any code? The webinar also demonstrates how to use Databases with FireDAC and how to link them to visual components for displaying or editing your data. We will also learn how to add screens in a program via a “no code mode”. In a no-code mode, you can use tab controls to enable screens and standard actions from the action lists to go from one screen to another. We also learn how to access APIs and display HTML pages using Delphi’s TWebBrowser as well as the use of other non-visual components like TRESTClient, TRESTRequest, and more. To learn more on how to use RAD Studio Delphi as a No-Code Development IDE, feel free to watch the video below.  

Detecting memory leaks is a very important task for any Windows app development. In programming languages like Delphi and C++, the programmer can dynamically allocate additional memory to hold data and variables that are required for the moment but not used throughout the program. When those memory areas are no longer needed, the programmer must remember to deallocate them, otherwise, it will result in leaks. In this video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021, we will learn more about the plugin called Deleaker that is exclusively dedicated to catching memory leaks. What does the Deleaker plugin do? The release of RAD studio 10.4 added significant new and enhanced windows capabilities throughout the product in addition to the major productivity and performance enhancement across supported platforms. This also includes the unified memory management that makes Deleaker an effective and relevant tool for RAD Studio. In this video, Artem Razin will show how the Deleaker integrates with Rad Studio 10.4 Sydney and assists developers to find and fix leaks. This 11-minute video will not just introduce the aforementioned plugin but will also show us how it works and how it can efficiently and quickly detect leaks. Interestingly, Deleaker has a friendly user interface for you to set up the environment and see the results (hit counts, size, source file name and call stack, and more). The Deleaker acts as a memory profile for both Delphi and C++ builders that helps fix memory loss as well as leaks of handles and other resources. The plugin is tightly integrated with RAD studio to allow developers to locate the source of leaks even without leaving the IDE. To learn more about this RAD Studio plugin, feel free to watch the video below. Why not download and try the latest version of RAD Studio for free today?

Modernization plays an important role to improve system performance especially if your organization is running a legacy IT system. However, modernizing legacy codes is never an easy task. In this video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021, we will learn how this migration process can be done in a surprisingly easy and quick way. The video will share with us everything we need to know about a Legacy IT system and what really holds some organizations from modernizing their legacy IT systems. It will answer why some companies like IBM Cobol decided not to modernize their mainframes to the modern operating system and take advantage of modern windows application development. What is The Delphi Parser? In this video, Oren Aviram will share the things you should do in order to take control over your Delphi code from understanding how your IT system works and how it operates within the whole ecosystem to analyzing your code and assessing your modernization needs. Modernization of legacy Delphi code requires a profound strategy of analyzing mapping and replacing old code. While it is possible to be done manually, it could be a very hard and dirty task. There are many tools that can help you analyze your code and automate the code conversion process but handling conversion of syntax within millions of lines of code requires an intelligent find and replace tool that knows Delphi syntax and can even link between objects through the code. This is where Delphi Parser comes into play. It’s a Delphi robot that can change the code and guarantee that it will not harm the legacy code in the process of rewriting the old code with no man-made bugs. What does Delphi Parser do? Delphi Parser provides you with total control over your code conversion. The automatic analysis and conversion process of this program reduces manual coding labor costs and speeds up time to market. It enables you to run a well-managed migration process and provides a highly efficient modernization with fast results and at an affordable price. This program comes with many useful tools for your modernization needs including the Automatic Migration Wizard, the Delphi Parser code Dependencies analyzer, and more. To learn more about Delphi Parser, feel free to watch this video below. You can download a free trial of Delphi today!

As Microsoft recently released Windows 11 offering a vast of incredible improvements, Delphi and the RAD Studio ide software is also moving forward with its recently released Delphi 11 (RAD Studio Alexandria). It means that they are finally moving off the 10.x series and will introduce us all to a new era. This transition, however, is more than just a version number change as they introduce a large number of improvements and modernization to leverage the user’s experience. In this video, Marco Cantu will share with us the amazing details about the recently launched Delphi 11 as well as the things in store for the future of Delphi. Can we go beyond 10x? The Future of Development with Delphi Delphi is indeed considered the ultimate ide software for building applications in modern object pascal with powerful visual design tools and integrated toolchains. In this video from the recently concluded Delphicon2021, Marco Cantu will guide us through all the changes made for Delphi 11 as well as the roadmap of the improvements and developments we can expect from RAD Studio in the near future. Delphi is focusing more on quality, leveraging most of its features to provide the utmost experience for developers. Some of the major changes in Delphi that are indicated in this video include the newly improved 4K Support that provides users with High DPI IDE. It also made various improvements related to the Windows platform including the powerful Windows App SDK, a large number of key subsystems like WebView 2, winUI3, MSIX patch packaging, and Window Windowing extensions. Delphi 11 also introduces MSIX and Window Store Support where you can use the Delphi IDE directly to build and deploy applications that are ready for the store. What are the other noteworthy changes in Delphi 11? They also leverage the VCL Per-control styling component that allows users to pick a native style for forms or controls and preview them at design time. They also added new controls that are focused on creating a modern UI and high-performance UI via TControlList VCL Component. They also made notable VCL Modernization works including a large collection of small improvements focusing on removing any legacy limitations that were based on the older version of Windows API to make sure that you have the best experience and the best integration with the platform. Other noteworthy changes include Fire Monkey and Multi-Device Development, new macOS 64vit ARM Target platform, Android 64-bit support, better FMX windows and desktop integration, further compiler performance optimizations. To know more about the future development in Delphi as well as the product roadmap, and some relevant Q & A sessions, feel free to watch the webinar below. Do you want to try the latest version of Delphi? Why not download a free trial of RAD Studio Delphi today?

When you develop Windows software, the user’s first experience with your product should be a stable and reliable installer. It’s an important component of successful software. Interestingly, there are a great number of Windows installers available in the market today. These 3rd party programs will vary in terms of their prices where most of which are offered free as well as the type of technology they are built from. NSIS and Inno Setup are two of the most widely used installers today but is it possible to create such a Windows setup in the new Delphi 11? In this video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021, we will learn more about RAD & Installer and how it is considered one of the most important windows tools for developers. What is RAD & Installer? The RAD & Installer is a third-party expert for Embarcadero’s RAD Studio. It is a RAD studio extension that brings both aforementioned install systems (NSIS and Inno Setup) to Delphi. In this video, Tomas Slapka of UnSigned Software will share with us all the details we need to know about their RAD & Installer tool for Delphi including all its core features. One of which includes the highly customizable Syntax Highlighting feature. Other noteworthy features include the Go-to and Go-to file function, Live Templates, Messages window, Navigation bars, Dynamic Help, and Project Properties that work similarly to Project Options that offers a place where you can adjust how the script compilation behaves. How can I create an Inno Setup Project from scratch? Aside from providing all the important details about RAD & Installer, Tomas Slapka will also provide short presentations on how to create Inno Setup project in Delphi 11 (RAD Studio 11 Alexandria) from scratch. Interestingly, the tutorial will only take less than 10 minutes and his presentation will show you how surprisingly easy to create such a project in the new Delphi. In addition to that, he will also share how to integrate some advanced IDE features into the project. To learn more about the RAD & Installer tool for Delphi, feel free to watch the video below. You can download a free trial of RAD Studio Delphi today!

In this video from the recently concluded DeplhiCon 2021, we will learn everything about the ECS or Entity Component Systems and how this particular method differs from traditional programming. This webinar is hosted by Erik Van Bilsen of Grijjy and this one-hour-long session will show us how the idea behind this ECS method can make you look at programming from a different angle. This software architectural pattern is often used in windows program development particularly in video game development for the storage of game world objects. What is Entity Component System? Bilsen described ECS as a programming paradigm that takes composition-over-inheritance to the extreme. ECS challenges the traditional concept of encapsulation and inheritance in favor of composition. It is also designed with performance in mind, both in terms of execution speed and memory storage. In this video, Bilsen will also guide us through the two different storage strategies including Array of Structs (AoS) and the Struct of Arrays (SoA), as well as the Arrays of Objects (AoO). We will also get a deeper look into what are entities, components, and systems actually are. How to Implement ECS in Delphi? This session will also provide us with a relative comparison between the inheritance and composition as well as the differences between the Entity Component System to traditional classes in programming. Aside from simply comparing a class-based approach and an ECS-based approach for the same programming problems, we will also get a sample usage demonstration of how you would use a simple ECS framework in Delphi. Fortunately, Delphi has all the tools you need to implement this paradigm. To know more about ECS, feel free to watch the video below. Download a FREE trial copy of Delphi and follow along!

JSON plays a huge role in windows application development, especially when transmitting data in web applications. The JSON format is used for serializing and transmitting structured data over a network connection. Nowadays, most developers are greatly in favor of JSON because it’s extremely lightweight and it is easier to read compared to something like XML. Despite the popularity, it is very interesting to note that some developers still don’t know all the ways to deal with JSON in Delphi. In this video, Dion Carlos Mai and Gustavo Mena Barreto of AquaSoft will give us an overview of different ways to deal with JSON in Delphi. What are the best ways to deal with JSON in Delphi? This video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021 will provide us with an overview of different ways to deal with JSON in Delphi and will also guide us through how to speed up your time developing JSON parsers. Little did we know, there is more than one way to deal with JSON in Delphi and this session will walk us through all the possible options along with various demos to see how these options effectively work in Delphi. One of the highlighted options from this video is the use of the JSONtoDelphi website. This website is designed to help us write the Delphi co-relate class to a specific JSON. It can generate the class to do the parser and in just one click, we can generate all the structures that we need to access all data from the JSON object What is the Super Object? Super Object is another option we can use especially if you are using the older versions of Delphi. The RESTResponseDataSetAdapter is a relatively new component in Delphi that can be used effectively to deal with JSON. This component can be used using the REST Debugger tool. Working with JSON using this component is surprisingly easy because you are already working with a dataset. Another option is the use of TJSONMarshal Class. With this class, we can change the default behavior of the serialization algorithm without having to write anything in the RTTI method. It is a good approach for routines that use threads and a customized JSON structure. The session concludes with a Q&A to address some of the JSON-related queries. To learn more on how to deal with JSON in Delphi, feel free to watch the video below. You can follow along for free. Why not download a trial copy of Delphi today?

Application Programming Interfaces or simple APIs play a very huge role in windows app development. One of its core functions is to simplify software development and innovation by enabling applications to exchange data and functionality easily and securely. An API is a set of defined rules that explain how computers or applications communicate with one another. Interestingly, in this video from the recently concluded DelphiCon 2021, we will not just have a deeper understanding of how API works but will also introduce us to APILayer which was recently acquired by Idera (Embarcadero Parent company). Understanding How API works and RESTful API’s Fundamental Requirements APIs are generally very simple to understand and some developers might have been using them for quite some time. However, for people who are very new about it, Victor Fernandes will help you better understand what APIs are, through a very clever analogical comparison. In this video, he uses restaurants as a perfect example. Here, the restaurant acts as the server and the customers are the clients or developers. APIs, on the other hand, are the services that the restaurant can offer while the orders represent the API request. Fernandes will also discuss the 6 fundamental requirements of RESTful APIs. What is APILayer? This session will also introduce us to the APILayer and its core features. APILayer is a very useful tool for developers as it provides a great number of easy-to-use REST API micro-services. It includes some useful GEO API tools to provide real-time flights and historical information and a handful of finance-related APIs for currency conversion, cryptocurrency exchange, market stock, and more. APILayer also provides high-quality and real-time data APIs to boost efficiency and ease the burden on your backend. These include tools like Weatherstack for real-time world weather data, aviationstack for real-time and historical flight tracking, and many more. The video will also provide us with some demos on how to use some of the APIs and how easy it is to connect RAD Studio with these APIs through REST. To know more about APILayer, feel free to watch this short webinar below. Why not download a trial copy of Delphi today and try out the examples for yourself?