Dimensional Data

Here at TMS, we are working on so much new exciting frameworks and features that I decided to share with you what we expect to bring to you in 2021! Photo by Rhett Wesley on Unsplash First, a disclaimer: this is not an official commitment. Some of the things listed here might be delayed or not be released at all. But of course, that’s not our intention, since we are listing it here. We want to (and probably will) release all of this in 2021. But, since unexpected things might happen, we can never guarantee what will happen in future. One second thing: thislist only covers what is coming around TMS Business line of products. There is much more to come from TMS in 2021! I was going to title this post as “TMS Business Roadmap for 2021”. But I thought that the current title brings more attention and curiosity. And it looks like it worked, thanks for coming! ?? Ok, jokes aside, another reason is that we still don’t know if all of the libraries, features and technologies listed here will be part of the TMS Business bundle, and the original title could be misleading. But regardless, everything listed here will for sure be smoothly integrated with TMS Business – either using ORM (TMS Aurelius) or REST/JSON framework (TMS XData), or any other core product, what is for sure is that everything listed here makes up a huge ecosystem around TMS Business technologies. An exciting year is coming ahead! So, without further ado, this is what we expect to bring to Delphi world this year, with TMS Business. GraphQL TMS is bringing GraphQL to Delphi! We have it already in a beta state, the core is complete, all is going fine. We still need to document everything, and add a few more features here and there, but it’s in a very advanced stage. This teaser video shows GraphQL server in action, written in Delphi! The frontend is GraphQL Playground JS framework, but still being served via a Delphi server. The relevant parts of the code used to build the server in the video are the following. First, the GraphQL schema is built: SchemaDocument := TGraphQLDocumentParser.ParseSchema( ‘type Query { hello(name: String!): String }’); Schema := TGraphQLSchemaBuilder.Build(SchemaDocument); Schema.SetResolver(‘Query’, ‘hello’, function(Args: TFieldResolverArgs): TValue begin Result := ‘Hello, ‘ + Args.GetArgument(‘name’).AsString; end ); Then, the endpoints for the GraphQL API and the GraphQL Playground are created: ADispatcher.AddModule( TGraphQLServerModule.Create(‘http://+:2001/tms/graphql’, FSchema)); ADispatcher.AddModule( TGraphQLPlaygroundModule.Create(‘http://+:2001/tms/playground’, ‘/tms/graphql’)); And that’s it for the “Hello, world” demo! TMS Auth A complete framework for adding authentication to your application, with user, roles and permissions management and providing features like login, registration, e-mail confirmation and more. Relying on Aurelius ORM and XData REST framework, with a few lines of code you will get all your database setup and have an authentication API server running, with lots of features. Well, it’s said one picture is worth a thousand words, so here is an example of the available API out of box: And these are screenshots of an existing app built with TMS Web Core which is already using TMS Auth for user registration and login: It will never been as easy to add user and permissions management and login system to your Delphi application and server! BPM Workflow A full workflow engine is […]

Coincidence or not, but 26 years ago, in 1995, not only Delphi 1 was released by Borland but Microsoft also released Windows 95 that from that moment on skyrocketed in popularity and went for world domination as operating system.Who would have thought in 1995 that 26 years later, detecting on what Windows operating system your software is running would be more complex than ever?Over the years, Microsoft released not only new major versions almost every 2 to 3 years but also all sorts of editions like the Windows NT operating system for example. In 2015 Microsoft released Windows 10 and decided it would continue to release incremental updates all under the Windows 10 moniker but also here Microsoft went on to make it available in different editions (Education, Home, Pro, Enterprise) and at the same time continued to release major updates to its server operating system Windows 2016 Server and Windows 2019 Server. Needless to say that proper Windows operating system version detection became non-trivial over the years. Added to this complexity is the fact that Microsoft decided to create a mechanism to return Windows version information to applications through its APIs different from the real Windows version and this depending on the application manifest. The reason for this approach was obviously for ensuring old applications would continue to work thinking they were running on older Windows operating systems, but it doesn’t make things easier.  So, forget about all this history, forget about all this complexity as after all, it is Friday today and we are heading to the weekend to celebrate the 26th anniversary of Delphi. This #FreebieFriday brings you one routine GetOperatingSystem() that returns the Windows version and also the version number as string: procedure GetOperatingSystem(var AName: string; var AVersion: string); const SM_SERVERR2 = 89; VER_NT_WORKSTATION = $0000001; type pfnRtlGetVersion = function(var RTL_OSVERSIONINFOEXW): DWORD; stdcall; var osVerInfo: TOSVersionInfoEx; majorVer, minorVer, spmajorVer, spminorVer, buildVer, edition: Cardinal; ver: RTL_OSVERSIONINFOEXW; RtlGetVersion: pfnRtlGetVersion; procedure GetUnmanistedVersion(var majv,minv,buildv: cardinal); begin @RtlGetVersion := GetProcAddress(GetModuleHandle(‘ntdll.dll’), ‘RtlGetVersion’); if Assigned(RtlGetVersion) then begin ZeroMemory(@ver, SizeOf(ver)); ver.dwOSVersionInfoSize := SizeOf(ver); if RtlGetVersion(ver) = 0 then begin majv := ver.dwMajorVersion; minv := ver.dwMinorVersion; buildv := ver.dwBuildNumber; end; end; end; function GetWindows10Edition: string; begin Result := ‘Windows 10’; GetProductInfo(majorVer, minorVer, spmajorVer, spminorVer, edition); case edition and $FF of $62..$65: Result := ‘Windows 10 Home’; $79..$7A: Result := ‘Windows 10 Education’; $46,$04,$48,$1B,$54,$7D,$7E,$81,$82: Result := ‘Windows 10 Enterprise’; $30,$31,$A1,$A2: Result := ‘Windows 10 Pro’; end; end; begin AName := ‘Unknown’; AVersion := ‘0’; // set operating system type flag osVerInfo.dwOSVersionInfoSize := SizeOf(TOSVersionInfoEx); if GetVersionEx(POSVersionInfo(@osVerInfo)^) then begin majorVer := osVerInfo.dwMajorVersion; minorVer := osVerInfo.dwMinorVersion; buildVer := osVerInfo.dwBuildNumber; AVersion := majorVer.ToString + ‘.’ + minorVer.ToString + ‘.’ + buildVer.ToString; case osVerInfo.dwPlatformId of VER_PLATFORM_WIN32_NT: // Windows NT/2000 begin if majorVer = 17763 then AName := ‘Windows Server 2019’ else AName := ‘Windows Server 2016’; end; end; end else if (majorVer = 6) and (minorVer = 3) then begin if osVerInfo.wProductType = VER_NT_WORKSTATION then AName := ‘Windows 8.1’ else AName := ‘Windows Server 2012R2’ end else if (majorVer = 6) and (minorVer = 4) then begin if osVerInfo.wProductType = VER_NT_WORKSTATION then begin AName := GetWindows10Edition; end else begin if osVerInfo.dwBuildNumber >= 17763 then AName := ‘Windows Server 2019’ else AName := ‘Windows Server 2016’ end; end else if (majorVer = 10) and (minorVer = 0) then begin if osVerInfo.wProductType = VER_NT_WORKSTATION […]

What’s new? The first TMS FNC Maps update of 2021 includes 2 often requested features: programmatically toggle StreetView mode in TTMSFNCGoogleMaps and the ability to avoid toll roads with TTMSFNCDirections. Toggle StreetView mode in TTMSFNCGoogleMaps With just one line of code it is now possible to switch to StreetView mode on the map’s current center position. This feature is available exclusively for the TTMSFNCGoolgeMaps component.   TMSFNCGoogleMaps1.Options.StreetView.Enabled := not TMSFNCGoogleMaps1.Options.StreetView.Enabled; Avoid toll roads with TTMSFNCDirections Adjust your routing with just a single parameter to avoid toll roads. This feature is available for the following directions services: Google, Here, Bing, Azure and MapBox. Avoid toll roads:     TMSFNCDirections1.GetDirections(StartCoordinate, EndCoordinate, nil, ”, nil, False, tmDriving, nil, False, ”, mlmDefault, True); Include toll roads (default):     TMSFNCDirections1.GetDirections(StartCoordinate, EndCoordinate, nil, ”, nil, False, tmDriving, nil, False, ”, mlmDefault, False); What’s next? Although we are already working on a future update, it’s a little early to reveal what we have planned for now.I hope you enjoy the new features and I’m looking forward to share more exciting new additions to TMS FNC Maps throughout the new year! 

Intro A while back, we introduced SVG in TMS VCL UI Pack. The first version focused on smaller icon sets. We have meanwhile tweaked and improved the engine and although there is still a lot of work to be done, the next update of TMS VCL UI Pack will offer 2 quality of life improvements: Gradients (GDI+) Rendering quality (GDI+) Disabled drawing (TVirtualImageList) Gradients Gradients were left out of the first version because of shortcomings on other platforms, as we also have SVG rendering engine support for FNC targeting not only VCL, but also FMX, LCL and WEB. The underlying native graphics can be quite complex and have various differences between frameworks. Therefore we decided to take the initial step of offering linear & radial gradients support in VCL only using GDI+. Please note that we are still targeting smaller less complex icons, but we’ll add improvements over time. Rendering quality The initial version did not use the full quality that GDI+ had to offer. When working with SVG, we focused on adding features instead of quality and therefore the rendering quality was not optimal. We have now changed this so it has a smoother appearance independant of the size. v1.0                       v1.1        Disabled drawing In v1.0 we also added support for TVirtualImageList, which converts SVG files into bitmaps on the correct size without losing quality. You can add a TAdvSVGImageCollection attached to a TVirtualImageList and specify only one SVG suitable for any size you want. The TVirtualImageList also has the ability of automatically adding disabled state versions of the converted bitmaps. Initially, this was not working due to the way the bitmap alpha channel was configured and the SVG quality drawing on the bitmap before returning it to the TVirtualImageList. In this update, we have added correct alpha channel to the bitmap conversion routine. What’s next? The above applies to VCL only and will be part of the next update of TMS VCL UI Pack. The engine is a port from FNC, support for other operating systems (macOS, iOS, Android) is still ongoing. As soon as things get shape, we’ll post an update.

We look forward to connect with you at the upcoming webinar “A Cross-Platform Development Deep Dive with the TMS FNC Suite of Components” organized by Embarcadero.   Webinar content: Starting a new project? Are you going to use FireMonkey or VCL? What about targeting the Web with TMS WEB Core? Luckily the Framework Neutral Components (FNC) from TMS Software works with all those frameworks and more.  Join this live deep-dive session with Dr. Holger Flick, Bruno Fierens and Pieter Scheldeman of TMS Software where the content will focus on your questions with live demos, real-time debugging, and a level of interaction like never before. You won’t want to wait for the replay, mark your calendar today! The TMS FNC Suite gives developers a single UI controls set, a single learning-curve and a single license to have the freedom of choice to develop Delphi or C++Builder, using VCL for Windows, FireMonkey cross-platform applications for Windows, macOS, Android, iOS, Web applications with TMS WEB Core, or even Lazarus LCL applications for Windows, macOS, or Linux. There is so much to tell about TMS FNC components so we kindly invite you to visit our landing page, where more information is provided, including online demos, video tutorials and more. Extras videos can be found on the following page: FNC videos Register today!

A new year and yet another new theme for blog articles. After #GRIDGOODIES and #FREEBIEFRIDAY, this is a new theme we introduce with #WEBWONDERS. In these blogs, we explore the wonderful world of the browser operating system and uncover hidden or not so hidden treasures, tips and tricks. So, let’s kick of this new series with exploring the world of web audio. Modern browsers make the web audio API available. The goals of the web audio API are mixing sound, generating sound and applying effects to sound from web applications.  TMS WEB Core includes the Pascal import unit for using the web audio API from our beloved language. This unit is in the RTL subfolder that contains all units for several different browser APIs. So, in this blog, we let you explore the web audio API with a small code snippet that shows how you can create your own audio wave and have it played through the speakers of the device. The most straightforward is to create a sound through a sine wave with variable frequency. While technically, the web audio API comes with oscillator objects that could generate this, in this sample, we will use Pascal code for creating the buffer that will hold the sine wave. It is this buffer of floats (TJSFloat32Array) that will be played. The only part of the code where we need to use JavaScript is for the creation of the audio context. This is because there is a subtle difference between the creation on Chromium based browsers and webkit based browsers. So, basically the JavaScript code tries the webkit based creation if the Chromium based creation failed. So, the Pascal function to do this is: procedure playfreq(freq, volume: double); var   ctx: TJSAudioContext;   buf: TJSAudioBuffer;   wave: TJSFloat32Array;   i,len: integer;   src: TJSAudioBufferSourceNode;   sampleFreq: double; begin   // connect to the browser window Audio Context.    asm     ctx = new (window.AudioContext || window.webkitAudioContext)();   end;   // get the sample frequency the audio context can use    len := round(ctx.sampleRate);   // create a new buffer of floating point values   wave := TJSFloat32Array.new(len);   // determine the sine wave frequency in relation to the audio context sample frequency   sampleFreq := ctx.sampleRate / freq;   // create a buffer on the audio context   buf := ctx.createBuffer(1, len, ctx.sampleRate);   wave := buf.getChannelData(0);   // fill the float array with the sine wave data taking frequency & volume in account   for i := 0 to len – 1 do     wave[i] := (volume /100) * sin(i/(samplefreq/(2*PI)));   // create a buffer source object for the audio contect   src := ctx.createBufferSource();   // assign the buffer holding the wave to the audio buffer source object   src.buffer := buf;   // connect the audio buffer source object to the audio context output   src.connect(ctx.destination);   // play the sample from position 0   src.start(0.0); end; With this Pascal routine, it becomes simple to put two TWebTrackBar components on the form that allow to select the frequency and the volume and add a button to play the sound. With a frequency selectable between 20Hz en 20000Hz and volume between 0% and 100%, you have a little web application to test your ears frequency range or speaker […]