I am responding to the various requests for 64 bit and the discussion 
about the future direction of Delphi. I have a small company - we write 
software for new and used auto dealerships - sales and finance - coming out 
with accounting now and parts and service in the next few years.

    Our customers don't care about 32 bit vs 64 bit, etc. They want me to 
provide simple and convenient solutions to make their jobs easier.

    We have stuck with Delphi 5 for many years - I should have upgraded 5 
years ago but it did the job. We are now in the early stages of a 
significant upgrade that will land us in Delphi 2010 / Delphi 2011.

    My biggest fear is become obsolete by not having a deployable web based 
system. Some of my customers are clammoring for it while some definitely 
would not consider it. A web based system is great for remote data access 
and wonderful. I'd like a product that can allow me to deploy with either a 
GUI or a web interface. Unfortunately, Delphi seems to have very limited 
options in this area and the future does not look promising.

    I have avoided going web based because of the large maintenance and 
support burden - because the web tools are still very limited - and because 
it is difficult to control the interface like can be done in a GUI 
application. However, the newer web tools are catching up and these issues 
will be greatly diminished in a few years.

    The world is moving towards web based computing and mobile device 
computing - not every application is appropriate for such migration - but - 
alot more applications will end up web/mobile based and many apps will end 
up spread out over web and mobile platforms. It is only a matter of time.

    The options for a dual platform seem limited - a partial list is 
Miscrsoft Visual Studio, python, Delphi to a limited extent, and a few 
others. Those are the tools I am looking at.

    With Microsoft C#/Visual Studio, I believe that I could achieve the goal 
of 1 platform with both a GUI and a web based option. However, I hate their 
database access model which only provides for optomistic record 
locking/stateless access - I am hoping the Delphi does something to allow me 
the option of continuing to develop in Delphi. I really love Delphi and it 
has helped my business grow and thrive. However, I sense a distinct lack of 
momentum with Delphi - as evidenced with the dramatic decrease in newsgroup 
traffic and the decrease in 3rd party product development.

    Only time will tell. Hopefully Delphi will regain momentum and begin to 
increase its paying userbase. To do this, Delphi must offer features, 
options, and avenues that are desired by its remaining developer base and to 
attract new developers. Those are my thoughts.


Neil Huhta
Profit Monster Data Systems LLC

Neil --

Thanks for your continued support.

If you go the web route, I'd suggest you give a hard look at doing your
backend with DataSnap, and your front end with Delphi Prism and
ASP.NET.  You can use Prism to access your DataSnap servers, and Delphi
Prism is a fully capable ASP.NET platform.

You might also be interested in the stuff that is "cooking in the labs"
for Delphi for PHP.



-- 
Nick Hodges
Delphi Development Manager
Embarcadero

Nick:

    Thank you for the suggestions. My customers are small to middle size 
businesses on a limited budget. We rarely see more than 50 workstations, 
some clients have 1 workstation and our average has maybe 6 workstations and 
of course no IT staff - so I have to provide a zero admin solution. I will 
definitely check out your ideas - time is on my side. What do you think 
about my synopsys of the general direction programming will go in the next 
10 years ??? If so - then I assume Embarcadero will be weaving that into 
their strategy.

    I will confess to being confused by this next move of becoming MAC 
compatible. In our 10 years - we made approximately 1000 presentations to 
customers - closed maybe 200 deals - and only 1 of those 1000 prospects 
asked if we could run on a MAC. Steven Jobs himself seems to be reducing the 
resoiurces and focus Apple is placing on PC's - care to share your thoughts 
about the MAC cross compatibility ???

    Anyways - I appreciate all of the hard work you guys are putting into 
regaining momentum in the market. My company is in the same process - I had 
a nasty divorce 5 years ago - and it took alot out of me - so I focused on 
ym other business and am now working very hard to re-establish momentum in 
my software business - but - I enjoy it and we are beginning to increase our 
momentum in the market.

Neil Huhta
Profit Monster Data Systems LLC




"Nick Hodges" <nick.hodges@embarcadero.com> wrote in message 
news:252496@forums.embarcadero.com...
> Neil --
>
> Thanks for your continued support.
>
> If you go the web route, I'd suggest you give a hard look at doing your
> backend with DataSnap, and your front end with Delphi Prism and
> ASP.NET.  You can use Prism to access your DataSnap servers, and Delphi
> Prism is a fully capable ASP.NET platform.
>
> You might also be interested in the stuff that is "cooking in the labs"
> for Delphi for PHP.
>
>
>
> -- 
> Nick Hodges
> Delphi Development Manager
> Embarcadero

> You might also be interested in the stuff that is "cooking in the labs"
> for Delphi for PHP.

Well at least I'm very interested. But the first two attempts where pretty 
disappointing. So you  have a major challenge there!

albert

Nick,

> If you go the web route, I'd suggest you give a hard look at doing your
> backend with DataSnap, and your front end with Delphi Prism and
> ASP.NET.  You can use Prism to access your DataSnap servers, and Delphi
> Prism is a fully capable ASP.NET platform.

I have the impression that an approach with Delphi and ExtPascal is also 
promising.

-- 
Roman

Neil,

Can I suggest that you take a look at the "Remote Desktop Services"
available in Windows 2008 R2. They encompass
Connection,services,Licensing,Gateway,Session and Web Access Management
tools.

Forget about remote desktop as a traditional "desktop". What you get
with these tools is web publishing of your Win32 application. That
means NO technology change from what you are doing now i.e. you still
write your application in Delphi (even Delphi 5 if you want to)

We've recently started using a hosted virtual service offering these
tools ready configured. All we do is make our application available to
selected windows logons. They can then either come in via a web
interface, leading to what looks to them like the application running
natively on their machine. Alternatively they can have a shortcut on
their desktop which launches the remote application on the hosted
service. Obviously they need an internet connection and so far we've
not found the bandwith requirements caused by remote desktop to be in
any way onerous. In fact the performance of our application running on
the hosted service, connected to a customer using a decent ADSL line is
comparable to a LAN experience and not that different from running it
locally.

So far we've found very few drawbacks to this approach. Given your
alternative is to have two technology streams running in parallel to
achive web and win 32 interfaces, I consider this a very promising
route.

I've never liked the compromises that web interfaces introduce and this
solution blows them away.

As a final note, our customers DO require 64 bit and have done for some
considerable amount of time. We have also lost potential business due
to a lack it in Delphi in recent years.

Paul.

Albert Drent wrote:

> But the first two attempts where pretty disappointing. So you  have a
> major challenge there!

http://blogs.embarcadero.com/joseleon/ would be a good place to look

-- 
John Kaster http://blogs.embarcadero.com/johnk
Embarcadero Developer Network: http://edn.embarcadero.com
Features and bugs: http://qc.embarcadero.com
Got source?  http://cc.embarcadero.com

Roman Kassebaum wrote:

> I have the impression that an approach with Delphi and ExtPascal is
> also promising.

Indeed -- looks very intersting.

-- 
Nick Hodges
Delphi Development Manager
Embarcadero

Hello,

have you already noticed that D2010 comes with IntraWeb/VCL for the web
included? (haven't yet tried it myself but some give it good reviews)

Greetings

Markus

Markus Humm wrote:
> have you already noticed that D2010 comes with IntraWeb/VCL for the web
> included? (haven't yet tried it myself but some give it good reviews)

+2

It's hard to claim that web options inside Delphi are "limited" when 
IntraWeb is available! It's like saying MS has limited web options 
because it "only" has ASP.Net. We use IntraWeb for most of our web 
projects. It can handle enterprise level projects, with an outstanding 
level of re-use of existing Delphi code, and low dev times.

And as far as the future, AtoZed is actively developing the product. 
Version XI is in beta and contains some very welcome improvements. XII 
is on the horizon.

And besides, the Ajax support is very good. It makes many of our pages 
feel very similar to the desktop versions (no post backs).

It's worth a serious look.

Loren sZendre

Nick,

> Indeed -- looks very intersting.

The trick is the underlying ExtJS framework which is beautiful and very 
powerful.

-- 
Roman

Am 17.06.2010 21:43, schrieb Loren Szendre:
> Markus Humm wrote:
>> have you already noticed that D2010 comes with IntraWeb/VCL for the web
>> included? (haven't yet tried it myself but some give it good reviews)
> 
> +2
> 
> It's hard to claim that web options inside Delphi are "limited" when 
> IntraWeb is available! It's like saying MS has limited web options 
> because it "only" has ASP.Net. We use IntraWeb for most of our web 
> projects. It can handle enterprise level projects, with an outstanding 
> level of re-use of existing Delphi code, and low dev times.
> 
> And as far as the future, AtoZed is actively developing the product. 
> Version XI is in beta and contains some very welcome improvements. XII 
> is on the horizon.
> 
> And besides, the Ajax support is very good. It makes many of our pages 
> feel very similar to the desktop versions (no post backs).
> 
> It's worth a serious look.
> 
> Loren sZendre

What makes me wonder is that Nick didn't mention Intraweb. He rather
mentioned DataSnap for the server backend and ASP.NET in prism for the
frontend. I'd think this to be complexer than using Intraweb.

Greetings

Markus

Markus Humm wrote:

> What makes me wonder is that Nick didn't mention Intraweb.

I didn't because I wasn't thinking clearly.  

Intraweb + Datasnap would be a very excellent solution for the OP's
needs.

-- 
Nick Hodges
Delphi Development Manager
Embarcadero

> {quote:title=Karenzy Karanzy wrote:}{quote}
> Neil,
> 
> Can I suggest that you take a look at the "Remote Desktop Services"
> available in Windows 2008 R2. They encompass
> Connection,services,Licensing,Gateway,Session and Web Access Management
> tools.
> 
> Forget about remote desktop as a traditional "desktop". What you get
> with these tools is web publishing of your Win32 application. That
> means NO technology change from what you are doing now i.e. you still
> write your application in Delphi (even Delphi 5 if you want to)

This sounds like an ideal fit for the OP. Certainly a good interim solution.
We have been on the user-end of many web-access efforts, and the Remote Desktop path, is proven and reliable (at some BW cost but as mentioned, BW is cheap and getting cheaper)

 If doing this, I'd slightly modify the original app, to give layered security. Make 'typical field access' quite simple, but add some protection against massive database attacks, from either poor security, or disgruntled employees.

I've also seem some real shockers, where custom-design web data entry was attempted.
These have been cumbersome, and so browser-locked, that they are frankly unusable.
They seem to be intern-level designs, and are very poor at generating reports.

In one example database entry/create is possible via almost any browser, and even via email form, but the edit/modify path is the shocker. 
I have no idea why they fumbled so badly on the edit/modify systems.

Is it a client-server app? Do you want to keep it that way? If so, then two good options have been proposed by others going forward. If a new Windows 2008 server (preferably R2) is an option the new remote desktop options rock. If you want a web UI, use VCL for the Web.

Is it n-tier? Or is that the direction you want to go? If so you have some really good options. If you get the Enterprise version of Delphi you obviously have DataSnap availalbe to you. You can serve up data in things like JSON which any device out there can consume should you want to make an interface for it. If you have Pro, like me, then RemObjects DataAbstract or kbmMW are great options as well (I use RemObjects myself). Both provide very turnkey, low maintenance options compared to the .NET world and
 can provide data to any device via SOAP, JSON, their own formats, etc. A potential web front end could be in a variety of formats, though it seems to me ASP.NET has received the most attention in that regard.

Just one recommendation for the customers who want a web front end. If you could provide a remote desktop option for them, I bet they'd be satisfied once they see it demonstrated. In my experience, it's not that they really care so much about a web user interface. In fact, I find only network admins love web UI. Users prefer real windows apps. It's almost certain that they simply don't want to have to install anything on the workstations. Remote Desktop can meet that need.

Markus Humm wrote:
> What makes me wonder is that Nick didn't mention Intraweb. He rather
> mentioned DataSnap for the server backend and ASP.NET in prism for the
> frontend. I'd think this to be complexer than using Intraweb.

For us, being able to use reams of existing code was by far the most 
important consideration. It was only after making that decision that we 
discovered how fast it was, how cool its Ajax implementation was, how 
cool TMS's IW grid was (fully infused with Ajax), how amazing IW's state 
mgmt was, etc, etc.

Loren sZendre

Thank you everybody for your ideas and suggestions. I am using remote 
desktop already but not with the Windows2008 server. What are the 
improvements in Win2008 ??? my drawbacks with remote desktop are #1 printing 
to local printers requires 3rd party software (ms does not detect and 
passthru usb printers at least prior to win2008) #2 remote desktop sessions 
are too easy to kill with your app running #3 the client has to incur a 
license fee and program their router to a static ip. However, these are 
small issues.

Intraweb and the php for delphi sound interesting. I heard mixed reviews of 
Intraweb and got the impression that is was more limited then ASP.net - also 
i am concerned about the lack of 3rd party components and vendors for 
intraweb - i am very picky aboout user interfaces. Does anybody have any 
details about how intraweb is doing ???

I need to start playing with all of these different approaches and pick a 
solution that meets the needs of my customers - but for the moment i will 
focus on the upgrade to D7 and D2010.


Neil Huhta
Profit Monster Data Systems

> Intraweb and the php for delphi sound interesting. I heard mixed reviews of 
> Intraweb and got the impression that is was more limited then ASP.net - also 
> i am concerned about the lack of 3rd party components and vendors for 
> intraweb - i am very picky aboout user interfaces. Does anybody have any 
> details about how intraweb is doing ???
> 

I think Intraweb is fine if you are planning on reusing a lot of your existing code. But if you wanted to build something new I would worry about using something that is unlikely to ever have more than 0.1% market share for it's development niche. It's only market seems to be existing Delphi developers who want to do a web but can't escape their roots. .NET, PHP, Java, Rails etc are the big boys in town. And if you really can't shake the love of Pascal style code you can use Delphi Prism, although it is s
mall niche as well.

Craig.

>Delphi developers who want to do a web but can't escape their roots. .NET, 
>PHP, Java, Rails etc are the big boys in town.<
If you want to move a desktop app to the web to you also need to use Flash 
or Silverlight in the front end to improve the user experience?  Curious, 
the new MS officeLive applications, are these done in Silverlight or is that 
all Java Script?

thanks  Bob

"Craig van Nieuwkerk" wrote in message news:252890@forums.embarcadero.com...
>> Intraweb and the php for delphi sound interesting. I heard mixed reviews 
>> of
>> Intraweb and got the impression that is was more limited then ASP.net - 
>> also
>> i am concerned about the lack of 3rd party components and vendors for
>> intraweb - i am very picky aboout user interfaces. Does anybody have any
>> details about how intraweb is doing ???
>>
>
> I think Intraweb is fine if you are planning on reusing a lot of your 
> existing code. But if you wanted to build something new I would worry 
> about using something that is unlikely to ever have more than 0.1% market 
> share for it's development niche. It's only market seems to be existing 
> Delphi developers who want to do a web but can't escape their roots. .NET, 
> PHP, Java, Rails etc are the big boys in town. And if you really can't 
> shake the love of Pascal style code you can use Delphi Prism, although it 
> is s
> mall niche as well.
>
> Craig.

Neil Huhta wrote:
> Intraweb and the php for delphi sound interesting. I heard mixed reviews of 
> Intraweb and got the impression that is was more limited then ASP.net - also 
> i am concerned about the lack of 3rd party components and vendors for 
> intraweb - i am very picky aboout user interfaces. Does anybody have any 
> details about how intraweb is doing ???

The third-party support for IntraWeb is both good news and bad news. The 
bad news is that TMS is the only major vendor for third-party components 
for IntraWeb (although there is the open source Arcana Elite Suite that 
has loads of components). The good news is that TMS has a very complete 
suite of components. For instance, their data-aware grid is priceless. 
It is infused with Ajax options (including Ajax paging -- way cool). It 
can be made to look as good as any grid on any platform, including ASP.Net.

An IntraWeb app can be made to look as good as you care to spend the time.

Loren sZendre

John Kaster schreef:
> Albert Drent wrote:
> 
>> But the first two attempts where pretty disappointing. So you  have a
>> major challenge there!
> 
> http://blogs.embarcadero.com/joseleon/ would be a good place to look
> 
I know that blog and am following it. But the taste is the proof of the 
pudding. Due to my former experience I won't be an early adaptor!

albert

Albert Drent wrote:

> Due to my former experience I won't be an early adaptor!

I appreciate you being open to trying again.

-- 
John Kaster http://blogs.embarcadero.com/johnk
Embarcadero Developer Network: http://edn.embarcadero.com
Features and bugs: http://qc.embarcadero.com
Got source?  http://cc.embarcadero.com

>I know that blog and am following it. But the taste is the proof of
>the pudding. Due to my former experience I won't be an early adaptor!

That makes perfectly sense for us if you take a look at all the things
E. is planning for the next two or three releases. Way to many things
are changing, take a look how long it took to change the ide.

Hi,

> Intraweb and the php for delphi sound interesting. I heard mixed reviews 
> of Intraweb and got the impression that is was more limited then ASP.net - 
> also i am concerned about the lack of 3rd party components and vendors for 
> intraweb - i am very picky aboout user interfaces. Does anybody have any 
> details about how intraweb is doing ???


I disagree that Intraweb picky in user interface part.  You can take a look 
on our pages built completely with intraweb.
For example:

http://www.dosli.cz
http://web.dosli.cz/edoc?direct_access=142
http://web.dosli.cz/eduweb  (login/pass  demo/demo)
http://web.dosli.cz/touch_of_nature  (login/pass  demo/demo)


From our point of view, we are able to create web interface to our VCL form 
application quickly and easily.

With regards

Petr Slipek.

Hi,

> Intraweb and the php for delphi sound interesting. I heard mixed reviews
> of Intraweb and got the impression that is was more limited then ASP.net -
> also i am concerned about the lack of 3rd party components and vendors for
> intraweb - i am very picky aboout user interfaces. Does anybody have any
> details about how intraweb is doing ???


I disagree that Intraweb picky in user interface part.  You can take a look
on our pages built completely with intraweb.
For example:

http://www.dosli.cz
http://web.dosli.cz/edoc?direct_access=142
http://web.dosli.cz/eduweb  (login/pass  demo/demo)
http://web.dosli.cz/touch_of_nature  (login/pass  demo/demo)


From our point of view, we are able to create web interface to our VCL form
application quickly and easily.

With regards

Petr Slipek.

I am almost (hopefully within 6 months) able to develop/deploy GUIs that can be run over a WAN (internet) in exactly the same way that you would run them over a LAN, including access to just about any database, without any code changes. Essentially I have built a distributed messaging-framework that enables communication with remote tiers through messaging (both requests and notifications). For custom-built applications where the cliebnt-base is known this negates any need for a web-based interface and al
lows anyone who installs the software to have remote access.

Cheers, Misha