Synopse

To content | To menu | To search

2011, Wednesday September 14

L10n and i18n in our framework

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Wednesday September 14, 20:31 - mORMot Framework

In computing, internationalization and localization (also spelled internationalisation and localisation) are means of adapting computer software to different languages, regional differences and technical requirements of a target market:

  • Internationalization (i18n) is the process of designing a software application so that it can be adapted to various languages; 
  • Localization (L10n) is the process of adapting internationalized software for a specific region or language by adding locale-specific components and translating text, e.g. for dates display.

Our framework handle both features, via the SQLite3i18n.pas unit. For instance, resourcestring defined in the source code are retrieved from the executable and can be translated on the fly. The unit extends this to visual forms, and even captions generated from RTTI.

In short, making your software open to any language is handled by the framework, from the bottom-up.

Continue reading...

2011, Monday September 12

Using Extended in Delphi XE2 64 bit

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Monday September 12, 23:13 - Pascal Programing

Unfortunately, Delphi's 64-bit compiler (dcc64) and RTL do not support 80-bit extended floating point values on Win64, but silently alias Extended = Double on Win64.

There are situations, however, where this is clearly undesirable, e.g. if the additional precision gained from Extended is required.

The Open-source uTExtendedX87 unit provides a replacement FPU-backed 80-bit Extended floating point type (TExtendedX87) for Win64.

Continue reading...

2011, Sunday August 28

Multi-threading and Delphi

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Sunday August 28, 08:57 - Pascal Programing

Writing working multi-threaded code is not easy - it's even hard, as as a Delphi expert just wrote in his blog.

In fact, the first step into multi-thread application development could be:

"protect your shared variables with locks (aka critical sections), because you are not sure that the data you read/write is the same for all threads".

The CPU per-core cache is just one of the possible issues, which will lead into reading wrong values. Another issue which may lead into race condition is two threads writing to a resource at the same time: it's impossible to know which value will be stored afterward.

Continue reading...

2011, Saturday August 20

Enhanced Log viewer

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Saturday August 20, 10:24 - Open Source libraries

We already shipped a sophisticated set of logging classes some month ago.

Since then, its features have been enhanced, and the system has been deeply interfaced with our main ORM framework. Now almost all low-level or high-level operations can be logged on request.

But since the log files tend to be huge (for instance, if you set the logging for our unitary tests, the 6,000,000 unitary tests creates a 280 MB log file), a log viewer was definitively in need.

Continue reading...

2011, Monday August 15

Synopse

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Monday August 15, 12:00 - Synopse Company

About the Synopse Informatique company and our Open Source approach.

If your project needs Delphi software development, it's the right place to search.

Continue reading...

one comment

2011, Thursday August 11

FireMonkey and DXScene

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Thursday August 11, 11:05 - Pascal Programing

For those how are interested in FireMonkey, I made some screenshots of some DXScene sample app.

It may give you some good starting point about the features of the upcoming Delphi XE2 user interface components.

Continue reading...

2011, Wednesday August 10

Framework documentation updated for revision 1.15

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Wednesday August 10, 20:52 - mORMot Framework

The framework documentation was just updated.

The general organization of the SAD document (which is the one to be read in all cases) has been refreshed, and is now separated in smaller chapters.

The new official name has been changed into "Synopse SQLite3/mORMot framework"...

Continue reading...

2011, Monday August 8

Our mORMot won't hibernate this winter, thanks to FireMonkey

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Monday August 8, 06:41 - mORMot Framework

Everybody is buzzing about FireMonkey...

Our little mORMot will like FireMonkey!
Here is why...

Continue reading...

2011, Sunday August 7

SQLite3-powered, not SQLite3-limited

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Sunday August 7, 09:46 - mORMot Framework

Our downloadable documentation has been enhanced, and contains now a description about the main feature of the near-to-come 1.15 version, i.e. "database agnosticism".

The core database of our mORMot / SQLite3 framework uses the SQLite3 library, which is a Free, Secure, Zero-Configuration, Server-less, Single Stable Cross-Platform Database File database engine.

As stated below, you can use any other database access layer, if you wish. A fast in-memory engine is included, and can be used instead or together with the SQLite3 engine. Since revision 1.15 of the framework you may be able to access any remote database, and use one or more OleDB (or Oracle) connections to store your precious ORM objects. The SQlite3 will be used as the main SQL engine, able to JOIN all those tables, thanks to its Virtual Table unique feature.

Continue reading...

2011, Monday July 25

Close future of the framework: database agnosticism

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Monday July 25, 22:19 - mORMot Framework

Our ORM RESTful Framework is about to access any available database engine.

It will probably change its name (since it won't use only SQlite3 as database), to become mORMot - could be an acronym for "Manage Object Relational Mapping Over Tables", or whatever you may think of...

We'll still rely on SQLite3 on the server, but a dedicated mechanism will allow to access via OleDB any remote database, and mix those tables content with the native ORM tables of the framework. A flexible Virtual Tables and column mapping will allow any possible architecture: either a new project in pure ORM, either a project relying on an existing database with its own table layout.

Continue reading...

2011, Friday July 22

SynDBSQLite3: SQLite3 direct access

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Friday July 22, 17:14 - Open Source libraries

For our ORM framework, we implemented an efficient SQLite3 wrapper, joining statically (i.e. without any external dll) the SQLite3 engine to the executable. SQLite3 is in fact used as the DB kernel of the framework. For instance, thanks to its unique virtual table mechanism, even tables in other databases (like Oracle or MSSQL) are available as if they were SQLite3 tables.

We just made this wrapper independent from our ORM, in a new dedicated unit, named SynSQLite3.pas.

It was an easy task to let this unit be called from our SynDB database abstract classes.

Continue reading...

2011, Saturday July 9

SynDBOracle: Open Source native Oracle access

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Saturday July 9, 11:46 - mORMot Framework

For our upcoming mORMot framework, and in completion to our SynOleDB unit, we just added a new Open Source unit, named SynDBOracle. It allows direct access to any remote Oracle server, using the Oracle Call Interface.

Oracle Call Interface (OCI) is the most comprehensive, high performance, native unmanaged interface to the Oracle Database that exposes the full power of the Oracle Database. We wrote a direct call of the oci.dll library, using our DB abstraction classes introduced for SynOleDB.

We tried to implement all best-practice patterns detailed in the official Building High Performance Drivers for Oracle document

Resulting speed is quite impressive: for all requests, SynDBOracle is 3 to 5 times faster than a SynOleDB connection using the native OleDB Provider supplied by Oracle. We noted also that our implementation is 10 times faster than the one provided with ZEOS/ZDBC, which is far from optimized.

You can use the latest version of the Oracle Instant Client provided by Oracle - see this link - which allows you to run your applications without installing the standard (huge) Oracle client or having an ORACLE_HOME. Just deliver the dll files in the same directory than your application, and it will work.

Continue reading...

2011, Monday July 4

WinINet vs WinHTTP

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Monday July 4, 06:09 - SQLite3 Framework

If you want to implement an HTTP client access in your application, you may consider several choices:

  • Use the provided Indy components;
  • Use third-party components like Synapse, ICS or your own WinSock-based wrapper;
  • Use WinINet;
  • Use WinHTTP.

For our ORM, we tried to avoid external dependencies, and did not have the need of all Indy's features and overhead.
We fist wrote our own WinSock wrapper, then tried out WinInet.

When used on our testing benchmark, we found out that WinINet was dead slow.
Then we tried WinHTTP, the new API provided by Microsoft, and we found out this was blazing fast. As fast as direct WinSock access, without the need of writing all the wrapper code.

Continue reading...

2011, Sunday July 3

"Sharding" or "Share nothing" architecture

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Sunday July 3, 20:12 - SQLite3 Framework

Here is what wikipedia states at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_nothing_architecture:

A shared nothing architecture (SN) is a distributed computing architecture in which each node is independent and self-sufficient, and there is no single point of contention across the system. People typically contrast SN with systems that keep a large amount of centrally-stored state information, whether in a database, an application server, or any other similar single point of contention.

This is just one approach of "sharding". Sharding is indeed related to a shared nothing architecture - once sharded, each shard can live in a totally separate logical schema instance.
"I sharded, therefore it scales"...

You can do this in Delphi... and opens a new world of scaling opportunities... Just as Google, Facebook, or eBay do... 

Continue reading...

2011, Saturday July 2

Synopse PDF Engine 1.14

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Saturday July 2, 19:51 - Synopse PDF engine

Our SynPdf unit has been updated to the 1.14 version.

Some enhancements:

  • new SetCMYKFillColor and SetCMYKStrokeColor methods for TPdfCanvas
  • now handles EMR_POLYBEZIER* commands in conversion from meta file content
  • fixed EZeroDivided error when enumerating SetWindowExtEx(szlExtent(0,0))
  • some enhancements for better PDF/A-1 conformance to the standard: now includes the ICC profile for RGB pictures; corrected /Link flag and XML metadata; new header with 8 bit characters; correct outlines and other minor issues: now pass e.g. validation tests.

Compatible with Delphi 5 up to Delphi XE.

Source code released under GPL/LGPL/MPL license, on choice.
That means: free, like a bird, and like a beer.

Comments and feedback are welcome on our forum.

Is Object-Relational Mapping the Paradise of Computer Science?

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Saturday July 2, 11:32 - mORMot Framework

There is a well known syndrome around, against ORM.

Do you remember The Vietnam of Computer Science article?

It is worth reading... and commenting.
Sounds a bit outdated by now. Tempus fugit!

Continue reading...

Faster variant late binding

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Saturday July 2, 10:27 - mORMot Framework

For both our SynOleDB and SynBigTable units, we allow late-binding of data row values, using a variant and direct named access of properties. Thanks to this unique feature (as far as I know in the Delphi database world),

This allows clear and valid code as such:

var Customer: Variant;
begin
  with Props.Execute(
    'select * from Sales.Customer where AccountNumber like ?',
    ['AW000001%'],@Customer) do
    while Step do
      assert(Copy(Customer.AccountNumber,1,8)='AW000001');
end;

In practice, this code is slower than using a standard property based access, like this:

    while Step do
      assert(Copy(Column['AccountNumber'],1,8)='AW000001');

But the first version, using late-binding of column name, just sounds more natural.

Of course, since it's late-binding, we are not able to let the compiler check at compile time for the column name. If the column name in the source code is wrong, an error will be triggered at runtime only. But it would not be an issue, since it would be the same for the SQL code inserted: it's only executed at runtime (this is one of the benefits of using an ORM, by the way: the ORM will generate correct SQL code for you...).

The default VCL implementation of this late-binding was a bit slow for our purpose.
Since it has to deal with Ole Automation, and because it's fun, we hacked the VCL to provide a lighter and faster version for our custom variant types.

Continue reading...

2011, Friday July 1

SynOleDB: OpenSource Unit for direct access to any database via OleDB

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Friday July 1, 09:09 - mORMot Framework

That's it, our SynOleDB unit seems alive and running well.

OLE DB (Object Linking and Embedding, Database, sometimes written as OLEDB or OLE-DB) is an API designed by Microsoft for accessing data from a variety of sources in a uniform manner. It was designed as a higher-level replacement for, and successor to, ODBC, extending its feature set to support a wider variety of non-relational databases, such as object databases and spreadsheets that do not necessarily implement SQL.

SynOleDB unit implementation has been made with several points in mind:

  • Tested with SQL Server 2008 R2 and Oracle 11g providers from Microsoft and Oracle; 
  • Ability to be truly Unicode, even with pre-Unicode version of Delphi (like Delphi 7 or 2007); 
  • Could access any local or remote Database, from any version of Delphi, since it doesn't use the DB.pas unit or any related part of the VCL (even the Delphi 7 personal or the Turbo Explorer editions), just for free; 
  • Handle NULL or BLOB content for parameters and results; 
  • Avoid most memory copy or unnecessary allocation: we tried to access the data directly from the retrieved data buffer, just as given from OleDB; 
  • Was therefore designed to achieve the best performance possible: most time is spent in OleDB: the code layer added to the OleDB customer is very thin; 
  • True OOP architecture, to be used with any OleDB provider (allowing custom parameters or such), and even without OleDB (in the future, direct access to any DB client could be used); 
  • Could be safely used in a multi-threaded application/server (with one TOleDBConnection per thread); 
  • Allow parameter bindings of requests, with fast access to any parameter or column name (thanks to TDynArrayHashed);
  • Late binding of column values in Delphi code;
  • Direct JSON content creation, with no temporary data copy nor allocation; 
  • Designed to be used with our mORMot ORM, but could be used stand-alone (a full Delphi 7 client executable is just about 200 KB), or even in any existing Delphi application, thanks to a TQuery-like wrapper.

Continue reading...

2011, Wednesday June 29

Synopse SQLite3 framework 1.14

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Wednesday June 29, 06:10 - SQLite3 Framework

Our ORM framework has been released as version 1.14.

It's mainly a bug-fix release:

  • Integrated SQLite3 engine updated to latest version 3.7.7.1;
  • Fix several issues about JSON generation layout;
  • Enhanced automated User Interface generation for object on-screen edition;
  • SynPdf unit now handles Bézier curves from TCanvas, and some CMYK functions; also enhanced PDF/A-1compatibility;
  • Some speed enhancements, and new functions for the SynOleDB unit.

Continue reading...

2011, Thursday June 16

Which Delphi compiler produces faster code?

By A.Bouchez on 2011, Thursday June 16, 21:55 - Pascal Programing

After a question on StackOverflow, I wanted to comment about the speed of generated code by diverse Delphi compiler versions.

Since performance matters when we write general purpose libraries like ours, we have some feedback to propose:

Continue reading...

- page 2 of 7 -