Synopse Open Source

To my understanding, the so-called "strong-typing" feature is one big benefit of the Delphi object pascal language.

As stated by wikipedia:

Most generally, "strong typing" implies that the programming language places severe restrictions on the intermixing that is permitted to occur, preventing the compiling or running of source code which uses data in what is considered to be an invalid way. For instance, an addition operation may not be used with an integer and string values; a procedure which operates upon linked lists may not be used upon numbers. However, the nature and strength of these restrictions is highly variable.

Some Delphi users may find this is a limitation of the language, in comparison with other "fashionable" script idioms (like Python, Javascript of Ruby). For me, runtime strong typing (alla Python or Ruby) is not true strong typing. Simon Stuart just proposed a smartstring kind of string, which is in fact a weakstring type. As far as I understood his point, he wanted to get rid of all the warnings emitted by Unicode-version of the Delphi compiler, about explicit string conversion.

In fact, I use to go in the opposite direction. For wide projects, strong-typing is one of the big benefit of using Delphi (like other main "serious" languages like Java, C, C++, Ada or C#).

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.

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.

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.

Our SynPdf unit has been refreshed to the 1.13 version.

• code modifications to compile with Delphi 5 compiler;
• added horizontal scaling for GDI enumeration in case of text kerning (could occur for small fonts);
• fixed "Save when closing with Acrobat Reader X" - thanks to Ondrej for the fix;
• fixed clipping problems and vertical font positioning issue in GDI enumeration - thanks to Ondrej for those corrections!

How to make your software run fast, especially in a multi-threaded architecture?

We tried to remove the Memory Manager scaling problems in our SynScaleMM. It worked as expected in a multi-threaded server environment. Scaling is much better than FastMM4, for some critical tests. But it's not ready for production yet...

To be honest, the Memory Manager is perhaps not the bigger bottleneck in Multi-Threaded applications.

Here are some (not dogmatic, just from experiment and knowledge of low-level Delphi RTL) advice if you want to write FAST multi-threaded application in Delphi.

The Synopse SQLite3 Database Framework was just released under version 1.12:

• internal SQLite3 database engine was updated to version 3.7.5, and SQL functions have been enhanced;
• now handle prepared SQL statements with a neutral automated syntax;
• with Delphi 2009/2010/XE, you can define directly Unicode string properties in TSQLRecord (will be stored as UTF-8);
• include some overloaded methods using Variants for direct property access (e.g. in any grid);
• SynPdf has now direct bookmarks and links methods, can reuse any existing bitmap, and generate PDF/A-1 files;
• internal reporting now supports bookmarks and links (with on screen navigation), and better integrates with SynPdf;
• a lot of bug fixes, new methods and enhancements.

Our SQLite3 Framework has been updated into the 1.7 version. For Delphi 7 to Delphi 2010.

Mostly User-Interface (reporting) enhancements, and some bug fixes.

Synopse PDF engine is an Open Source PDF document creation library for Delphi, embedded in one unit. It's used in the 1.7 version of SQLite3 framework, for creating PDF files from reports.

Among its features, you can use a true TCanvas to create the PDF, and embed True Type fonts subsets. Of course, it's Unicode ready, and licensed under a MPL/GPL/LGPL tri-license.