Synopse Open Source

2013-10-09

Good old object is not to be deprecated - it is the future

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-10-09. Pascal Programming

Yes, I know this article title is a huge moment of trolling for most Delphi developer.
But object could be legend... - wait for it - ... dary!

You perhaps already noticed by several blog posts here that I still like the good old (and deprecated) object type, in addition to the common heap-allocated class type.
Plain record with methods does not match the object-oriented approach of object, since it does not feature inheritance.

When you take a look at modern strongly-typed languages, targeting concurrent programming (you know, multi-thread/multi-core execution), you will see that the objects may be allocated in several ways, to facilitate execution flow.

The Rust language for instance is pretty interesting. It has optional task-local Garbage Collection and safe pointer types with region analysis.

To some extent, it is very similar to what object allows in the Delphi world, and why I'm still using/loving it!

2013-09-19

FreePascal Lazarus and Android Native Controls

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-09-19. Pascal Programming

We all know that the first Delphi for Android was just released...

I just found out an amazing alternative, using native Android controls, and FPC/Lazarus as compiler and IDE.

It creates small .apk file: only 180 KB, from my tests!

It makes use of direct LCL access of Android native controls, so it is a great sample.

2013-09-10

Thread-safety of mORMot

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-09-10. Open Source › mORMot Framework

We tried to make mORMot at the same time fast and safe, and able to scale with the best possible performance on the hardware it runs on.
Multi-threading is the key to better usage of modern multi-core CPUs, and also client responsiveness.

As a result, on the Server side, our framework was designed to be thread-safe.

On typical production use, the mORMot HTTP server will run on its own optimized thread pool, then call the TSQLRestServer.URI method. This method is therefore expected to be thread-safe, e.g. from the TSQLHttpServer. Request method. Thanks to the RESTful approach of our framework, this method is the only one which is expected to be thread-safe, since it is the single entry point of the whole server. This KISS design ensure better test coverage.

Let us see now how this works, and publish some benchmarks to test how efficient it has been implemented.

2013-09-04

HTTPS communication in mORMot

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-09-04. Open Source › mORMot Framework

In mORMot, the http.sys kernel mode server can be defined to serve HTTPS secure content.

Yes, mORMots do like sophistication:

When the aUseSSL boolean parameter is set for TSQLHttpServer.Create() constructor, the SSL layer will be enabled within http.sys.
Note that useHttpSocket kind of server does not offer SSL encryption yet.

We will now define the steps needed to set up a HTTPS server in mORMot.

2013-09-02

Summer videos of mORMot

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-09-02. Open Source › mORMot Framework

During this summer, warleyalex did meet some mORMots in the mountains of REST, Java, AJAX and JSON. (picture may differ from actual user:) ) He did some videos of his experiment with our little rodent. At this time, there are 11 videos available! Latest one is a Java client application, […]

2013-07-24

Tempering Garbage Collection

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-07-24. Pascal Programming

I'm currently fighting against out of memory errors on an heavy-loaded Java server.

If only it had been implemented in Delphi and mORMot!
But at this time, the mORMot was still in its burrow.
Copy-On-Write and a good heap manager can do wonders of stability.

Here are some thoughts about Garbage Collector, and how to temper their limitations.
They may apply to both the JVM and the .Net runtime, by the way.

2013-07-04

Let mORmot's applications be even more responsive

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-07-04. Open Source › mORMot Framework

In mORmot applications, all the client communication is executed by default in the current thread, i.e. the main thread for a typical GUI application.
This may become an issue in some reported environments.

Since all communication is performed in blocking mode, if the remote request takes long to process (due to a bad/slow network, or a long server-side action), the application may become unresponsive, from the end-user experience.
Even Windows may be complaining about a "non responsive application", and may propose to kill the process, which is far away from an expected behavior.

In order to properly interacts with the user, a OnIdle property has been defined in TSQLRestClientURI, and will change the way communication is handled.
If a callback event is defined, all client communication will be processed in a background thread, and the current thread (probably the main UI thread) will wait for the request to be performed in the background, running the OnIdle callback in loop in the while.

2013-06-21

SynPDF now generates (much) smaller PDF file size

By AB4327-GANDI, 2013-06-21. Open Source › Synopse PDF engine

We have reduced PDF generated file size for all version of the PDF format, by trimming any uneeded space in the generated content.

We introduced a new optional PDFGeneratePDF15File property for even better compression, using advanced features (Object Streams and Cross-Reference Streams) of the PDF 1.5 format.
This PDF 1.5 format needs Acrobot 6.0 and up to open them.
Which should be the case on your computer.

Can be up to 70% smaller for a pdf with a lot of pages with simple textual context.

I suspect our library is able to generate the smallest file size possible, even in regard to other alternative libraries.
Open Source can be great, can't it?