2014-05-18

"Native" means CPU-native... even Microsoft admits it!

There were a lot of debate about what "native" was..

Especially for some great companies, you want to sell their compiler technologies...
For them, "native" is not CPU-native, but framework-native...

Even Microsoft claimed since the beginning of C# that the managed .Net model was faster, due to "optimized JIT or NGEN compilation"...

But even Microsoft is clearly changing its mind!

They switch to "Native" for their framework, especially when targeting mobile platforms!

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2013-03-07

64 bit compatibility of mORMot units

I'm happy to announce that mORMot units are now compiling and working great in 64 bit mode, under Windows.
Need a Delphi XE2/XE3 compiler, of course!

ORM and services are now available in Win64, on both client and server sides.
Low-level x64 assembler stubs have been created, tested and optimized.
UI part is also available... that is grid display, reporting (with pdf export and display anti-aliasing), ribbon auto-generation, SynTaskDialog, i18n... the main SynFile demo just works great!

Overall impression is very positive, and speed is comparable to 32 bit version (only 10-15% slower).

Speed decrease seems to be mostly due to doubled pointer size, and some less optimized part of the official Delphi RTL.
But since mORMot core uses its own set of functions (e.g. for JSON serialization, RTTI support or interface calls or stubbing), we were able to release the whole 64 bit power of your hardware.

Delphi 64 bit compiler sounds stable and efficient. Even when working at low level, with assembler stubs.
Generated code sounds more optimized than the one emitted by FreePascalCompiler - and RTL is very close to 32 bit mode.
Overall, VCL conversion worked as easily than a simple re-build.
Embarcadero's people did a great job for VCL Win64 support, here!

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2012-12-31

Enhance existing projects with mORMot

Even if mORMot will be more easily used in a project designed from scratch, it fits very well the purpose of evolving any existing Delphi project, or even creating the server side part of an AJAX application. 

One benefit of such a framework is to facilitate the transition from a Client-Server architecture to a N-Tier layered pattern.

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2012-11-23

Speed comparison between WCF, Java, DataSnap and mORMot

Roberto Scheinders wrote a nice blog post about performance and stability of DataSnap XE3, compared with mORMot and some other available frameworks.

Compared frameworks were:

  • DataSnap (Delphi)
  • mORMot (Delphi)
  • ASP.NET WCF
  • Jersey/Grizzly (Java)
  • Node.JS (JavaScript)

In short, DataSnap was slow and not stable (concurrent test was crashing the application), whereas mORMot was very stable, very fast (faster than any other in concurrent mode), and used much less memory.

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2012-10-18

Interfaces are not evil; or are Delphi-ers the new Vampires?

A very interesting comment by mpv in our forum highlighted some points about potential interface (ab)use:

IMHO: Idea is good, but "the devil is in the details". To use mocking I must use interfaces. When I use interfaces I lost control on code, because I don't see implementation. Debugging an optimization became very hard. Especially if a beginner developer read something like GOF (Gang Of Four) and wherever necessary and where not use design templates like Visitor, Decorator and so on, and in debugging I don't understand at all what class actually implement passed interface. As for me, this is a biggest problem for .NET framework - developers use interfaces, don't look on implementation (and often don't have it in sources at all), do not learn by reading someone else's code and therefore produce monkey-code. This is only IMHO...

Could sounds rude, and like a trolling subject, but I perfectly understand this point of view.
Introducing stubs and mocks in mORMot was not the open door to all problems.. but,on the contrary, to help write robust, efficient, and maintainable code.
It does not mean that using interfaces and C#/Java is the root of all evils and code inefficiency, but that it may lead into problems.

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2012-09-09

Synopse mORMot framework 1.17

Our Open Source mORMot framework is now available in revision 1.17.

The main new features are the following:

We have some very exciting features on the road-map for the next 1.18 release, like direct Event/CallBacks handling.
Stay tuned!

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2012-09-03

Client-Server allowed back to XE3 pro

The attempt to restrict the XE3 professional license did evolve into an amazing discussion in Embarcadero forums, and Delphi-related blogs. David I announced the (reverted) EULA for Delphi Pro. Remote database access is again possible, with terms similar to Delphi Xe2. You can check the Software  […]

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2012-05-28

Synopse mORMot Framework 1.16

Our Open Source mORMot framework is now available in revision 1.16.

The main new features are the following:

Thanks to its features, mORMot is now able to provide a stand-alone Domain-Driven Design framework for Delphi.

Quite a long and nice road for a little mORMot, and more to come!

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2012-05-25

Domain-Driven design

With a previous article, we introduced the concept of "Domain-Driven design" into our framework presentation.

It's now time to detail a bit more this very nice software architecture design, and how mORMot is able to achieve such an implementation pattern.

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2012-05-03

Custom JSON serialization of records

By default, during interface-based service call, any record parameter or function result will be serialized with our proprietary binary (and optimized layout) - i.e. RecordLoad and RecordSave functions - then encoded in Base-64, to be stored as plain text within the JSON stream.

But custom record JSON serialization can be defined, as with any class - see this article - or dynamic array - see this article.

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2012-04-25

The mORMot attitude

In a discussion with Henrick Hellström, in Embarcadero forums, I wrote some high-level information about mORMot.

It was clear to me that our little mORMot is now far away from a simple Client-Server solution.

The Henrick point was that with Real Thin Client (RTC), you are able to write any Client-Server solution, even a RESTful / JSON based one.

He is of course right, but it made clear to me all the work done in mORMot since its beginning.
From a Client-Server ORM, it is now a complete SOA framework, ready to serve Domain-Driven-Design solutions.

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2012-04-20

WCF, mORMot and Event Sourcing

Our latest mORMot feature is interface-based service implementation.

How does it compare with the reference of SOA implementation (at least in the Windows world) - aka WCF?

"Comparaison n'est pas raison", as we use to say in France.
But we will also speak about Event Sourcing, and why it is now on our official road map.
Comparing our implementation with WCF is the opportunity to make our framework always better.

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