This morning I attended an event called “Developer Direct LIVE” from Embarcadero Technologies, the maker of RAD Studio XE6 (contains Delphi XE6 and C++Builder XE6). RAD Studio XE6 is currently the only development tool capable to compile applications in 4 different operating systems: Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android. Instead of maintaining separate source code for each OS, using RAD Studio XE6 we can have ONE set of source code, then compile it into 4 different operating systems, all become native applications (not web-based like HTML5).
I like to code using Delphi. It is one of my favorite programming languages. I’m sharing my personal notes from the event, hoping it will benefit fellow Delphi or C++ programmer using any RAD version from Embarcadero.
[9:20] Start of event.
[9:40] Live demo of the new VCL styling: setting theme look for our VCL application with very minimum work. Interesting but rather gimmicky.
[9:41] Oh wait, the automatic theme includes the “metro style” look & feel. So it might be useful after all.
[9:43] VCL style: can change it at runtime. Nice.
[9:45] New component to customize Win 8/8.1 taskbar button and the preview area.
[9:51] Sensor component for VCL. Access location, movements and other features in Win tablet devices.
[9:52] Apache HTTP Server in WebBroker and DataSnap.
[9:53] TWebBrowser updated to the latest IE (if anyone care).
[9:53] DirectX 11 API support.
[9:56] Improvements in LiveBindings (allow normal components to display database content).
[10:00] TPrototypeBindSource: an interesting component to quickly populate test values for demo. No need to populate demo database just to show client a user interface.
[10:02] Visual designer for LiveBindings is pretty useful.
[10:08] FireDAC data explorer integration. Access database and tables right from the Delphi GUI and do drag n drop to automatically create the necessary FireDAC components with proper setting for the dragged database object.
[10:10] Interesting. There’s an error message in live demo, big lol.
[10:10] FireDAC: new Informix driver.
[10:11] TFDMemTable: memory table is my favorite to do my complex algorithm. They improved support for JOIN in XE6.
[10:16] FireDAC: new behavior in persistent db objects, now can use “combine”.
[10:18] FireDAC: can merge persistent fields with dynamic fields.
[10:23] Some explanation about DataSnap.
[10:29] Interbase database now embeddable and fully encryptable.
[10:52] Break time.
[11:00] New XE6 feature: app tethering. It’s based on TCP IP, limited for local network and some VPN.
[11:03] App tethering: zero configuration, peer to peer model across the same app or companion app.
It automatically detect and show list of apps with app tethering in the same subnet mask. Kinda similar to Bonjour, I guess.
[11:06] App tethering: the communication can be as simple as string, or as flexible as stream. We can set password to the connection if needed.
[11:15] App tethering demo: sending photo of the audiences freshly taken from an iPhone directly transferred to desktop application. Took about 2 seconds for that 1 photo.
[11:18] BaaS: Backend as a Service. It’s a cloud solution with users management. Support usage analytics, push notification, cross platform.
[11:25] Live demo: sending push notification from Kinvey cloud service to iPhone app.
[11:34] Live demo: creating to do list app in iPhone, synced to cloud.
[11:41] Live demo: sending push notification to Android phablet.
[11:42] New in FireMonkey: C++ support to build Android apps.
[11:56] FireMonkey now has tint-color. Finally can change the background color of a component.
[11:57] FireMonkey: improvements in TGrid and TListView.
[11:58] New: support to develop app for Google Glass.
[11:59] Interesting: putting a button in a Google Glass app. Imagine how we can press that button.
[12:00] New in iOS app development: in-app purchase and iAd banners.
[12:10] XE6: more than 2000 bug fixes from XE5.
[12:11] New: out of IDE compilation for large projects.
[12:12] New: license recharge pricing. Pay less when upgrading from exactly one version behind (same tier).
[12:17] End of session.
To close this article, I would like to express my deep concern over one issue: there was no young people attending the event. Regeneration is a very crucial aspect of a product’s survival in long term and I believe more efforts should be taken by Embarcadero to expose younger generation that such a cool programming tool exists.
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