A beacon is a Bluetooth Low Energy device including some information in its advertising data.
Working with beacons requires code to read the beacons and some setup to ensure you read only the right beacons, especially as more and more are appearing! This article mainly focuses on the latter and what you should be aware of before you deploy your beacons.
With RAD Studio XE8 there have been a number of database updates to expand connectivity, and improve and introduce functionality for us programmers.
FireDAC has introduced new support for Change Views – enabling rapid identification of what has changed on the server side data and updating of client side stored data. See this <2min video for how these work.
Source code for the example ships in the samples directory:
<Samples><language>Database\FireDAC\Samples\DBMS Specific\InterBase\ChangeView
IBX has also introduced new components to make it easier to work with change views and subscriptions.
FireDAC now includes support for Teradata, using the driver name TData.
An example of how to set the driver properties is shown on the docwiki help for connecting to Teradata with Delphi.
DriverID=TData Server=192.168.43.140 Database=MyDatabase User_Name=dbc Password=dbc
Marco Cantu mentioned on the Launch webinar Q&A a customer was claiming seen a speed up of around 25% on a TClientDataSet application due to the refactoring at the base of how TField is used at the core layer. 🙂 This is really cool for both VCL and also FMX developers.
With the new platform for iOS 64bit, the database layer is also seamlessly available, just recompile and run 🙂
There are updates for EMS including push notification. EMS is a great way to access central data from mobile devices. EMS now is updated to include InterBase XE7 for both the server and ToGo side, allowing you to use Change Views on both Server and Clients.
Where FireDAC uses SQLite, it has been updated to a newer driver.
For more of whats new in RAD Studio XE8, including EMS updates, please click here Whats new in Delphi XE8 and C++ Builder XE8
RAD Studio XE8 has been launched today with a host of new features for both mobile and desktop applications.
For more on whats new visit RAD Studio XE8 documentation
I have been playing with a new application that combines my hobby as a Basketball referee with my geeky side and have published using RAD Studio XE8 a new Google Play store application for managing Basketball Shot Clocks.
I started this app using components that was introduced in XE7 – AppTethering and Multi-View, and these have been great, but I have benefited recently from the new FireUI updates in building a version for multiple screens. I now have it running on Tablets, Phones and Android TV. (which is kind of fun).
Getting to XE8 was trivial from XE7, and my next step now is to add in the new Analytics features of XE8. AppAnalytics provides developers with a visual representation of how users are interacting with applications built with RAD Studio XE8
I’ve found you get some good analytics about platform and country etc from Google App Store, which is cool, but I want some in app details to know when its being used. – This is especially cool as this can be used in VCL and FireMonkey applications and there is a free version of the service with the option to purchase enhanced online analytics.
I’m also going to look to increase the native controls used in the app with the new options for a number of the controls I have used (like the slider and list view). I like the way FireMonkey abstracts this as an option and even surfaces some new options in this area.
For more about the new controls and everything else that is new in XE8 please visit the online help documentation.