Stephen is a Charted IT Professional and the Associate Product Manager for InterBase at Embarcadero. He is also a Product Evangelist for RAD Studio, regularly speaking across EMEA. @DelphiABall
InterBase XE7 update 3 is now available for general release.
What’s new in InterBase XE7 – Update 3?
In my post about InterBase XE7 Update 2 I mentioned about the new reserve words that are used by Change Views and how to work with reserved words by using “quotes”.
CHANGE,
CHANGED,
INSERTED,
UPDATED
DELETED
With update 3, InterBase XE7 only adds these words to the reserved list once Change Views are active in the database. This will make it easier for users to migrate to InterBase XE7 and take advantage of the other cool features like partial data dumps, improved index handling etc.
Embarcadero CodeCentral “Registered Users” can download the patch binaries (Server/Desktop/Developer/Trial) for Windows and Linux, and, ToGo Edition. You can find the downloads at http://cc.embarcadero.com/reg/interbase
This blog post looks at Enums and how multi-platform generics and RTTI (or what C# guys call reflection) make this really simple using common code on Windows, Mac OS X, iOS and Android using Delphi.
Starting with what an Enum is, the post then explores how you would traditionally have seen it written in code, before looking at the clean X-platform approach RTTI and Generics provide.
If your experienced in working with enums and want to find out how RTTI makes it easier, you may want to skip the first part of this post and get to the section about RTTI further down.
Enumerated Types to and from strings
An Enum, or Enumerated Type is a data type with a set of named values.
Enums are a great way to define a set of constants that are specific for a type and work with them in context, ensuring only one, or an array of allowed values is set.
OK, I’m going to use an example that maybe should have more values listed, but you get the point. It is the points of a compass – North, South, East or West.
type
TCompass = (North, South, East, West);
var
D : TCompass; // short version for Directionbegin
D := TCompass.North;
case D of
North : ShowMessage('North');
South : ShowMessage('South');
East : ShowMessage('East');
West : ShowMessage('West');
raise Exception.Create('Unknown Direction');
end;
end;
This provides one way to convert a Enum to a string using a case statement, but every time you make a change to your Enum types, you need to add in extra code… Call me lazy, but thats too much work!
InterBase XE7 update 2 is now available for Windows and Linux server and ToGo. This update is highlyrecommended for all users of InterBase XE7.
For what is new and resolved issues in InterBase XE7 Update 2, please see the online InterBase documentation. – but in short, following update 1 with some change view enhancements – update 2 contains a number of fixes to general bugs reported.
Working with reserved words.
A list of Known Issues is available in the documentation. One that I will highlight is the addition of CHANGE, CHANGED, INSERTED, UPDATED and DELETED as reserved words in InterBase XE7 due to the introduction of Change Views.
I have heard of a few cases where developers have SQL statements that have stopped workings because their tables have fields that are one of the reserved words, e.g. UPDATED; Its easily to ensure those keep working by putting field names in “quotes” in your SQL statement.
As we know a lot of developers don’t quote their field names, we are working towards either a hot-fix or an update for the future that will only work with these as reserved words IF Change Views are being used, however it is recommended that you add “quotes” to the fields in your SQL if you are at all in doubt.
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 & IBX support for Change Views
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:
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.
64bit support for iOS
With the new platform for iOS 64bit, the database layer is also seamlessly available, just recompile and run 🙂
Other updates
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.
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).
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.
More Native Controls
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.
InterBase XE7, update 1 went live on Friday and brings with it SQL language enhancements for Change View, and some updates to IBConsole and the availability of InterBase ToGo for XE7
Full details about the update are available on the InterBase DocWiki
Change View Updates
There are 2 major additions to InterBase Change Views in Update 1
Prior to update 1 you had to manually drop a subscription via an SQL statement. This was a temporary solution and has now been replaced with the correct SQL syntax
DROP SUBSCRIPTION <subscription name> [RESTRICT| CASCADE]
If you want to remove a subscription that has subscribers you must use the CASCADE command as RESTRICT is the default.
Change View SQL Extensions
InterBase SQL now includes additional language to support querying about the changed state of specific fields via the <FIELD> IS [NOT] {CHANGED | INSERTED | UPDATED | DELETED} clause.
Take the following example. Lets imagine we have two employee records that have been modified.
EMP_NO 39 has their DEPT_NO changed
EMP_NO 109 has their SALARY changed.
At run time you want to select only those that have had a SALARY change prior to processing staff payments. To achieve this first, a Change View subscription is set active (making any SQL statement subsequently run only return the delta for that subscriber). Then SQL where clause then filters further where the SALARY IS UPDATED.
SET SUBSCRIPTION sub_employee_changes at 'MyDeviceID' ACTIVE;
SELECT EMP_NO, DEPT_NO, SALARY FROM EMPLOYEE WHERE SALARY IS UPDATED;
EMP_NO DEPT_NO SALARY
-------- ---------- ----------10960075000
Regardless of what you select, the commit will still bring
InterBase IBConsole Updates
InterBase IBConsole has a number of new features, introduced in Update 1 designed to get you started quicker.
When you open IBConsole now you find the new InterBase – Start Here page as a tab at the top of the screen. The start here page includes containing details about Community and featured posts, as well as training videos and direct links to the documentation. While an offline page ships with IBConsole, If you want to see this page now, please visit http://www.embarcadero.com/starthere/interbase/index.html
Having this page online allows us to improve our communication with our customers about critical information and appropriate news.
Recent Databases
There is also a new feature in the bottom left of the screen (see image above or below) enabling you to quickly connect back to the recent database you have been working on.
This windows shows you the database name, server and also the when you last accessed the database via IBConsole.
Change Views
IBConsole also now includes access to work with subscriptions.
InterBase ToGo XE7
InterBase XE7 ToGo trial edition is now available for download – more details to come soon about ToGo.
This week I hosted a Skill Sprints session looking at InterBase Change Views with an example set of code working around a Pharmacy needing to keep centralised drug information updated at distributed pharmacies.
The example code will ship with the next major release of the RAD Studio products – which you can get for free with the current RAD offer
This InterBase Change Views Example demo shows off this powerful way to track on the server what data is changing in a very lightweight and scalable way.
This Skill Sprint Video for InterBase Change Views follows on from the recent blog posts I have done on Change Views which are available here:
Last week CodeRage III Brazil ran with a host of great sessions in Portuguese, covering RTTI, App Tethering, DataSnap and FireDAC and also InterBase. Back in December I hosted the product Launch of InterBase XE7 at CodeRage 9, and it has been great working with Dormevilly and Fernando to get an updated Brazilian Portuguese version done, including some of the great capabilities we have today with Change Views. Great job guys 🙂
Programming with Delphi & InterBase
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish.AcceptRead More
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may affect your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
