Firemonkey from simple to complex. What is FireMonkey? lack of support for customizing native classes

What is FireMonkey?

FireMonkey (FMX) is a framework for cross-platform development for both desktop systems (Windows, Mac OS + server support on Linux is planned in the near future) and mobile (iOS and Android) using the Delphi/C++ language.

Peculiarities:

• single code base for all platforms;

• any control (visual component) can be a container (parent) for other components;

• the presence of a very advanced relative arrangement (20 types) of components on the form;

• LiveBinding allows you to connect any type of data or information to any user interface or graphical objects;

• presence of form/component styles;

• Multi-Device Preview allows you to customize the visual presentation for each platform;

• FireUI Live Preview - displays the appearance of the application on real devices in real time.

Possibilities:

• use of the native API of each platform, as well as the ability to call third-party native libraries;

• interaction with all sensors (GPS, Accelerometer, Compass, Bluetooth (including LE) and others);

• support for push notifications, IoT;

• support for asynchronous HTTP requests;

• support for most databases (MsSQL, MySql, Oracle, PostgreSQL, MongoDB, etc.);

• working with Cloud Service (Amazon, Azure);

• Android Service support.

Cons (currently):

• lack of support for customizing native classes;

• implementation of specific things is either impossible (widgets, extensions (iOS), etc.) or a dance with a tambourine is required (background service, broadcast message, etc.);

• Customization of the Splash screen (initial screen) is, to put it mildly, lacking;

• FMX controls use their own rendering (visualization, drawing), which is purely visually similar to the native one;

• the use of native controls involves large body movements;

• when there is a lot of nesting of components, incredible things happen: the application crashes in various places, loses focus, freezes, etc.;

• the information content of debugging an application on mobile platforms is zero;

• descriptions of errors on mobile platforms are reduced to the useless “Error 0x00000X”;

• compilation time wants to be the best for medium and large projects;

• the need to use a file to polish mobile applications for each platform;

• no support for Intel Atom architecture;

• inadequate price compared to competitors.

Pros:

• very active development of both the product and the community lately, support for more and more new technologies;

• the presence of a huge number of free and commercial components;

• The speed of the application is very close to native;

• very advanced visual editor and environment in general, the presence of styles;

• the ability to test an application on Win, and only then deploy it on devices, which greatly speeds up development;

• change mode/platform with a flick of the wrist;

• PAServer provides easy interaction with MacOs when developing for Apple OS;

• 3D graphics support out of the box.

In conclusion, I want to say that over the past couple of years FireMonkey has grown into a professional tool for cross-platform development of business applications and more. Many shortcomings are gradually being resolved and with each release the product becomes more modern and self-sufficient, and the existing skepticism towards the Delphi language itself, associated with many years of stagnation, also disappears. Writing new projects in FireMonkey is “safe” and promising.

Released in September last year, Delphi XE2 contains a record number of innovations.
Brief overviews of the capabilities of Delphi XE2 have already been published on Habré. But, obviously, the most striking innovation is the FireMonkey platform, and here I would like to pay a little attention to it.
I have made a small selection of links to materials that, I hope, will help you get a more or less adequate idea of ​​this platform. But first, for those who are not in the know, I will briefly tell you what FireMonkey is.
Embarcadero Technologies positions FireMonkey as a platform for creating rich business applications for Windows, Mac and iOS. Moreover, this platform is native to each OS, i.e. When running an application created using FireMonkey, no additional add-ons are used.
FireMonkey links directly to a native (from an OS perspective) graphics library such as OpenGL or DirectX. Thus, the best solution from a GPU point of view is proposed.
The core of the FireMonkey architecture is a powerful library of classes (including visual components).
The target platform is selected during the compilation process.
The first version of FireMonkey only supported Win32, Win64, MacOSX and iOS, but Embarcadero plans to port it to several other platforms in the future.

What should you consider?

Although the FireMonkey platform provides extensive tools for developing 3D applications, it should not be considered a game engine. FireMonkey is positioned specifically as a platform for developing business applications.
The product is currently in the initial stages of its evolution. And many functionality FireMonkey is undergoing changes, both qualitative and quantitative.

I hope the links below will help you understand the main features of the new platform.
Official product page on the Embarcadero website (Russian)

Among the English-language material I would like to highlight the series (English)

What to see?

Concerning latest version Delphi, there is more video material dedicated to the capabilities of the product and how to work with it than ever before. Both official, from Embarcadero, and from independent developers. There are a lot of videos about FireMonkey on YouTube, you can just use the search. Among this abundance of material, I will highlight a series of three videos from Marco Cantu - RAD in Action landing page, thus giving my research a vector of usefulness.

You are probably aware that Embarcadero is actively promoting its new vision of creating a cross-platform GUI - FireMonkey ( they call it a framework, but for its current state it sounds too cool). One competition after another is announced on the RuNet, webinars are held, and although the quality of the latter leaves much to be desired, the activity is encouraging. Now, actually, to the topic. As part of the last competition, it was proposed to develop some kind of application for learning. And yesterday another work appeared authored by Evgeniy Chmel ( I don’t know if this surname is inclined or not). Unlike the simple “one-form” ones seen earlier, here an attempt was made to pull the monkey by all its limbs: stylization, 3D, shader effects ( Embarcadero evangelists love to talk about GPU accelerated graphics :))). Let's see what came of it. For those who have not watched the webinars, I will make a small digression. At one of the webinars, Embarcadero evangelist Vsevolod Leonov told a heartbreaking story about how he had to “reboot the computer, specifically, hard” (this is a quote) due to the fact that the Silverlight SDK and Windows emulator Phone 7 “didn’t work” (this is a quote) on his computer because... They didn't like the video adapter or GPU settings. But applications developed using FireMokey, Vsevolod continues, are not at all demanding hardware. Let's see how he lied to us. Process Explorer v15.05 from Mark Rusinovich will be our impartial witness. So, download Evgeniy’s application and launch ( I don’t provide screenshots of Evgeniy’s application, they are available at the link to his work. Note the blurry fonts).

Launched the application. Let's look at consumption:

Immodest, but you can forgive” advanced technology" Go to the “Lessons” section and select “Lesson 5”. The stage preparation begins. This process is long ( It took me a little over a minute, on a quad-core Phenom II with a frequency of 3.3GHz), be patient. The stage is built. Let's look at consumption:

The monkey was well fed. Very well. Now try moving your mouse over the answer option buttons. It feels like the GUI reacts very sluggishly, doesn’t it? Look at the CPU usage graph ( I mean you should try it yourself, on your computer) – at these moments its load approaches 100% ( I had ~21.5% for a quad-core processor, which is equivalent to 86% for a single-core). But someone told us about GPU accelerated graphics. Okay, let's move on. We answer all the questions in the lesson. Let's look at consumption:

Are your eyes widened? Now look, for comparison, how much the 3D shooter FarCry consumes with active gameplay ( the level is called Factory, if anyone is interested) running in full screen mode 1440x900:

Draw your own conclusions.

More than three years have passed since the CodeGear division, responsible for the creation of world-famous tools such as Delphi, C++Builder and JBuilder, as well as the Interbase database management system, became part of Embarcadero Technologies, known for its tools for database design and administration , and two years since we discussed on the pages of our magazine what to expect in the development of tools that are so popular with Russian developers. We asked David Intersimone, vice president of developer relations and chief evangelist at Embarcadero Technologies, and Kirill Rannev, head of the Embarcadero Technologies representative office, to talk about what new has been done in this area over the past two years and what to expect in the near future. Russia. For our youngest readers, we will inform you that this is not the first interview that David and Kirill give to ComputerPress - our cooperation has been going on for the second decade. And for about the same number of years, we have periodically published reviews of database management tools, in which much attention is paid to Embarcadero products.

ComputerPress: David, your division has been part of Embarcadero for three years. Two years ago, you were enthusiastic about it becoming part of a company close to your goals and spirit. Has anything changed during this time? Do you and your colleagues still have the same enthusiasm?

Yes, I'm still very enthusiastic. The main change that has occurred since we became part of the Embarcadero company is that a lot of investment has been made in the development of Delphi. The number of people working on development tools has increased, and the number of technologies that we can develop or, if necessary, acquire, has increased.

The release of RAD Studio XE 2, which we plan to demonstrate in Moscow, is the largest release of this product with enormous capabilities and a large number of supported platforms since the first version of Delphi, created for the 16-bit version of Windows and which was an innovative product that combined component approach and compilation into machine code. Now we support development not only for Windows, but also for Macintosh, not to mention web development and creation of applications for mobile devices, and these applications for different platforms can have a single code.

The new development platform - FireMonkey - is a joint effort between Embarcadero and the recently acquired Russian firm KSDev from UlanUde, a manufacturer of components for vector graphics, DirectX and OpenGL, graphics effects technologies and Delphi components using GPU with PixelShader 2.0. We acquired the company KSDev (see ksdev.ru) a year ago and started collaborations to create a multi-platform development tool that includes the FireMonkey application development platform with Delphi and C++Buider components for application user interface creation, database integration, GPU graphics processing, and operating system integration.

Using FireMonkey, you can create an application that runs on the CPU and GPU together, and then use different compilers and Run-time Libraries (RTLs) to compile it for Windows, Mac OS, or iOS. Instead of learning to program using different graphics libraries, learning the APIs of different platforms that have different coordinate systems and different capabilities, developers using Delphi and C++Builder can use the same component-based approach, visually editing forms and connecting to databases by moving the component with the mouse. This is a fundamentally new way of creating applications that run on different platforms, and it is the future. If you want to add support for other operating systems and platforms to your application, you don't need to design and develop it again - you just need to recompile it.

We create new compilers that generate native code. Today there are Delphi compilers for 32- and 64-bit Windows versions, 32-bit versions of Mac OS 10. And we are working on the next generation of Delphi and C++Builder compilers that will allow you to create high-performance machine code for both these and other platforms such as Android or Linux, and keep the same design, same components, same code by using different compilers and runtime libraries.

As you can see, I have enough reasons for enthusiasm. And the developers I meet around the world know that Embarcadero is investing heavily in Delphi and C++Builder, as well as PHP development tools.

KP: What successes have you achieved in integrating the tools of the two companies over the past two years? What are Embarcadero's plans for the future in this area?

DI.: At the time CodeGear became part of Embarcadero, the company had development teams in Toronto, Monterrey and Romania, we were and are still located in Scotts Valley and in Russia, in St. Petersburg. Embarcadero had tools for developers and database administrators, CodeGear had tools for application development, but the latter also use databases. The merger of companies is a combination of expertise, knowledge in the field of databases, code optimization, including server code. The combination of companies also led to the creation of a new product, AppWave, a special technology for turning a regular Windows application into something very easy to use (like applications for the iPhone or other devices). AppWave allows you not to install an application, but simply select it and launch it from the prepared application storage server (app), and it will be executed on the user’s computer without making changes to its registry and system area file system. By the way, the AppWave application browser is written in Delphi. Embarcadero uses Dephi for its own development and our application development expertise.

iPhone (iOS) application created by
using the FireMonkey platform

You can also use the integration of our development tools and DB Optimizer to optimize SQL queries when creating applications. By passing SQL code directly into DB Optimizer, you can profile it, test it, and return an optimized version back to your development environment. Embarcadero's database expertise has also improved DataSnap technology. Thanks to the developers from Toronto, we gained a lot of knowledge about the architecture of multi-tier systems and databases. We now have joint expertise in creating server code and stored procedures in both companies. We have tools like RapidSQL and DB Change Manager, as well as development environments that simplify the creation of server code - for example, Code Insight and Code Completion technologies enabled the creation of SQL insight and SQL Completion technologies. Our common approaches to creating client and server code, our common philosophy, allow us to give common features to database management tools and application development tools.

Kirill Rannev: I want to add something important. From a commercial point of view, how we deliver our tools is very important. For example, new release RAD Studio XE 2 Ultimate includes the full suite of DB Power Studio tools. This is a very powerful set of tools, including the RapidSQL query development environment, the DB Change Manager change management tool, and the DB Optimizer query optimization tool, allowing you to carry out an important part of the development and deployment process by managing changes to the data model, database, code, and so on. This is a very good and correct combination of technologies.

DI.: But, if necessary, developers can use Subversion for version control source code and DB Change Manager for metadata versioning. You can use code profiling and DB Optimizer to optimize server code, RapidSQL to build and debug server code, and our development environments to build and debug applications. This combination of technologies in RAD Studio XE Ultimate Edition demonstrates the parallels between database and application development models. Most developers building business applications with Delphi and C++Builder work with databases and need these tools, and RAD Studio XE Ultimate Edition is a great combination for such developers.

KP: The modern user is no longer a user of the Windows platform alone. We use mobile devices, iPhone, iPad, devices based on the Android platform. This means that developers must begin to target different platforms without significantly increasing investment in training - that is, universal tools are needed. Obviously, it is unrealistic to expect the emergence of universal tools from platform manufacturers, and in this matter we can only count on independent tool manufacturers. How can we count on Embarcadero?

DI.: We still have a lot to do in terms of platform support. Today we are introducing support for the iOS platform for iPhone and iPad, then smartphones based on the Android platform, Windows 7 and Blackberry will receive our support. In RAD Studio XE 2, we started by building the FireMonkey platform for iOS and will then bring FireMonkey to other platforms.

At the same time, there are a large number of operating systems that support touch screens for phones, tablet computers and desktop devices, and we will continue to add support for them. In addition, there are voice, motion, biometric systems, accelerometers, so we must continue to expand FireMonkey so that all developers can take advantage of new platforms. For example, the Microsoft Kinect device was designed for the Xbox 360, and now there is a corresponding SDK (Software Development Kit) for Windows. And we already have examples where we use motion to control an application in much the same way that a mouse or keyboard would normally be used.

When you create applications with a lot of complex graphics, you generate a whole world of new user interfaces. If we are dealing with an operating room Windows system, we encapsulate its application software interface Windows API in the VCL library (Visual Component Library - a library of visual components that is part of the Delphi and C++Builder development tools. - Note ed.), which, by the way, can be used further. And in FireMonkey we encapsulate the operating system API. But today we manipulate shapes and graphics much more widely. You can also add physical properties to the space for animation and special effects. In addition, there are a huge number of other additional capabilities for creating user interfaces that we are going to implement in the next few years for different platforms, mobile and tablet devices.

Microsoft recently announced detailed information about Windows 8, which is due out in a year. We will support these innovations in the VCL library and the FireMonkey platform. But Delphi is a development tool designed not only for Windows, but also for Macintosh, iPhone and iPad. We also develop our PHP products, support jQuery Mobile, use the iOS API to develop mobile client applications, and create server-side PHP applications using wizards and tools to generate client-side JavaScript, HTML, and cascading style sheets. We can create packages from PHP applications and native-code client applications for iPhone iOS, and such a client will communicate with PHP server. And he, in turn, will communicate with the database server and with web services - with everything that is needed for business.

RadPHP XE2 development environment. Creating a mobile web application
using jQuery Mobile components for iPhone 3G

In other words, we plan to expand the capabilities of FireMonkey and VCL, including support for mobile platforms.

KP: Could you tell us more about the FireMonkey platform?

DI.: As I already noted, the VCL library created for Windows will continue to develop and improve. But today, if you want real business application development, you have to create them for different platforms. This is what the FireMonkey platform is designed for. It supports the creation of high-resolution, high-performance user interfaces 3D graphics, high frame rate and, importantly, uses a graphics processor for this.

You can use such capabilities when creating scientific, engineering and business applications. Such applications can connect to databases using dbExpress technology, still using non-visual components familiar to developers, such as ClientDataSet or DataSource, use DataSnap technology, connect to any database, SOAP and REST servers. You can create attractive controls, buttons with boxes, unusual tables and other interface elements, both in two and three dimensions. You can load a finished 3D model into the app and connect it to a 2D shape in which you can rotate it and view it from different angles. You can create a data cube or a 3D business chart and rotate it using your mouse, keyboard, or even a Kinect device, or you can step inside the cube and look at its different surfaces from the inside. And all this can be done using a high-speed GPU. The same application can then be compiled for another platform, such as Mac OS.

An application containing a rotating data cube,
placed on its edges

Or you can create a 3D shape from scratch and use cameras and lights to light and rotate parts of the user interface. The form designer already has a built-in environment to support a 3D user interface during design.

On Windows for working with two-dimensional graphics high resolution You can use Direct2D libraries, and for three-dimensional graphics - Direct3D. On Mac OS, the Quartz and OpenGL libraries are used for the same purposes. For iOS, the Quartz and OpenGL ES libraries are used. But all this is hidden from the developer - he uses the FireMonkey platform, its coordinate system and application programming interface, without thinking about these libraries, and can compile the same application for different platforms.

Let's remember what VCL is. VCL is a component wrapper around the Windows API. We deal with resources, menus, dialog boxes, colors, styles, Windows messages. Being a multi-platform wrapper, unlike VCL, FireMonkey retains the same event and component models, allowing you to think in terms of events (for example, OnClick, OnHasFocus, onMouseDown, and onKeyDown events), but handles Macintosh or iPhone events.

The FireMonkey platform also comes with complete system animation of user interface elements. It's certainly not a comprehensive Pixar-style animation system, but it does allow for effects such as bitmap animation, highlighting focus on a UI element, and working with vector graphics. More than 50 visual effects are available to the developer: blur, turning the image into black and white, dissolving, transitions, reflection, creating shadows - all types of effects available in modern graphics processors, which are now found in almost any computer. An application built using the FireMonkey platform sends commands to the GPU, which does all the work of displaying graphics and creating the user interface. Wherein CPU free for calculations and calls to the operating system. The developer can only place the components correctly.

The most fundamental thing about the FireMonkey platform is the way it builds the user interface. There are accommodation facilities raster graphics on interface elements such as menus, buttons, and scroll bars. At FireMonkey, we use GPU-powered vector graphics for this purpose. From a programming perspective, these are still the same controls, but all the work of displaying them is carried out by the graphics processor. We can apply styles to controls, make the application look like an application for Mac OS or Windows, create our own style, apply our own styles to interface elements (for example, make a button rectangular or round by changing its style in the form editor) - for this There is a style editor in the development environment. You can create your own style, or you can change the style of an already finished application.

FireMonkey Platform - Development Tools
and supported platforms

If you remember, the VCL library had a limited number of controls - containers (that is, allowing you to place other elements in them), and in FireMonkey each control is a container. This means that each control can contain any other control. For example, dropdown list items may contain images, buttons, edit fields, and other controls. You can also place components in layers.

The FireMonkey rendering system is quite flexible - it can use the Direct2D, Direct3D and OpenGL libraries, sending commands to the GPU. To achieve the same thing in VCL, you would have to generate a separate off-screen buffer, create an image in it by calling the appropriate graphics library functions, and then display it on the form.

Examples of graphic effects supported by FireMonkey

If you don't have a GPU, you can still apply 2D or 3D shapes and use FireMonkey controls. In this case, the FireMonkey platform will use the GDI+ libraries or other similar libraries and perform the same effects and animations or manipulation of 3D objects.

Another feature of FireMonkey is new system linking interface elements with data, open and flexible. There are two types of interface elements in the VCL: data-bound and non-data-bound (for example, TDBEdit and TEdit). In FireMonkey, every control can be associated with data of any type. This could be a simple expression, a field from a dataset, data from developer-created objects, or the results of method calls.

In addition, when creating an application, you can load a ready-made 3D model into it and use it - such capabilities are often required in both business and engineering applications. We have a client who creates applications for logistics. They had Information system, built using Delphi, and in it - an application that drew a plan and displayed information from data sources. They recently did something interesting - they drew a fully automated 3D warehouse in AutoCAD, and their application allows you to see how the automatic forklift moves around the warehouse and places goods on the shelves. And they put the data from the sources on the corresponding image.

Examples of changing application styles

KP: What 3D model formats are currently supported?

DI.: In this release we support loading models from AutoCAD, Collada (an open source 3D modeling tool. - Note edit.), Maya, an OBJ format that is supported by many 3D graphics vendors.

KP: What other formats are you planning to add?

DI.: We plan to add 3DS (3D Studio MAX), SVG (usually this format is used for 2D vector graphics, but sometimes for 3D), Google SketchUp. Perhaps we will support other formats.

KP: Does using 3D models in applications built with FireMonkey require a license for the appropriate 3D modeling tool?

DI.: No, it doesn't require it. All we do is read the model file. We're importing the model, but not exporting it (although, of course, you could write an application that saves the model in your own format). We do not pretend to be a manufacturer of 3D modeling tools - for this you can use AutoCAD, 3D Studio Max, Maya or any other 3D modeling tool, and import the created models into our applications.

KP: How performant are applications built with FireMonkey on modern hardware platforms?

DI.: Productivity is quite high. For example, rendering a 3D shape with three spheres and three light sources on MacBook Pro can be carried out at a speed of 100 frames per second. Or it can reach 600 - it depends on what exactly we are doing. Again, it all depends on the power of the GPU.

KP: Does this mean that you can create modern games using FireMonkey?

DI.: We do not position our development tools as tools for games. However, taking advantage of the high performance of modern graphics processors, you can create games using FireMonkey - after all, they are created using Direct3D or OpenGL.

KP: What work are you currently doing in the area of ​​supporting gesture recognition and other newfangled things? Is such support available?

DI.: We don't have gesture support in this release yet. Gesture controls will be added in a future release of FireMonkey, but in the meantime you can use the gesture support built into the operating system.

Mikhail Filippenko, director of Fast Reports, Inc.

K.R.: We have already said that FireMonkey technology has Russian roots - its foundations were created in our country, and then both the technology itself and its developers joined Embarcadero. In general, it is gratifying to see the growth of the Russian component in RAD Studio and Delphi. This includes the activities of our development center in St. Petersburg and the contribution of independent Russian developers. For example, Rad Studio XE2 includes the FastReport report generator - known all over the world and very popular in our country. He is originally from Rostov-on-Don.

KP: I would like to talk about compilers. What kind of compiler is used when creating iOS applications?

DI.: We don't have our own Delphi compiler for the iPhone or iPad—we haven't yet developed compilers for the ARM processors used in those devices. For iOS, we temporarily use the Free Pascal compiler and runtime library. But we are working on the next generation of compilers, including for AWP processors. But there are compilers for Windows and Mac OS, since both hardware platforms are based on Intel processors.

KP: What has been done in the field of creating compilers in the last two years?

DI.: We have 32- and 64-bit Delphi compilers for Windows and Mac OS. And we are working on a new generation of Delphi and C++ compilers. They're still a work in progress, but when they're done, we'll have Delphi compilers for ARM processors, Android platforms, Linux, and everything in between. And we will have 64-bit C++ compilers for Windows and other platforms, compatible with the latest C++ language standard just adopted by the ISO.

KP: What's going on with cloud computing support in Embarcadero development tools today?

DI.: In RAD Studio XE 2, we support moving applications to the Microsoft Azure or Amazon EC2 cloud using the Platform Assistant. And we have server components for Cloud Storage for Azure and Amazon S3 for storing tables, binary data, message queues. IN previous version With RAD Studio XE, we also supported deploying applications to Amazon EC2, but it lacked storage support.

Cloud computing support in RAD Studio XE 2

KP: Two years ago you talked about the new All-Access solution. How popular was it? What are its benefits for system integrators and developers?

DI.: The All-Access solution and the AppWave cloud tool are widely used around the world. They are designed to make it easier to use our own and third-party applications. In fact, it is a solution for managing licenses and application usage, and it is convenient for large companies. Smaller firms that don't have dedicated teams of people responsible for managing applications can put the application into a repository, select usernames from the database, and make those applications available without having to remember where. license key and how many licenses are available. All-Access and the AppWave browser are designed to manage both versioning and access control.

K.R.: The market is so diverse and the users are so different that it is impossible to cover all needs with one solution. That's why we strive for diverse packaging solutions. We have done a lot of work to unify the methods of licensing, license management and product installation. This line of solutions includes license and provisioning management tools not only for Embarcadero products, but also for any other product, including internal company developments.

Work on packaging development tools into effective kits for users is still ongoing. We have All-Access - a superset that combines all Embarcadero products. If a customer purchases All-Access Platinum, they receive all the tools found in Embarcadero. But sometimes this set turns out to be redundant; for example, for database specialists, we have made two other sets - DB Power Studio Developer Edition and DB Power Studio DBA Edition. The difference between them is that for the developer we offer RapidSQL - a tool for developing server code, and for the administrator there is built-in DBArtizan - a database administration tool, a broader product than RapidSQL. For professionals, we have the following All-Access suites: a suite that includes all products, DB Power Studio for developers, DB Power Studio for administrators, ER Studio Enterprise Edition for architects and anyone involved in modeling. There are combinations for application development and for administrators. Delphi is a developer's tool, and it makes a lot of sense to add SQL development and optimization tools to it. Finally, DB Change Manager is a logical tool for managing the complexity of changes that occur to databases during their life cycle.

Thus, All-Access is the head of a large family of different product sets.

KP: If it's not a secret, who in Russia uses All-Access?

K.R.: We have customers who bought All-Access based on Delphi. Many of them create complex client-server systems with SQL Server and Oracle, and they immediately liked our cross-platform database tools. We have a client company that has been working with Delphi since the first version, and a year ago it switched from using Delphi to the All-Access set. Two tools that all developers at this company are guaranteed to use are Delphi and DBArtisan. And there are customers who came to All-Access from the database side. Their main task is to administer databases, but they also sometimes develop applications. Clients using All-Access include media companies, engineering companies and other industries.

Separately, I would like to focus on small companies. Very often in small teams the developer does everything, and such a company sometimes buys large All-Access product sets for one or two developers. In large teams, it is not encouraged for a developer to also perform, for example, the role of a database administrator, so small product sets are usually popular there, but in small companies such a combination of responsibilities is quite acceptable.

Delphi Architect is a heavily marketed product that includes modeling and programming tools. The number of copies sold is, however, less than the Delphi Enterprise version, but it is also large. I would like to note that in 2010 we turned out to be the best country in terms of sales volume, despite the fact that all countries experienced a crisis. This growth was associated not so much with economic factors, but with the fact that the version of RAD Studio XE, released at the end of 2009, turned out to be very popular. And for now we expect further sales growth.

We have taken another reasonable step, which is extremely popular in Russia. The degree of legalization of different versions of our products is different: the higher the version, the more legalized it is, because earlier software not so actively bought. Starting with RAD Studio XE, the license covers versions 2010, 2009, 2007, and even Delphi 7, a widely used product.

Today, developers are faced with the fact that they have both new projects and projects in support. A large number of projects have been transferred from earlier versions Delphi to version 7 and remains within this version, continuing to work on relatively small resources. No one is moving them to newer versions, but they are maintained in a viable state. And now we allow you to get both RAD Studio XE and Delphi 7 for little money (less than the price of a Delphi 7 license) - that is, we legalize the developer both for the implementation of new projects and for support projects.

KP: How do you assess the current state of the Embarcadero community?

DI.: This community is large and very demanding. They need everything immediately - they are developers. But sometimes it takes a long time to do something right.

A few years ago, we took the Windows component architecture and put it on Linux desktops. Now we see that this was not the right decision. The right solution is to create an application platform. Applications even across platforms have menus, windows, graphics, network access, and device access. Different platforms may have different models flow control or exception handling, but in the application code we see the same try blocks. Our job is to make it easier for developers to create business applications and compile them for the platforms on which they are intended to be used, regardless of how the instruction set of the corresponding processors is structured and what other features of these platforms are. And FireMonkey is exactly what you need to solve this problem.

KP: If a company creates a new device and wants it to be supported in FireMonkey, will this be possible?

DI.: With the new generation of compilers, which will have a platform-independent front-end and a platform-dependent back-end, this will be quite possible. In the meantime, for each operating system, we create a compiler and runtime library from scratch.

Any modern new device, as a rule, has a graphic user interface(many of them have dual core processor and GPU) and standard SDKs for developers. This makes it easier to create device support in FireMonkey. If the new device only has libraries for two-dimensional graphics like Quartz, we will be able to support such a device in FireMonkey, but this will take approximately several months. However, a lot depends on the platform: not all platforms support all features, for example, iOS does not have menus and dialog boxes and you will not be able to place the corresponding components on the forms of such applications.

KP: Has anything changed in the policy of working with partners? What is being done to increase the share of users of your products? What is being done in Russia?

DI.: Our partner ecosystem is broad - there are hundreds of manufacturers of tools and components not found in our products, and we have a technology partnership program. Therefore, a wide range of components, technologies and tools are available to developers. And the solutions they create for their clients are better than if they used only our products. And for sales we have offices in many countries, resellers and distributors.

K.R.: What is important to us is not the number of partners, but the quality of work of each specific partner. For now, we want to focus on working closely with existing partners, although the pool of partners remains open. We have many partners, and we must help them in terms of technology. We work with developers, and they know what they want, and they know what is available on the market, and the capabilities of partners must match this.

We have business partners who have seriously invested in Embarcadero as a business line - they have trained specialists, marketing our products, dedicated employees responsible for this line and monitoring what is happening with our products, price list, marketing. Naturally, they are more successful in terms of sales of our products than companies that sell our products occasionally.

KP: David, Kirill, thank you very much for the interesting interview. Let me, on behalf of our publication and our readers, wish your company further success in creating your amazing tools that developers need so much!

Questions asked by Natalia Elmanova

FireMonkey is the core technology of the "new Delphi". Please tell us about the goals, capabilities and technical aspects of this fundamentally new library. After a while, looking back, how difficult and justified was your refusal to further develop the super-popular VCL?

It was chosen as the main direction for the development of Delphi technology to achieve a specific goal - multi-platform development from a single environment, based on a single source code base, without the need for radical retraining of developers. Within the framework of the now classic and super-popular VCL, this was impossible; its connection with WinAPI was too close, one might say, “at the genetic level.”

VCL components did not have an “abstract” layer between the functional level in terms of the interface and the mechanisms for displaying them. Functional level— how it behaves as a control, what events it reacts to, what kind of user interaction it provides. Display— calling platform-oriented visualization methods as a certain image formed by raster objects and vector primitives. FireMonkey initially implemented the principle of strictly dividing the control into two components: “behavioral” and “visual”.

Vsevolod Leonov, Embarcadero Technologies

The first one will generally repeat not even the basics of VCL, but the essence of object-oriented programming. A component is a class; component classes form a hierarchy where families and modules can be distinguished. The class of a component is loosely related to how it is rendered.

The visual “picture” is formed dynamically; it is not rigidly written in the component class. The image or "style" in FireMonkey is loaded into the component when the application starts. We have some kind of functional frame for the component, and the “skin” or “cladding” can be changed, but why? It is so that FireMonkey applications look authentic on any platform - Windows 7, Windows 8, Mac OS, iOS and, in the near future, Android. This is something that the traditional monolithic class structure of the VCL could not provide.

Here, the technological approach plays a special role. In principle, you can take the VCL library and “stuff it” with WinAPI and all other possible platform calls. This can still be done on a very limited subset of components, but the VCL contains several hundred components, so this approach could simply “kill” the VCL. It was decided not to touch VCL, but to develop new capabilities on a new platform - FireMonkey. This technology It even has a certain technical elegance - at the time of assembling the project for a specific platform, the Delphi IDE connects the required compiler, and the interface components receive a platform style.

For the user, this is one click of the mouse and the same source code; for Delphi, it is many years of hard work by developers to create such a multi-platform library.

When it became clear that FireMonkey would be introduced as a separate new platform, the right coexistence strategy had to be chosen: Embarcadero did not want to negatively impact VCL users in any way. Therefore, we have chosen the following plan: VCL remains ideologically and architecturally stable to ensure the highest possible compatibility, making it easier to migrate projects to modern versions. The development of FireMonkey will follow a natural and parallel path, without regard to the VCL.

The weak point of this solution is the rather problematic migration from VCL to FireMonkey within the same project. But for a new project, a developer can choose FireMonkey to ensure the multi-platform nature of their resulting application. After the release of XE4 with iOS support, we can already talk about the bright competitive advantages of Delphi for a start mobile development in the corporate environment, which will be increased after the implementation of planned Android support.

Therefore, there is no obvious “refusal” from the development of VCL as such. In new versions, the VCL part of Delphi also develops. This includes 64-bit support, the introduction of styling for visual components, the implementation of a mechanism for flexible dynamic connections or “binding,” and the inclusion of the FireDAC library for working with databases in VCL projects. It’s just that, compared to the giant qualitative leap made by FireMonkey, progress in the VCL seems somewhat lackluster. But, be that as it may, VCL is an integral part of Delphi and will remain so for many years to come. Although the evolution of platforms and the current state of affairs in the field of OS for desktop systems and mobile devices are such that the future is definitely for FireMonkey.

In the interview we already discussed iOS support, let's tell our readers about the support for other latest technologies from the latest RAD Studio XE4, for example, such as Windows 8 and WinRT, 64-bit systems, MacOS and so on. Can you list what else you can offer to the modern programmer spoiled by innovations?

Most likely, a modern programmer is not “spoiled” by innovations. For major projects any “innovation” often results in a gigantic amount of work.

For example, everyone waited a long time, many immediately rushed to translate their codes into new platform. But it turns out that even very professional teams are not ready for this. Compiling 64-bit code does not mean working. “Sins of youth” began to surface, for example, using instructions assuming a 4-byte address size. Lack of test culture, coupled with technological unreadiness to implement this process in a short time.

And here - the larger the project, measured, say, by the number of lines of source code, the more careful and balanced programmers are with various kinds of innovations ranging from the appearance of a “button” in the interface to “syntactic sugar” in the compiler.

One of these “problematic” achievements was the release of Windows 8. Personally, as a PC user and simply a modern IT specialist, I am delighted with Windows 8. But for developers who were sent a batch of computers running Windows 8 with specifications for development under the new OS as a load, this means certain difficulties.

We tried to provide development support for the new interface of this OS as comfortably and painlessly as possible. Therefore, special styles have been introduced for both VCL and FireMonkey, and the programmer can either rebuild the application interface or create a new application that will be indistinguishable from the “native” one for Windows 8. appearance. Of course, there is a need for “native” support for Windows 8 through WinRT. But this is affected by the prioritization of goals in modern conditions. Mac OS, iOS, Android in the near future do not yet allow us to talk about full support for WinRT in the near future.

Embarcadero's strategic goal, of course, is multi-platform. The release of RAD Studio XE4 was key, primarily due to its support for iOS. An existing programmer using VCL can start developing for iOS in a matter of hours. Even simple mobile app can be instantly transformed into a powerful project operating within the existing infrastructure. Don't think it's easy new compiler to FireMonkey and a new style to ensure compliance with the iOS interface.

This includes a new visual designer, built-in support for various form factors, data access libraries, including the new FireDAC, and LiveBindings technology for flexible and dynamic linking with corporate data. All these innovations arrive simultaneously - for Windows, Mac OS, and iOS. operating system Mac OS is not developing so rapidly, so there are no problems such as the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8. But they appeared Retina displays, and this required special attention. Now any MacOS application created in Delphi XE4 automatically includes two styles - “normal” and “high definition”.

That. the same application can have the same high-quality “native” interface on any desktop computer from Apple.

Embarcadero does not want to “surprise,” “amaze,” or even “entertain” developers with its new innovative releases. Rather, on the contrary, the IT sphere is already full of various surprises: new devices, new platforms, new users, their new needs, new interaction scenarios. Add new software development technologies to this, and programmers simply will not have time to create new systems and existing ones - all they will do is migrate from one environment to another, from an old library to a new one, from one language to another.

But we do not profess rejection of everything new. We just want to ensure continuity of everything - code, interface, project, even professional skills when new platforms and devices appear. You could say that we are fighting unhealthy conservatism regarding new platforms through healthy conservatism in development tools. Don't expect exotic products, non-standard programming languages, or outlandish development tools from Embarcadero.

With us you will always find visual development, classical languages, “native” code, and let the target platforms for your applications, created in the same proven classical way, be new.