Developers are increasingly being challenged to revitalize existing Windows applications by extending the user experience to new devices and form factors.
To help extend existing Windows applications with connected mobile devices, gadgets, sensors, and both cloud-based and on-premises services for customers in various vertical markets, Embarcadero Technologies has launched Embarcadero RAD Studio XE7, a complete solution to build connected apps for Windows, Android, iOS, Mac OS X, gadgets, and wearables. The new XE7 version of RAD Studio enables Delphi/Object Pascal and C++ developers to extend current Windows applications and build modern apps that connect desktop and mobile devices with gadgets, cloud services, and enterprise data and APIs.
“For the majority of our existing Windows customers that have existing Windows installations, this presents a whole new opportunity for them to breathe new life into existing applications,” said John "JT" Thomas, director of developer products at Embarcadero.
New RAD Studio XE7 Features for Building Connected Apps:
New Bluetooth Support
The new release makes Bluetooth connections now available for App Tethering. Developers can extend their existing Windows applications to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled devices, including Bluetooth LE for connecting to lower power devices. Hundreds of gadgets and wearables are immediately available to connect with existing Windows and mobile apps. “Out of the box, this means that thousands of gadgets are now supported and ready for developers to start developing these amazing solutions that are waiting to be built,” said Thomas.
FireUI Multi-Device Designer and UI Components
Traditionally developers had to build two completely different interfaces with separate code for different devices such as smartphones and tablets XE7 solves the problem of different form factors and provides a common interface that is optimized for specific devices and form factors, said, Thomas.
RAD Studio XE7 offers the ability to build a shared user interface that is optimized for specific devices and form factors. Developers can now get connected apps to market faster by developing for multiple platforms and device form factors simultaneously, with one shared master form and fine-tuned device specific views of that master form. A new behavior service API allows the framework to optimize for the capabilities and device form factor of the native platform to deliver the best user experience for that device.
“What it means is that developers have one project and one form factor across all these devices and they get to share all the UI code and event handling and controls across all these specific views and they still get to optimize it if they need for each specific view they are targeting,” said Thomas.
Parallel Computing Library
Developers can significantly boost multi-threaded app performance on multi-core systems with the new Parallel Programming library that increases the performance of existing C++ and Object Pascal code by parallelizing threads that can take full advantage of multi-core CPUs.
Enterprise Mobility Services (EMS)
When enterprises are mobilizing the workforce they have to enable secure access from data from services that go back and forth, getting information from SQL databases. Offered as a separate option that is charged for on a per user basis, the new Enterprise Mobility Services (EMS) provides a turnkey middleware server to enable user management and authentication, create loadable modules for custom APIs over REST, give developes the drivers to get enterprise SQL database access through REST for all major RDBMSs including Oracle, DB2, Informix, SAP ASE, SQL Server, and more. It includes an embedded SQL database and server-side SQL data storage that are secure and encrypted, as well as analytics that allow the organization to understand which users are accessing what, which devices are connected and which APIs are being used.
Other RAD Studio XE7 enhancements include: Object Pascal Language enhancements; RTL enhancements; database and FireDAC enhancements; new PAServer manager; and FireMonkey enhancements.
To download a free trial, go here.