Hi Tim

Just a bit of feedback from a new user to EWB which I thought might be useful. I've been an EDB customer for a while, am a Delphi Developer and need a web portal for our small ERP app.

I've evaluated EWB probably 3 or 4 times, and always been unable to get a proof of concept which I'm happy with. The stumbling block has also been SSL support. I loved the dataset functionality in the built in web server but for a public facing app SSL was a must. I was a little wary of going down the 'roll your own json' approach as in reality I've little experience of json and parsing json to apply the updates seemed like some work, what I was looking for was dataset like functionality. I looked at the PHP dataset provider, but again, a decent learning curve with php.

We were going to go with ASP.NET but in the final evals, the speed of front end development was so quick in EWB I decided to bite the bullet and look at json at the back end.

Now, having looked at actually building json in Delphi with the use of the EWB adapters it is trivial, and you can deploy using webbroker, data snap et al. once you've figured out how it works. The problem is there are no examples and certainly a couple of 'gotchas' particularly with turning off caching in TWebresponse for the browser in the IDE to not cache the data.

Which is kind of my point, for Windows Delphi Developers looking to move to the web with little or no experience of json I think it would be a great idea to put together some simple Delphi server side demos which work out of the box.

I would have expected me to be the perfect target customer for EWB, already having EDB but almost didn't purchase because I couldn't see a working example of how I could easily create the solution I needed.

Anyhow, I'm now a happy customer.

Hope this is in some way helpful.

Chris,

while I agree with you that there are not enough samples to help beginners or just to help with the decision to use EWB or not...

I am using EWB for applications that have to transfer all data in a seure way. That was the reason why I wrote my own webserver with Indy components when the early versions of EWB came out. Meanwhile I switched back to Tim's server - it' just better.  

Having bought Delphi XE5 I'm able to write all the modules I need and things turn out to be quite simple once you got it.

For security I use sTunnel which was recommended here several times and is easy to install und to configure.

Hope that helps a bit. If you have any other questions, please let me know.

Regards Uli

>  it is trivial ... once you've figured out how it works.

I agree. I came at it from a RemObjects SDK point of view, having done remote data
transfer between Delphi clients, and doing the work to make EWB connect was easy
thanks to other's who had done the work and posted the examples. It is though
perhaps hard to show how many variations on the server there are in a demo. I
wonder how we can help Tim with this. I've shown my web shop example, but there is
no source for that!

/Matthew Jones/

(Matthew Jones) wrote:

> I wonder how we can help Tim with this. I've shown my web shop example, but there is
>no source for that!

Now that I've done my proof of concept, I'm not going to be back on web dev for a month or so, once I do I'll try to start with a very simple web broker app and post the source to binaries.

Uli Becker wrote:

>I am using EWB for applications that have to transfer all data in a seure way. That was the reason why I wrote my >own webserver with Indy components when the early versions of EWB came out. Meanwhile I switched back to Tim's >server - it' just better.  

>Regards Uli

Hi Uli

Thanks for that, just had a quick wander through the web server, now I know how it works and the TEWBdatabase and TEWBdataset components work in delphi what do I miss by not using the built in webserver?

Chris,

> Thanks for that, just had a quick wander through the web server, now I know how it works and the TEWBdatabase and TEWBdataset components work in delphi what do I miss by not using the built in webserver?

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean.
Are you talking about Delphi or Elevate WebBuilder?

Uli

Uli Becker wrote:

>Sorry, I don't understand what you mean.
>Are you talking about Delphi or Elevate WebBuilder?

Elevate Web Builder (Well Both Really).

There are 2 Delphi Components which either get installed when you install elevate web builder or elevate web builder modules (probably web builder modules) these components are used on a Delphi data module to both automatically create json from any Tdataset descendent which you can then return to the browser using delphi webbroker or delphi datasnap and to apply updates to a dataset from json generated from an elevate web builder database 'commit'

Uli

Chris,

> There are 2 Delphi Components which either get installed when you install elevate web builder or elevate web builder modules (probably web builder modules) these components are used on a Delphi data module to both automatically create json from any Tdataset descendent which you can then return to the browser using delphi webbroker or delphi datasnap and to apply updates to a dataset from json generated from an elevate web builder database 'commit'

Ok, I got it. But what do you mean by "what do I miss by not using the
built in webserver?" The modules are used with the WebServer.

Uli

Uli Becker wrote:

Ok, I got it. But what do you mean by "what do I miss by not using the
built in webserver?" The modules are used with the WebServer.

Sorry, I Misunderstood, I was wondering what advantages using the built in web server would give me over using the approach I was going to use, just wondering if I have overlooked something.

Chris,

I can tell you how I handle things:

1. Desktop application built with Delphi: EDBServer running on a remote
server, local EDB database replicated with the remote EDB database.

2. Web application built with EWB: EWBServer running on a remote server
with different modules. Using sTunnel for secure sites.

3. Android application built with Firemonkey: no solution till now
except embedding a browser component and displaying the EWB application
without browser. But looks nice and is a simple solution.

All apps use the same EDB databases.

Uli