If you’re currently on the Professional Edition of Delphi, C++Builder or RAD Studio, you have a unique opportunity to benefit from our ongoing promotion on the Enterprise and Architect Editions.

To explore the features of UltraEdit and InterBase Server and the value they can add to your business, read this blog post.

That’s fine, you say, “but besides the extra tools and licenses, what can I get that doesn’t come with Professional? What makes upgrading to Enterprise worth the investment?”

In this blog post we’ll answer this question. We’ll look at the features differentiating the Enterprise Edition from Professional, the benefits they generate for you the developer, and the value you can deliver to your customers through better software with greater functionality.

A Big Leap: Enterprise Edition is for Advanced Network Connectivity And Data Access

The Enterprise edition of RAD Studio®, Delphi® and C++Builder® adds multiple enhancements and libraries to the Professional edition. These enhancements are designed to help you build highly connected applications and securely store enterprise data on mobile devices. In short, the Enterprise Edition is designed to enable applications that require remote data gathering and storage across the network.

How do RAD Studio®, Delphi® and C++Builder® Enterprise enable enhanced connectivity.

1. High-Speed Remote Database Access With FireDAC

FireDAC is a data access layer that supports, abstracts, and simplifies data access for high-performance applications. FireDAC provides a common API for accessing a range of popular database back-ends without affecting application performance.

The Enterprise edition of FireDAC adds network-level connectivity to local and embedded database connections. Migrating from Microsoft ADO to FireDAC is also very easy.

This is how one developer described their experience of FireDAC:

“We moved to FireDAC from ADO, and released the product as a major update. The customers are delighted, our application was immediately faster, easier to deploy and more stable.”

For more on migrating existing code to FireDAC, visit the Migration and Upgrade Center on the Embarcadero website.

2. Multi-Tier Development

The Enterprise edition enables multi-tier application development by providing the middle-tier API for client-side applications to connect to systems and databases. This middle layer creates a single point of access for connecting and managing these systems and databases, and a space for the business logic to exist independently.

These separate layers significantly reduce the complexity associated with developing enterprise-level applications, with load balancing, REST movement of data to the client tier, and ease of scaling.

The multi-tier options in RAD Studio®, Delphi® and C++Builder® are DataSnap, RAD Server and WebServer.

In contrast with DataSnap, RAD Server comes with push notifications, embedded secure JSON storage, user/group access control management, multi-tenancy support, and API analytics (see image above).

3. Targeting Linux

With Delphi you can reach Linux Servers with a shared code that also compiles for Windows. The result is superior speed and general performance, simplified development, and tremendous flexibility for developers and the users of their software.

RAD Studio’s RTL (Run-Time Libraries) enable development using a single code base that compiles native code for  Windows, macOS, Linux,  Android and iOS.

Linux is targeted by developers who need to have backend servers like RAD Server or DataSnap, and want to benefit from low hosting costs. With the Enterprise Edition and above they are able to target Linux. Meanwhile, the RTL enables targeting Linux with existing Windows code very simple. Linux also provides a great alternative to Windows for Kiosk applications.

4. InterBase ToGo Enterprise Data on Mobile

The Enterprise editions of RAD Studio®, Delphi® and C++Builder® come with an InterBase ToGo License included!

What does this mean for you the developer and your software users?

Development Speed

InterBase uses a single file format between development and production regardless of platform, significantly increasing development, testing and deployment speed.

InterBase also increases prototyping speed with advanced on-disk data encryption.

Multi-Platform Support

One of the few databases to offer multi-platform support for Windows and Linux, InterBase also comes with an embeddable version mobile (iOS and Android) and PC (Windows, Linux, macOS).

Advanced Data Security

Key security features that come with InterBase include role based permissions and the ability to use multiple encryption keys (even in the same data table).

Low Footprint, High Performance

InterBase is a small-footprint, highly flexible, fully-featured admin-free database with award-winning features like ChangeViews, which radically simplifies data change tracking and prevents the bloating of local caches with additional tracking fields.

The Enterprise Edition comes with a run-time royalty-free distribution license for InterBase ToGo for Android and iOS.

Combined with the 25-user or 50-user InterBase Server license you can get with Enterprise or Architect Editions respectively, the connectivity and reach of your applications can grow exponentially.

The graphic below lists the available features of InterBase editions, including ToGo and Server.

5. Enterprise Connectors

What can the Enterprise Connectors do for your software? Enterprise Connectors enable real-time access to live data without cloud-based intermediaries. They use a SQL standard for querying and updating data, which translates to faster development and fewer maintenance costs.

In partnership with CData, a company that builds extensions for FireDAC, the Enterprise Edition of RAD Studio®, Delphi® and C++Builder® can use these Connectors to query 180+ SaaS, NoSQL, & Big Data enterprise solutions using standard SQL.

RAD Studio Enterprise includes a CData EC Professional license to use data sources like GMail, DropBox, Facebook, Twitter, Slack, Paypal, Ebay, Trello, WordPress, Couchbase, Google Directory, and Jira!

In short, Enterprise Connectors make connecting to an application as easy as connecting to a database!

The connections are highly secure with TLS/SSL encryption options for all client/server communications included.

Enterprise Connectors come with a run time royalty-free license for your organization, and OEM licenses are available for wider distribution (available from CData).

For a full list on the apps EC’s can access, visit this page.

Conclusion

To sum up, the superpowers of the Enterprise Edition are advanced FireDAC connectivity for accessing databases on remote machines, multi-tier development of highly scalable and flexible applications, targeting for Linux server and desktop, enterprise-grade data security and storage for mobile devices with InterBase ToGo, and Enterprise Connectors accessing data from 180+ SaaS applications.

Ready to do much more with your software? Click here or click the graphic below!