Lachlan Gemmell

Impressive looking software, just the wrong side of the world.

If I remember correctly the DevJet Documentation Insight version that was bundled with previous IDE versions had a template that improved the appearance of the Help Insight. See here for more info from DevJet. Whether you should use the version from the DevJet site or from your XE5 I'm not sure.

The IDE/installer have trouble reaching the Embarcadero servers on old operating systems due to their out of date HTTPS encryption. If you're using one of these old operating systems you need to update the default Windows HTTPS encryption method. https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/3140245/update-to-enable-tls-1-1-and-tls-1-2-as-default-secure-protocols-in-wi

If you're using Windows 7 you might need to apply this security update. The outdated encryption in Windows 7 prevents the IDE from reaching the Embarcadero servers. https://support.microsoft.com/en-au/help/3140245/update-to-enable-tls-1-1-and-tls-1-2-as-default-secure-protocols-in-wi

Take a look at TFDMemTable.Data. It doesn't do exactly what you want but it's close.

There's also a problem with the IDE accessing GetIt on Win7 related to out of date OS encryption. There's instructions from Microsoft on how to rectify that.

I see the question was asking for threadsafe read-only access so I agree an TFDMemTable will be suitable for his needs.

Back in 2014 the lead architect of FireDAC confirmed it is not threadsafe. That was quite a while ago but to the best of my knowledge that has not changed.

I'd go ahead and install it, those debugger issues are a real pain. There's an uninstall for patch 2 if it does break your code. So far the only patch 2 specific compiler issue reported is related to using record constraints on generics where the record contains a managed type such as a string or a dynamic array. If you don't use record constraints on your generics (and you probably don't) then you're likely fine. To my knowledge the only library that's definitely broken so far is VSoft.Messaging. I haven't read anything that leads me to believe that Spring4D is broken.

It's all working just fine. Here's what the installer appended to my Delphi Win32 library path C:\Users\Lachlan\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\JEDICodeLibraryJCL-3.4\lib\d27\win32;C:\Users\Lachlan\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\JEDICodeLibraryJCL-3.4\source\include;C:\Users\Lachlan\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\JEDIVisualComponentLibraryJVCL-3.9\lib\D27\win32;C:\Users\Lachlan\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\JEDIVisualComponentLibraryJVCL-3.9\common;C:\Users\Lachlan\Documents\Embarcadero\Studio\21.0\CatalogRepository\JEDIVisualComponentLibraryJVCL-3.9\Resources

No problems here. Correct JCL/JVCL properly installed themselves from GetIt into Delphi 10.4.

It might not be perfect yet but at least there's a path forward, rather than the hopelessly broken error insight we've been putting up with for the past 15 years. Red squiggles that go away eventually is definitive progress compared to red squiggles that had no hope of ever disappearing.

I've gone back to Embarcadero to resume my request to transfer my license to a Network Named User. Would you and @Uwe Raabe be willing to summarise the setup of your ELC servers and mention any gotchas you encountered please?

Back in January I spoke to EMBT about switching to a Network Named License. I backed out when they told me that the license agreement restricts you to just 3 installations. I knew from your blog posts that back in 2018 they weren't enforcing this restriction, but I was worried that had changed. Sounds like that's not the case?