Roger Cigol

It's called the April patch - but it's out now ! https://blogs.embarcadero.com/rad-studio-12-3-april-patch-available/

Hi @MrBlues I do wonder if you might have been better posting your question as a brand new topic rather than adding it on the end of a year old and only partially related post. Not to worry.... It is always better to start with a *.xsd schema file rather than an *.xml data file when creating transformations. The schema can (and usually does) contain more information about fields. However not every use case allows this (a schema may not exist or may not be available) and XML mapper is designed to work when you start with an XML data file (as you have done) The main purpose of XML mapper is as a design tool. You create a dataset mapping and from this you create a transform file *.xtr, The normal case is then to forget about XML mapper and just take your transform file and use this at run time in your Delphi (or C++) application. If you load the transform file back into XML mapper it does not contain any data and you get the blank fields (exactly as you have described). There are (rare?) cases where you want to load in the *.xtr transform file back into XML mapper (perhaps if you want to edit it, for example). To do this you need to store a copy of the original XML data file in with the transform file, at the time the transform file was created. This usually results in a much larger transform file and this "file size bloat" serves no purpose when the transform is used at run time in a Delphi or C++ app. For this reason XML mapper now has a check box that must be selected (before the transform file is created) that forces XML mapper to include the XML data file in the transform file. You can see this check box (called "Incl. XML Schema" on your first screen shot, towards the bottom left of the middle section of XML mapper. BACKGROUND: Earlier versions of XML mapper did not have this check box and always added the XML data to the transform file.

All good ! There is more than one way to skin a cat.....

Of course there ARE times when the use of ANSI strings makes sense. One example is when sending data to/from an external device down an RS232 port where the external device uses a protocol based on simple ANSI text. We have many real world cases such as this (eg Eurotherm temperature controllers). The key point that @David Heffernan makes is that you should choose your types carefully to closely (or exactly!) reflect your needs. Time spent thinking carefully about your type selection will save you time in the long run.....

@GabrielMoraru Sorry to disappoint: I do very little Android programming. I think for mobile devices error reporting by a separate message box would not fit a user interface very well. Every time I try and do anything useful (with other firm's/organisation's apps) on a handheld device I think "well the designer of the software didn't do a bad job but everything would be easier on my desk top". Then I get back to base and do the same actions on my desktop and guess what? everything is so much easier !

It is recommended to use the same installer system (ie iso or web) as you used for your 12.2 installation

It's good to know April Fools Day is not just a British thing !

My partner, Julie, is just back from Manhatten where here hotel room was on the 42nd floor. 🙂

Yes: one of the worst things about thread safe / non-safe issues is that they do not always show themselves. A ThreadSafety issue can remain unnoticed during all your development and then you send it off to your customer and it falls over immediately. It has happened to me. Any thread work needs very careful design so that such bugs (which are the hardest to find) are avoided in the first place.

We have successfully written a 64bit C++ Builder App that ran on a Windows 10 64 bit OS and talked to an MS Access database. But you need to use the microsoft 64bit access run time driver package. This cannot exist along side the MS Access program. So either you have to uninstall MS Access before installing the 64bit driver package or you run the 64 bit application in a virtual machine with the MS Access *.mdb and other files on a drive that the virtual machine can connect to.

Embarcadero have not dropped support for MS SQL Server. It's just not in "Professional". I think "Professional" has always been limited to local databases only. MS SQL Server would rarely be expected to use just for a local database.

I think you are being a little unrealistic here in terms of business costings.

I use PostgreSQL and all seems good to me.

And yes, the viewing of data at design time using a 64bit database does work with 12.3 (certainly with 64bit versions of postgreSQL which is what I work with). The 64bit IDE is a first step. Of course we would all like it to work perfectly and to have had it a year ago but at least this shows it is coming. I am very much in favour of Embarcadero releasing stuff with limited functionality but which works rather than trying to rush too much out too quickly and therefore it all being very buggy. They have gone down this route in the past but seem to have learnt that this puts customers off. They do now seem to be releasing smaller changes at a time but smaller changes that work. I think this is much better for us users.

Thanks @Uwe Raabe I knew it had to be somewhere - and I have now found both with the help of your hints!