Anyone using Clever Components?

[JonRobertson 72]

Does anyone actively use Clever Components?

 

I downloaded a trial last week and opened a ticket with questions on Monday. There has been no response or update on my ticket.

 

Is there an alternate way of contacting support aside from their ticket system?

 

Thanks

[Sherlock 663]

Assuming they really are based in the US you may have caught them in the middle of a 4th of July party. I'd give them till next week before moving on.

[JonRobertson 72]

20 minutes ago, Sherlock said:

Assuming they really are based in the US

I doubt it. The domain register is in Germany and the registered name servers are in Russia. 

[Lajos Juhász 293]

That could explain that they are not present on FB (last post from 2022), YT last video is 3 years old.

[Anders Melander 1795]

To me it looks like it's a Russian company pretending to be a US company - If it's even a company.

[Attila Kovacs 629]

Yes, I'm using it actively. Don't expect rushed answers; the situation must be complicated, obviously.

Otherwise, the components are mature and have been working well in production for years.

 

Is your question technical?

 

[JonRobertson 72]

12 minutes ago, Attila Kovacs said:

Is your question technical?

Yes. Several questions, about the Database Comparer VCL components.

 

I downloaded the trial and samples of Database Comparer. With the prebuilt DBComparerDemoAdo, I attempted to compare two versions of one of our databases. The result was "Update script is empty" even though there are certainly differences in the schema of the databases.

 

There are some messages in the log indicating an issue, such as "ambiguous column" and "field not found". However there is no additional information to give insight, such as the DB objects that triggered the errors.

 

I hoped that "The trial version can operate inside Delphi / C++Builder IDE only, all other features are completely available without any restrictions" was accurate. There is no mention on the download page of other restrictions. The trial version appears to be limited to extracting only a few DB objects.

The help file is unhelpful on most topics, for example:

TCustomScriptExtract.ScriptFileNames
property ScriptFileNames : TStrings;

A vast majority of the help topics are like this, lacking any description aside from the Pascal definition. Without source, it is difficult to determine the capabilities without better documentation.

 

One of the most important capabilities that I need to test is how well the components handle dependencies between database objects. What order are objects created? If there are stored procedures or functions that depend on other stored procedures or functions, are these created in the correct order so the creation scripts do not fail?

 

How can I iterate through DBStructure.Metadata properties (such as Tables, Views, and Procedures) by name? I don't see a way to get a list of the names of the objects that were extracted, a count of the objects, or a way to iterate them by index. If I have a list of table names, how do I use .Tables['MyTable'] to get the CREATE script? I've tried .Body, .CurrentDefinition, .SourceDefinition, .Text, and .SQLExec (to get to .SQLExec.Statements, but .SQLExec is nil).

 

I greatly appreciate any insight you or anyone else can provide. I need to make a recommendation on purchasing either Database Comparer VCL, Delphi HTML Component Library (primarily for the SQL Library components), or writing my own, which I started investigating today.

[timfrost 78]

I have used bits of their Internet Suite for over a decade. Looking back over the few tickets I have opened, the response time has varied between two and ten days.  Not much more than it used to be when Sergei just responded to e-mails.  I agree the help file is a bit primitive but they also have a large library of examples and tutorials for the Internet Suite on their site and on Github. I know nothing about their other products, but the ones I use are pretty solid. For this reason, and the fact that I have the source code, I have never really worried about where their offices are, or how many people are in the 'Clever Components Team' which appears under Sergei's e-mail signature.

[MichaelT 6]

17 hours ago, Sherlock said:

Assuming they really are based in the US you may have caught them in the middle of a 4th of July party. I'd give them till next week before moving on.

The whole MS Microsoft ECO-System gained it's competitive advantage by off-shoring to Russia in the 1990s at the time of Y2K (in comparison to IBM). It has always been about (big) Enterprise(s) and nothing else. Afterwards there have been several economic development programs in the U.S. aiming at moving companies to the West in a legal sense at least (subsidies for founding companies).

 

It's more or less a copy of the British off-shoring (deindustrialization of England in the 1970s) idea. As far as business is concerned no change with Russia so far. If you think of the prime minister of Estonia, she's touting extreme Anti-Russian propaganda on one hand and her husband still does extensive business with Russian companies on the other still.

 

A second reason was a gain in reputation by setting up the company in the U.S. and within the U.S. in the state with the most restrictive terms and laws concerning business (SQL Detective & Co for example). The one who setup the business portion is a former director of Oracle Marketing manger from Austria and 'friend', a big word, of mine.

 

The economy of Russia in contrary to the E.U. is far more liberal and younger, so it's no surprise that one-man shows and smaller companies have a fair chance to succeed. When we grew up in Austria during the so called steel-crisis in the mid 1980s the situation was not that bad as in Russia in the 1990s but from the perspective of the material flow the Germans put their goods into their shelves setup up here (Aldi/Hofer). At the peak of this evolution we had three kind of shops for food. Discounters, luxury stores and market stands at the backyard of the parts in the city populated by the Turkish community offering the best fruits and vegetables one could grab.

 

Pretty much the same happend to the vast majority third-party vendors after 10 years as far as Delphi was concerned. Things don't work out this way, such transition things happen in a well organized manner in order not to run into shortages.

 

Local products disappear for about 10 to 15 years from the Business to Customer part of an classic industrial consumption society an move into B2B, especially when evolving from non-industrial lines to industrial ones (carpenter vs. . Another trick in Austria was to invest free business and the matching licenses and everyone with money on the savings account could get one and access the product from B2B. Follow the model and introduce exceptions (to the rules) whenever applicable. In the meanwhile some carpenters turned their small companies into furniture factories (more automation, machines instead of heavy tools) and tourism as well as the business with Russia was the supporting driver of this evolution. What was needed, was a higher price level.

 

A third tendency was to cut off the growing dominance of shops from Russia (in a sense of protection) on the Huge Java stacks for example in middle of the first decade after Millennium shift.

[johnnydp 20]

Solid components, anyway now from about a year it looks more like abandoned project (no support) and releases are very very rare now.

[pcoenen 1]

No news from them for quite some time, what pity. Open tickets are not answered anymore. 

Edited October 8 by pcoenen

[Dave Nottage 559]

6 minutes ago, pcoenen said:

No news from them for quite some time, what pity. Open tickets are not answered anymore. 

Sergey pushed a change to this repo 2 months ago, so he was doing something. It's a shame if they're not responding to customers.

[timfrost 78]

Clever Components is one of our software-library suppliers who used MyCommerce to process payments. We last paid for annual support/updates renewal in March this year, which may have just squeezed through to Clever before Digital River went quiet; or may not. Reading how other vendors have been affected makes me wonder if Clever have been starved of funding also. 

[gkobler 38]

i use the Database Comparer VCL components.

I had an update subscription, but after I paid for another year and never received an update or answers to my support tickets, I decided to cancel the subscription. I can continue to work with the components since I have the source code.

[JonRobertson 72]

On 10/20/2024 at 7:45 AM, gkobler said:

i use the Database Comparer VCL components

Those are the components that I was considering. I gave up on getting the trial to do what I needed and wrote my own. Luckily I only have one RDBMS to support.

[delphidelphi 0]

Unfortunately obsolete abandoned, used to be the best....

IMHO mycommerce should stop selling that if there is no support as more users reporting.

Users paying not only for code but mainly for support which seems to be non-existing now.

 

 

[John R. 18]

21 hours ago, delphidelphi said:

IMHO mycommerce should stop selling that if there is no support as more users reporting.  

Well if they are still using MyCommerce, chances are that they are abandoned as this platform is screwing all of its customers. See: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/15/digital_river_runs_dry_hasnt/

[johnnydp 20]

2 hours ago, John R. said:

Well if they are still using MyCommerce, chances are that they are abandoned as this platform is screwing all of its customers. See: https://www.theregister.com/2024/10/15/digital_river_runs_dry_hasnt/

Thanks John for this post. Well, very interesting info which puts new light, maybe they scammed Sergey first that's why clever guys disappered? Or why not both ways? ☺

Would be good if anyone from clever could commet there and cut speculations..

Edited November 4 by johnnydp

[timfrost 78]

I have used a Clever Components support ticket (I have never had any other way to contact them) to send Sergey a link to this thread and ask him to comment. 

[johnnydp 20]

On 11/4/2024 at 5:25 PM, timfrost said:

I have used a Clever Components support ticket (I have never had any other way to contact them) to send Sergey a link to this thread and ask him to comment. 

No hope, IMO it's gone 4ever.

Edited November 14 by johnnydp