How upgrading from Delphi 7 to Delphi 12 eliminated 15 monthly support tickets and unlocked Linux deployment.

[Serge Pilko 4]

 How upgrading from Delphi 7 to Delphi 12 eliminated 15 monthly support tickets and unlocked Linux deployment

 

In May 2024, we were contacted by a European leader in natural gas measurement systems. Their software was partly built in Delphi 7 and partly in C#. It had become difficult to maintain. 

 

The company wanted to migrate to Delphi 12, modernize the UI, and enable Linux deployment, without breaking existing functionality.

 

Our team faced and handled the following challenges:

 

• The project relied on Delphi 7. That version lacked full Unicode support. The framework used ANSI strings by default, and this created critical limitations for modern global applications.
• The legacy app only ran on 32-bit Windows, using outdated Win32 APIs and hardcoded paths (C:\Data\). This prevented deployment on Linux cloud servers (AWS/Ubuntu).
• The app was built on obsolete BDE components and unsupported libraries. 

 

Here's what we did:

✅ Migrated from Delphi 7 to Delphi 12

✅ Replaced BDE and Indy 9 with FireDAC and Indy 10

✅ Refactored code for cross-platform compatibility

✅ Delivered a modernized UI with preserved workflow familiarity

 

We achieved:

- 15 support tickets per month were reduced to zero

- Windows-only application is now cross-platform

- Overall, the application is more prepared for future challenges

 

A few months later, the client returned for an estimate to migrate other Delphi projects to a web-based platform.

 

If you want to see the full story, with the challenges and solutions broken down, follow the link https://www.softacom.com/cases/modernizing-industrial-software-with-delphi-12/  

 

[Die Holländer 87]

1 hour ago, Serge Pilko said:

A few months later, the client returned for an estimate to migrate other Delphi projects to a web-based platform.

I'm looking forward to the full story of this project.

Are you going the Delphi route (webserver, webcore, UniGui, etc..) or (Java)script API - end-points - back-end HTML CSS front-end route?

 

1 hour ago, Serge Pilko said:

 

✅ Migrated from Delphi 7 to Delphi 12

✅ Replaced BDE and Indy 9 with FireDAC and Indy 10

✅ Refactored code for cross-platform compatibility

✅ Delivered a modernized UI with preserved workflow familiarity

Bravo ! 😎🏅🏆

Edited 8 hours ago by Die Holländer