Thinfinity VirtualUI - cloud-based conversion

[Mark Williams 14]

Has anyone had experience of the above (from https://www.cybelesoft.com/)?

 

It offers to convert Delphi apps into cloud based apps with just one line of code. Sounds too good to be true or is it not difficult to do this (never tried myself).

 

If it is a difficult process, I'm surprise this didn't come up on any searches on this forum.

 

Would appreciate feedback on above if anyone has experience of it and also generally on what is involved in the process using Delphi?

[Larry Hengen 39]

I downloaded and tried a development version and it was as advertised.  I think I had to change 1 line of code and voila....a browser based version.  That said, if you do some things like host an ActiveX, or WPF control in your app then it's not quite so straightforward.  For a smaller application it is certainly a solution that beats redevelopment as a  web app.  I don't think hosting a large app is a good long term solution due to the server resources required, but it's certainly worth some investigation.

[Ian Branch 127]

I have used TF for several years and it has been taken up by a couple of my Customers.

All with good success.

As indicated, in your source there is only the need to add one line of code.

The rest of the magic is in the installation & setup of TF.

Using D10.x.x, I have experienced issues with themeing via TF so I have disabled it for TF based Apps.  Not a big issue as far as I am concerned.

HTH.

Ian

[Mark Williams 14]

That all sounds very promising. Thanks for the comments. My app is fairly heavy duty and with a huge executable (which seems to be par for the course with Delph nowadays). It needs to access several dlls and an ocx. The ocx is mine and could be (possibly should have been)  written as a dll. Are there any issues you know of with dlls?

 

8 hours ago, Ian Branch said:

I have experienced issues with themeing via TF so I have disabled it for TF based Apps.

I use theming and would like to retain it, but it's clients who are asking for possibility of cloud app, so they can make the choice of living without it. I can keep in the desktop app version.

 

12 hours ago, Larry Hengen said:

I don't think hosting a large app is a good long term solution due to the server resources required, but it's certainly worth some investigation.

I was under the impression that the license fee charged by Cybelesoft included the hosting of the app. However, the hosting shouldn't be a problem. Each client would probably set up their own internal and external servers to host it.  That leads to another question and that's what sort of degradation in speed have you experienced between desktop and cloud?

 

12 hours ago, Larry Hengen said:

For a smaller application it is certainly a solution that beats redevelopment as a  web app.

What is actually involved in redeveloping as a web app? Is it possible in Delphi? I haven't seen anything anywhere dealing with this.
 

[Fr0sT.Brutal 900]

Probably you could look at UniGui as well

[Mark Williams 14]

29 minutes ago, Fr0sT.Brutal said:

Probably you could look at UniGui as well

Had a quick look. Very interesting. Looks like quite a bit of work to produce a large app and also I think it requires replacement of all visual components with their own. Couldnt't see some fast conversion script for this. Maybe it's as easy as copy and replace of pas and dfm file class names.

 

However, I rely significantly on virtualTreeView for display of db data. I don't think the treeview they provide would be suitable. Could convert to TListView, but I couldn't find that as an option on their components page. I don't use DGGrid's for various reasons, but could always consider that. 

 

All the same, worth keeping an eye and it could well be useful for "light" version of desktop apps.

[Ian Branch 127]

9 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

It needs to access several dlls and an ocx. The ocx is mine and could be (possibly should have been)  written as a dll. Are there any issues you know of with dlls?

Sorry.  No experience.  Having said that, the App & DLLs are all running on your Server so I wouldn't anticipate an issue.

9 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

I was under the impression that the license fee charged by Cybelesoft included the hosting of the app.

Not my knowledge/experience.  Runs on your own Server/PC that can be accessed via the internet.

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

23 hours ago, Mark Williams said:

 It needs to access several dlls and an ocx. The ocx is mine and could be (possibly should have been)  written as a dll. Are there any issues you know of with dlls?

An OCX  *is* a  DLL.

[A.M. Hoornweg 144]

On 1/15/2020 at 8:02 PM, Mark Williams said:

Has anyone had experience of the above (from https://www.cybelesoft.com/)?

 

I have just tried some of their live demos.  They do not work in my Opera browser but they do work with Edge. So depending on your browser, your mileage may vary.

[Morten Skovrup 6]

Example of a "large" VCL app (120 MB exe, using dll's, DB,...) running on VirtualUI. App is intended for desktop only, but VirtualUI allows to support users on MAC's, Linux... Works just fine, but needs a few more lines of code to handle uploads, downloads, etc. but it's doable. Resource use is heavy, but basically a matter of hardware on the server side.

Go to: http://coolselector.danfoss.com/ and launch "Coolselector Online" a bit down the page.

 

[Mark Williams 14]

3 hours ago, A.M. Hoornweg said:

An OCX  *is* a  DLL.

Of course, although an ocx usually has a visual element to it rather than just a library of procedure. I thought it may have a problem with ocx because of the visual element. Always best to check I feel.

[david_navigator 12]

What Microsoft licensing is required to use Thinfinity to provide an app as a SaaS solution ? 

 

Cybelesoft tell me that I don't need a CAL or an RDS license due to the way it works, but reading the Microsoft licensing I can't work out how they come to that conclusion. 
Are any of you Thinfinity users using it to provide a service to outside users and if so, what have you done licensing wise ?

[Keesver 23]

We are preparing to release our software using Thinfinity as an alternative to the desktop version. We did some tests and this showed it worked pretty good. We do want to change our application to make it look more 'web' alike. This means hiding the menu for example. Can't tell yet how performant it will be. You do need a server capable of handling the number of concurrent users of your application though.

We were told RDS licenses are not required because Thinfinity does not use the RDS services (which I can confirm after running multiple sessions on the same server without such license). I can't say if Microsoft agrees on this....

[david_navigator 12]

1 hour ago, Keesver said:

We were told RDS licenses are not required because Thinfinity does not use the RDS services (which I can confirm after running multiple sessions on the same server without such license). I can't say if Microsoft agrees on this....

What about CALs or are you running on Azure ?

[Keesver 23]

We run on Azure...

[david_navigator 12]

8 hours ago, Keesver said:

We do want to change our application to make it look more 'web' alike. This means hiding the menu for example.

What were you thinking of instead of a menu ?

[Mark Williams 14]

I've used it on one smallish app so far. It works perfectly with just one line of code. You may need to tweak a few things if you want to open documents, but it is very straightforward.

 

It took a little bit of time to get my server set up correctly and I needed support from Thinfinity to do this, but the support was superb.

[david_navigator 12]

I have a massive app that we converted to use Thinfinty. You can play with it here if you'd like to see the experience from a user POV
https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/

 

Alias: ashoka

Username: HireTrack_Admin
Password: 1234  

 

There are two areas where we still have issues - some DevEx components don't render properly in certain circumstances - e.g on the first form you see, one of the buttons doesn't get drawn fully until you move your mouse over it. I do have a fix for this issue, but there are other DevEx issues apparently, though we haven't hit any yet.
The other issue I've come across is launching a form that uses an embedded browser. That doesn't work correctly, though Thinfinity people are very reactive and have promised me a fix in the next week of so.

 

There are areas where we have If Thinfinity.active then in our code - especially anything that involves uploading or downloading files.
 

My biggest gripe with Thinfinity is the license management. We have our app running across about 10 servers, with one licensing server, but there's no way to see which server is using how many licenses - e.g. I can see that 50 licenses are in use, but not which machines are using them. This might not matter for your scenario, but it's an annoyance in ours.

 

David

[Attila Kovacs 629]

18 minutes ago, david_navigator said:

I have a massive app that we converted to use Thinfinty. You can play with it here if you'd like to see the experience from a user POV

just an empty page, do I need something on the client side?

[david_navigator 12]

9 minutes ago, Attila Kovacs said:

just an empty page, do I need something on the client side?

Odd. You should see something like this. Nothing required client side.

 

[Attila Kovacs 629]

<o>

 

yes, then I log in and I'm getting an empty site

[Attila Kovacs 629]

now it's working, no HDPI support?

Edited April 21 by Attila Kovacs

[david_navigator 12]

2 minutes ago, Attila Kovacs said:

<o>

 

yes, then I log in and I'm getting an empty site

Odd. Never seen that before (and I have 100's of users). What browser are you using ? Are you on a touch screen device ?

Here's a video clip of what you should see https://Navigator.tinytake.com/msc/OTUyNDkyMF8yMzEzMTE5NQ

[david_navigator 12]

5 minutes ago, Attila Kovacs said:

Cannot set properties of null (setting 'redirectionStarted')
TypeError: Cannot set properties of null (setting 'redirectionStarted')
    at Mobile.initTouchManager (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/common/js/thinvnc.m.js:2361:55)
    at initTouchDevice (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/common/js/thinvnc.m.js:2319:18)
    at WebFMX.completeConnection (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/webfmx.sdk.js:1397:13)
    at WebFMX.connect (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/webfmx.sdk.js:1305:22)
    at https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/thinfinity.virtualui.js:491:26
    at initializePrintClientNode (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/thinfinity.virtualui.js:534:29)
    at start (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/thinfinity.virtualui.js:487:13)
    at VirtualUI.connect (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/thinfinity.virtualui.js:175:17)
    at https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/js/app.js:270:15
    at fireStateEvent (https://trial.hiretracknx.com:6580/virtualui.sdk.min.js:355:406)

I'll raise a ticket to Thinfinity and see if they have any suggestions.

[Attila Kovacs 629]

I've tried both, chrome and IE, the same, (they are actually the same nowadays anyway)

 

I managed to get it working once, but the same error has occurred again. However, it wasn't functioning properly. I couldn't see the entire forms and such... ike there's no HDPI support.

Edited April 21 by Attila Kovacs