No C/S FireDac for Delphi Professional

[Mark Elder 0]

Hello,

 

I just got this in an email from my account manager:

Quote

As you may have heard, we have brought our standalone FireDAC solution to EOL and are no longer renewing support subscriptions for FireDAC SKU’s in our system. The announcement was made in this August 2020 blog post: https://blogs.embarcadero.com/august-2020-gm-blog/ 

 

I missed this blog post - it's a two sentence item at the very bottom of the post. I'm surprised that I can't find any other discussion on this. Maybe Embarcadero didn't sell very many Client/Server packs?

 

I'm requesting pricing now. I don't want to upgrade, but I'm not sure what else I could reasonably use to access SQL Server databases. 

 

Mark

 

 

[Attila Kovacs 629]

https://www.devart.com/unidac/ 

[Stano 143]

You only have two options. Buy a higher version of Delphi or a third party component. See Attila Kovacs

[FPiette 383]

I think ADO components are included in PRO version as well.

[Stano 143]

Yes, as dbGo. + dbExpress

[Attila Kovacs 629]

You could also quit your emba subscription and use the last one you have with FD.

[Javier Tarí 23]

Unless you really need Enterprise, I would go with UniDac

 

If you decide to go with UniDAC, consider making wrapper components wich, depending on a $DEFINE, would inherit from FireDAC or from UniDAC, and then substitute all your current FD components with those

 

That way, your app will always be ready for both FD and UD. So if you later decide to go with Enterprise and come back to FireDAC, you would not need to change a single line of code on your sources

 

That's pretty much my line of work right now

[FPiette 383]

@Mark ElderFinally, what will you do? I ask because you have not reacted to any answer you received. And by the way, if you don't want to write a full message, at least click on the like button of each answer you like. The like button is the heart icon on the right side of each message. Thanks.

 

[Arnaud Bouchez 407]

Take  look at Zeos/ZDBC.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/zeoslib/

 

They are Open Source, and with very good performance.

If you bypass its TDataSet descendants, and use directly the ZDBC layer, you will get even better performance than alternatives, e.g. when you retrieve only one row of data (e.g. to fill a single class properties).

And it has very good FPC support, too.

 

But I guess you may be able to use your current version of FireDac with the latest Delphi, with minor changes to the source code...

Edited November 4, 2020 by Arnaud Bouchez

[darnocian 86]

I was very disappointed too. It seems like they are trying to force people to upgrade. Requesting pricing won't help - I've done it twice already - they simply state it is no longer available.

 

I appreciate it takes some time to manage packages, but is it really worth upsetting users that have been buying the product? Anyways, alternatives are available, even other programming environments were connecting to a database is not 'an enterprise feature' and is free...

[Guest]

1 hour ago, darnocian said:

I appreciate it takes some time to manage packages

This really made me think, if that is costing money and should be compensated then what about GetIt ?

 

I mean, a GM blogged and wrote this phrase "which contain over $1,000 of free software" from here https://blogs.embarcadero.com/august-2020-gm-blog/ , he sees including over $1k of free software is good selling point and smart marketing approach, so how do you think it will take until the same GM will decide that the users should pay back some of this $1k ?

 

(i read that phrase long time ago, and like most blog posts on internet i just forget about it, but not that phrase, it lingers)

[Clément 148]

Embarcadero should revisit their SKU matrix.

Professional SKU is not satisfactory for DB Access, and some basic "Enterprise" software integration SOAP, REST etc
Enterprise SKU is great for DB Access, but lack support for standard enterprise solution.  Support for SOAP,REST, Encryption is very weak in native Enterprise SKU, and to offer a solution as good as native competition SKU you have to buy expensive 3rd party library.
.NET offers such wide range of very good written library.
This makes delphi ecosystem expensive.

 

In Brazil we still have a very large base of Delphi Developers, they need a _good_ Professional SKU as most of them are ISV and don't have budget to buy an enterprise SKU especially if they won't use all the enterprise matrix features.
This is also true for Managers in small companies. They won't spend money on features they won't need/use.

 

Not an easy solution.

 

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Clément said:

Embarcadero should revisit their SKU matrix.

Why i think they are visiting it more that hey should, they are revisiting it more than their roadmap, which is very promising non the less !

[mandalf 0]

This also made my company to switch to Enterprise, and that only created new problems - see here. I agree that Delphi ecosystem becomes more and more expensive, but I would be more eager to swallow it if they could make things work. 

 

Being with Delphi since 1.0 and I am very unhappy how the installation, licensing and updating works now.

[Guest]

Here my testimonial about FireDAC and RAD Studio not Enterprise or Architect use:

• I DID the INSTALLATION OF FireDAC (from RAD Studio v10.3.0) in the RAD Studio CUMUNITY EDITION v10.3.0.
  • was necessary 390MB of files!
• Then, it is possible to use FireDAC in a non-Enterprise or Architect edition.

 

Since the EC is the old PROFESSIONAL with changes, naturally, then, perhaps, it is also possible to do this same installation.

Edited November 25, 2020 by Guest