What is RAD Server?

[TimCruise 2]

What is RAD Server?

Is it a Linux based server software?

Can it be installed on Ubuntu 20.04 virtual machine?

 

Edited December 13, 2021 by TimCruise

[corneliusdavid 214]

It's a REST server in a box with installations for both Windows and Linux, running stand-alone or under IIS (Windows) or Apache (Linux). You add your own custom services as modules using Delphi or C++Builder. For Linux installations, I know it supports Ubuntu, but you'd have to check with Embarcadero for the latest supported distributions and versions--but yes, it would run under a virtual machine. It also requires at least the Enterprise edition of Delphi, C++Builder, or RAD Studio.

 

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/rad-server

[mvanrijnen 123]

RADServer is a lot of promises, once using the product you find out you'd better choose another solution as a base for rest services.
(we are still using it, but from week to week, less and less is used from the radserver itself), it's about the same as Delphi lot of commercial shit and shouting, but not really a usable product.

 

 

 

[TimCruise 2]

23 minutes ago, mvanrijnen said:

RADServer is a lot of promises, once using the product you find out you'd better choose another solution as a base for rest services.
(we are still using it, but from week to week, less and less is used from the radserver itself), it's about the same as Delphi lot of commercial shit and shouting, but not really a usable product.

 

 

 

Yes, if it is just a web server, I am not interested at all. 

[mvanrijnen 123]

4 minutes ago, TimCruise said:

Yes, if it is just a web server, I am not interested at all. 

It's a webserver with a "framework" around it to make it a little easier to develop and deploy your webservices. It's not too bad, but has some shortcomings, most pain is the fact that there is almost no documentation. 

 

What did you thought it was?

 

[MichaelT 6]

4 hours ago, TimCruise said:

Yes, if it is just a web server, I am not interested at all. 

You could regard RAD-Server as a Interbase add-on making this database more complete and future ready than ever before. Kidding. We all have been around in the Delphi forums for too long. So I couldn't stand.

 

There is more. Push notifications for example, but indeed closely related to technologies used in conjunction with let's call it Delphi.

 

Once you come to the point, when you think, I take

a) a web server

b) add some modules to encapsulate a frame-works functionality into something similar to web snap modules

c) put your code into libraries loaded at runtime for example into an executable oder another library communicating/integrating with the web server

d) making use of FAST-GCI for example

e) .... whatever comes into your mind

 

use something what works out of the box and handles a) b) d) for you. Most of these 'technologies in a broader sense' ended up a cut down version of what's originally intended. In general the EMBT eco-system needed their own thing allowing to focus on c). The opportunity arose with REST services.

[corneliusdavid 214]

8 hours ago, TimCruise said:

if it is just a web server, I am not interested at all

It's not a web server. It's a REST server that can run stand-alone or through a web server such as IIS or Apache. It provides a framework with user management on a robust and encrypted database onto which you can easily add custom-written API endpoints for REST clients.

[mvanrijnen 123]

20 minutes ago, corneliusdavid said:

It's not a web server. It's a REST server that can run stand-alone or through a web server such as IIS or Apache. It provides a framework with user management on a robust and encrypted database onto which you can easily add custom-written API endpoints for REST clients.

have you tried to login as the same user twice ? with the same applicationid ?

Of course in pure REST you would not have to logon, but everyone uses sessions, you can't get a second sessionid for a user with RADServer at the moment. 

So I (we) have implemented our own sessions and authorisation within appserver, skipping the provided ones.

 

That said, it's a good start of to get started with web/micro services and the rest idea. 

We are no a month in production with the first application and it runs ok., in januari we launch our 2nd (inhouse) application for this.

 

We run it on a IIS Server, for outside world we put a nginx server in between wich does the client/server certificate authentication and the routing to (possible) different in house servers. 
(we could do this also on IIS, but felt saver with this solution)

 

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by mvanrijnen

[corneliusdavid 214]

Admittedly, I've only used it for simple apps to test and understand RAD Server.

 

19 minutes ago, mvanrijnen said:

you can't get a second sessionid for a user with RADServer

What you're saying is that each connection must be logged in with a separate user, right? For a per-user license of RAD Server, I guess it's ensuring the license fee won't be abused. 

[mvanrijnen 123]

2 minutes ago, corneliusdavid said:

Admittedly, I've only used it for simple apps to test and understand RAD Server.

 

What you're saying is that each connection must be logged in with a separate user, right? For a per-user license of RAD Server, I guess it's ensuring the license fee won't be abused. 

just try the example: Tutorial: RAD Server Client Application to Manage RAD Server Users - RAD Studio (embarcadero.com)

simultanously from 2 different computers.

 

[corneliusdavid 214]

1 hour ago, mvanrijnen said:

just try the example: Tutorial: RAD Server Client Application to Manage RAD Server Users - RAD Studio (embarcadero.com)

simultanously from 2 different computers.

That uses the TBackendAuth component, different than simply accessing a custom API endpoint. I've accessed API endpoints using the same login from multiple computers nearly simultaneously. But the authentication component logs in, then you do your user management, then logout--that's a very different scenario, isn't it?

[mvanrijnen 123]

No it's not what i mean, probably i pointed to the wrong example 🙂

 

I'll try to make a simple example tomorrow, of what i mean, already created ticket with EMB support for it, but for now no solution.

When you log a user on to the RadServer, you get an EMB-X-Token, for further use with the restcallss (a session token), you can not have multiple session tokens for one username. 

 

(go into the db of radserver, and it explains itself).

 

If else, then we got the wrong explanation from EMB self. 

(i can look that up also).

 

 

Edited December 14, 2021 by mvanrijnen

[corneliusdavid 214]

Oh, so you send the username/password in the first API call, get back a session id, then use that for subsequent API calls. And THAT is where the problem occurs, when doing the same thing from a different device and it returns a different session id but you can't use a different session id for the same login.

[mvanrijnen 123]

will take a little longer, tested positive with selftest for corona this morning, so in quarantaine@home now. 

(PCR-Test @GGD/healthcare test this afternoon)

[corneliusdavid 214]

@mvanrijnen, no worries, take care of yourself.

[TimCruise 2]

On 12/15/2021 at 6:31 PM, mvanrijnen said:

will take a little longer, tested positive with selftest for corona this morning, so in quarantaine@home now. 

(PCR-Test @GGD/healthcare test this afternoon)

Which variant? 

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

@mvanrijnen - I wish you a speedy recovery!

[mvanrijnen 123]

thhx, i was tested positive last week (pcr test), no serious complaints, but have to keep the quarantaine time. few more days.

@TimCruise We don't get to know which variant, only Positive/Negative for corona, the variants are determined by sampling the positive results i believe.

 

Edited December 19, 2021 by mvanrijnen

[Lars Fosdal 1792]

Currently in quarantine myself.  Got a message on the anonymous tracking app that I had been near someone that had Corona. 

Getting tested today.  Hoping that it was a red herring, since I've already had Covid in March and have gotten two shots since then.