Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Embarcadero has bought the AnyDAC data access components library from DA-SOFT. This is great new for all Delphi (and C++Builder) developers using databases, that is most of them! Embarcadero has bought the AnyDAC data access components library from DA-SOFT. This is considered the best data access library for Delphi, and I'm personally very happy that is will become part of the Delphi "Enterprise" product. We plan offering this technology, in the near term, as an add-on for existing users, and fully integrate it in future versions of Delphi and C++Builder. Not only we are buying the library, but also retaining the great database expertise of Dmitry Arefiev, AnyDac author, who will keep improving the library, help us port it to mobile platform, and add features to it. I've been in touch with Dmitry over the last couple of years, and somehow helped the discussions with Embarcadero get started way before I joined the company... and I'm very happy to be now personally involved in the deal and the coming offers. This is great news for all Delphi developers using databases, that is most of them! While I liked the simplicity of dbEpxress, its features set remained very stable since it was introduced, and the transition to dbExpress IV started in Delphi 2009, was never fully completed. AnyDAC provides a much more powerful framework, offering at the same time an abstract and universal data access layer, but letting developers hook to tons of specific features of individual databases. Also, the complete source code (drivers included) is part of the library, unlike dbExpress, that has DLL-based drivers. I could go on and will do this soon, but for now you can refer to the library documentation at http://www.da-soft.com/anydac/docu/frames.html. It is also great news for current AnyDAC customers, as they'll be able to leverage their investment, given this data access library will become more mainstream. Embarcadero is going to make specific support and upgrade offers to current AnyDAC customers in the coming weeks. Dmitry will keep working on the library, fix bugs and offer enhancements, so you should not worry about its future. Quite the opposite: Embarcadero is willing to invest even more on AnyDAC. You can find the official press release here: http://www.embarcadero.com/press-releases/embarcadero-technologies-acquires-high-performance-enterprise-database-connectivity-technology-for-developers . In the coming days, we'll provide more information (possibly an extensive FAQ), for now feel free to ask here in my blog. PS. I told you, this is going to be a great year for Delphi ;-)

44 Comments

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC As a long time customer of Dmitry's I sincerely hope that Emb will just let him get on with the job and not interfere whilst providing future financial support and stability. My only area of concern is that AnyDAC maintains the already excellent integration with RemObjects DataAbstract given the obvious competition with DataSnap? Thanks Stuart

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Grrreat news! Waiting for a built-in ORM now... :-P

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC I am both scared and relieved at the same time. We took the AnyDAC route a few years ago, getting out of the BDE, and we have not regretted it for a second. My fright comes from the fact that DA-SOFT could not be beat in terms of customer support...many of us have come to DA-SOFT with a problem, only to have it fixed the next day. It is only realistic to think that with Embarcadero, this will no longer be the case. However, my relief is that maybe this gives the product more legs and more years, since we'll be needing it for at least that long. Embarcadero should consider itself lucky that they have Dmitry...he is the man! The multi-platform support in AnyDAC is incredible, if only I had time to port our stuff!

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Excellent news! Any idea how soon existing RAD Studio customers might be able to get their hands on this? -- Jack

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC The only thing I'm worried about is Embarcadero taking AnyDAC and moving all the really useful features into a top-tier Delphi/RAD Studio SKU.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC "My only area of concern is that AnyDAC maintains the already excellent integration with RemObjects DataAbstract" Assuming there are no technical changes planned to the future versions of the AnyDAC (or whatever it will be called) library that would prevent us from it (which would surprise me), Data Abstract will continue supporting AnyDAC (among many other options) as access layer for the back end. The only unfortunate part of this change seems to be that the great AnyDAC library will now be limited to those Delphi users opting for the higher-priced "Enterprise" edition, from reading between the lines of Marco's announcement. Fortunately, as you know, DA makes selecting different back-end DAC component layers easy and a no-code change. So DA+AnyDAC users who are not on Enterprise can easily switch to something else (say UnIDAC, CoreLabs, or the like), and conversely, Delphi Enterprise user who used DA with a different DAC can easily switch to DA+AnyDAC, should they choose to.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC marc, - integration of third party tools with AnyDAC should continue and will remain an important feature, there is no reason not to - we are trying to be a little more flexible in terms SKUs and versions -- Marco

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Marco, "integration of third party tools with AnyDAC should continue and will remain an important feature, there is no reason not to" i had no doubt, but glad to have that confirmed, thanx!

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC I'm happy I never used nor dbExpress nor AnyDAC. Just a question: part of dbExpress was also the foundation of DataSnap, what will happen on this side?

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Real great news for us! We are using AnyDAC since its initial startup and could not imagine to live without it. I am sure Dmitry has a lot of interesting plans and with the background of the EMBT resources we can expect a lot :). regards Günther Schoch

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC This sounds like good news. As happy as I am about the SQLite support in XE3, the implementation isn't complete. Jack asked the question I'm most interested in. Will existing XE3 customers get access to the AnyDAC libraries before XE4 is released, and if so, what kind of timeline are we looking at?

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Marco: integration of third party tools .... will remain an important feature DA-Soft: removed all 3d party product integrations: From now all 3d party product integrations will be accessible from 3d party vendors. Hmm...

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Marco: integration of third party tools ... will remain an important feature DA-Soft: removed all 3d party product integrations - From now all 3d party product integrations will be accessible from 3d party vendors. Hmm...

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Couple of comments: Bruce, we will announce how XE3 users will be able to get the library in a few weeks, no need to wait for XE4 Arioch, the need of letting third party maintain the integration is related with legal IP issues, I think Dmitry made the specific code freely available to them. We had to drop a couple of other features for the same reason, trying to replace those going forward. -Marco

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Thanks Marco. And what is the reason behind FastCode ban ? I can only imagine proting AnyDAC to "VM-based" compiler, like MobileStudio probably gonna be. Be it intermediate format, line LLVM, or deployment format like JVM, whatever. If AnyDAC would continue to target native compilers, then FastCode could just be IfDef'ed without pulling it out even in case of native ARM support. And IP should not be the issue here as Delphi already includes FastMM and JCL with similar licenses.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Marco / marc Thanks for the clarifications regarding RO/DA integration. Looking at this page: http://www.da- soft.com/anydac/anydac-for-delphi-v-6.0.9.3011- released.html it seems that the AnyDAC integration will have to come from Remobjects not Dmitry it seems. But as marc kindly said they will support this - thanks =) I'm now very keen to hear clarification on licensing - I am an XE2 user who has licensed AnyDAC separately for a number of years and I seriously hoping that I don't have to upgrade to the latest delphi just to get continued use and support for this great product? Regards, Stuart

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Congrat to EMBT and DA-soft for this deal. It promise for both products a great future!

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Nice, should be great for Delphi.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC I will answer regarding 3d party tools integration and FastCode removal: 1) Were removed all code on which I does not have 100% rights. Eg, FastCode Move, CompareText, FillChar routines. Or RemObjects DAD. 2) FastCode removal is not a problem for modern Delphi version users, as there Move, CompareText, FillChar are actually from FastCode. 3) As AnyDAC will become standard data access components, then number of required 3d party integrations will grow and 3d party vendors will decide to implement integrations with AnyDAC. In this situation no need for me to develop the integrations and I can dedicate my time to AnyDAC code development. In next few days I will send existing integration code to appropriate 3d party software vendors. I believe they will be happy to maintain existing stable and clean integration code. Also, will put archive with addons on da-soft.com, as a temporary solution. 4) Additional note about RemObjects DAD - actually last 1-2 years it was 99% maintained, supported, updated by RemObjects team. We were including it copy into AnyDAC installer just for our customers convenience.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Congrat for the AnyDac developer. But I think, it is a bad sign for EMBA. Innovation does not come from EMBA but from a single person. That is very sad. For EMBA. EMBA is not managing their human resources...

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Good news.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Please make it available to Pro users at a reasonable price. I suspect that most of the AnyDAC customers are Delphi Pro users who would otherwise have no incentive to upgrade to an Enterprise SKU of Delphi.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC @Marco What about XE2 uesrs ? Are they able to get that ? Tnx All

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Just hope EMB dont try to charge to actual customers a higher money for yearly subscriptions...

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC What happens to dbExpress? Will it be carried on as I like the idea of being able to just swap DLLs if I need to switch database (given that I do not use special features of the databases involved)? As for the source code providing: there were requests for this for dbExpress a few years back already leading to distribution of small parts of source code. Why can the source this time be distributed? What's different this time? You also write about that the move to dbExpress 4 was never fully finalized. Can you elaborate more about that? Why? What's missing? Will it still be done? And the most interesting question: why do you need to add another database technology? Aren't there more "construction sites" requiring attention right now? (e.g. fixes to IDE features not properly completed since years, OTAPI enhancements necessary for certain 3rd party enhancements/integrations [a certain ressource editor comes to my mind or status overlay icon for the project manager showing SVN status) I hope this new solution is properly unicode enabled as I had a report from some colleagues at work recently about the stock Oracle dbExpress driver having issues when one column of a table contains Cyrillic text and the other say German. One of both is always wrong, depending on system settings about codepage for non unicode programs. I'm just not sure there's a QC report about this. But having to buy 3rd party drivers to fix such a issue with the stock drivers several releases after the unicode migration is not too great for any customer. If I come up with a small demo project, can we have a timely fix for this issue? (might also be a case for using one support case as we're on SA - will that enable us to get a fix soon?) What I wanted to say with this post simply is, instead of integrating yet another technology in a field where you already have different ones better invest the resources in quality improvements as perception of quality is a bit declining lately. (my 2 cents of worth) Greetings Markus

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC WOW Great news!! ....and a ORM when??? :-)

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC @Markus, I couldn't be more agree with you. My personal opinion, this "great news" just will kill old AnyDAC customers, as I am now. With this acquisition, EMB will force us to buy new license to get new release, fix and updates.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Hi Marco, first I would like to say that these are great news for Delphi. AnyDAC is a great library. I'm using it for a long time and it always has been better than DBExpress. Dmitry is also a great developer so that he will enforce the Delphi team. The only thing I'm a bit concerned is that my biggest client only uses Delphi Professional so that maybe in the near future he must move to are more expensive version. -- Best regards, Roman blog.kassebaum.eu

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Great news! Congrats to EMBT, Dmitri and Marco. Now the next step should be a built-in ORM... isn't it? ;-)

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Great news, I already use Anydac in several big applications with success; it's the best Delphi DB library interface and the most complete in features, capabilities and approach. Their cached update and Live Data Windows are perfect, as SQlite management. I hope that development and upgrades are always the same... and Dmitry is always ready to perform its works... for better future result (Android, IOS, new Db interfaces, etc...) Best Regards, Stefano Sesamo Software Spa

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC I am not sure this is good news. If Embarcadero makes it part of the enterprise SKU this means that it won't be available for customers who buy e.g. professional. Up until now they could just buy AnyDAC and be fine. Will this be possible in the future? Or will they be forced to but the Enterprise SKU with lots of stuff they probably don't need just for that one feature?

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC For several years, I had hoped that one day this had become possible - cooperation between creators of the best IDE in the world and author of the best Delphi DAC, which is Delphi's heart and essence of Delphi programming. And now it’s that day. Great news for Delphi and C++Builder! Above many of current AnyDAC users are worrying about feature of AnyDAC in Pro SKU and about super excellent support provided by author, but who’s of you are really worrying about Delphi future and your's future? I understand that this change probably could be in some points difficult for AnyDAC users – no doubt, but this is crucial for all of us in Delphi / C++Builder community to go forward and be more competitive, more productive than Java / .NET / HTML5 developers. I'm sure that this news will help us to be like that. Thanks Dymitry for this very brave decision! And good news for Embarcadero!

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Hi Marco. Congratulations, first of all. IMHO Embarcadero should consider buying UniGUI. www.unigui.com Have you heard about this framework? Best regards. Marcelo Alaggio Brasil.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Not sure what the outcome of this integration would be for the current AnyDAC users or even for the future of the AnyDAC family, but it certainly recognizes the well-earned prestige of the library. I remember when I benchmarked MyDAC against other alternatives (either shipped with Delphi, open source or third party commercial components): - Performance-wise MyDAC was unbeatable. MyDAC was simply way faster than the others. - From the deployment and integration point of view MyDAC was really a gift: no DLLS were needed, just plain native Delphi code that was pretty much compiled into the EXE. - MyDAC respected the "standard" contracts of the Delphi data access components. This makes a migration from the other alternatives to MyDAC pretty easy. For the most past, I just needed to change the class name in the .pas and .dfm files. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Dmitry Arefiev for the sale and to thank him for his outstanding work with the library so far.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Hi, I'm an old customer of AnyDAC, and I'm actively using it for all my projects, and also contributed with some code improvements for third party tool connector for Fast Report. Because pf economic problems I wasn't able to renew my subscription until last week when I tried to buy a license and I was surprised it is going to be part of EMBT. What will gonna happend fort those who want to stay with, I want to still have an active subscription to AnyDAC.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Francisco, we welcome all AnyDAC customers and are going to make specific offers for them. We plan reaching existing AnyDAC customers with specific proposals in the coming weeks. We are still finalizing the details of the offers, but I hope you'll appreciate the effort. Of course, you can keep using your existing AnyDAC license in the meantime. -Marco

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Thanks for the anwer Marco. On the EMBT forum it became on the Main Topic trendinds of delphi history, I have seen a lot of discussions here and there, even the adquisition of Codegear didn't caused such polemic as this adquisiton :). My expectations are to still adquire an anydac license separatetely from any SKU, because I still use old delphi versions mainly d7 and d2010, mainly because economy issues and well those IDEs does the job I need. Hope you will take care of this. Thanks for the JOB you're doing and that this could end in good terms for all the delphi community, I know it is a business and you have to make smart decisitions, not all of us will agree, but if it is in good for the majority of us it is going to be good. Regards

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC @Francisco Duenas: I suspect you'll have a VERY hard time if you think AnyDac will support old Delphi versions for new features. I expect the old Delphi versions to not receive further updates, i.e. only make new features available for newer Delphi versions. Regards, A

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Yes Andrea, I also suspect that, but until they don't publish their offer, I will not decide or suppose anything. Keeping AnyDAC customers is the best smart idea they could do, even those using old IDEs. Also many uses anyDAC with Freepascal, I expect they also keep that. If they don't well there are many other options, UniDAC, MyDAC, etc. But lets give a chance to see what they can offer. Regards

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC This is a great that Embarcadero buy AnyDAC! If Embarcadero still buy this great WEB library http://www.unigui.com/demo it will be also great! This is better than IntraWEB.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC What about compatibility with FPC? I use with linux. Phillip

UNIGUI for web applications I agree with Lena. UNIGUI is the best framework for web applications. It´s something that is missing in Delphi. Marco, I think you should consider this framework.

Embarcadero Buys AnyDAC Why not open the world of Delphi other technology instead of datasnap. Buying AnyDAC is good and I love it but nothing for me. I love to have something like RESTServiceProvider for ClientDataset and let me have more options to connect to the fast moving back-end framework and database like NoSQL etc.

Availability of AnyDAC in XE3 Just following up on a question that was asked earlier: When can we expect to see the availability of AnyDAC in XE3? Thanks.





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