Monday, September 26, 2011

Advantage Technical Summit

We had another very successful technical summit in Boise last week. We focused on mobile development and our Advantage Web Api. The best feature of the Web Api is that it uses oData and JSON to transfer data which can be consumed by virtually any client. No specific Advantage client is required to send and receive data through the Web Api.

I taught classes on Mobile Web Development using JQueryMobile with oData. There is an excellent screencast done by Daniel Ryan which demonstrates our example Web Application. I also did a class on developing oData applications for iOS which includes iPods, iPhone and iPad devices. JD Mullin did a series of screencasts on using oData with iOS as well. Jed Thomet did a class on using oData from Android devices.

We also had our usual classes on using our other Advantage technologies and clients. We added a panel discussion session which gave attendees the opportunity to ask our development team general questions about Advantage and our development process.

The greatest benefit of our technical summits is the networking that goes on between Advantage users and our staff here. It is always great to hear about how you are using Advantage with your products. I hope we will see you at our next conference.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Delphi Live 2011

IMG_0764We had the opportunity to attend Delphi Live! in San Jose California again this year. We always get to see and talk to many Delphi users that are also Advantage customers.

This year we were able to talk more about our Advantage Web Platform which provides oData and JSON access to Advantage data through the Web. This allows access from virtually any device, such as iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets. We have an example mobile website where you can see this technology in action.

There were many sessions on the latest release of Delphi, Delphi XE 2 at the conference. This release includes 64-bit support and Fire Monkey which is a cross-platform development mechanism. We will be updating the Advantage Delphi Components to work with this release and to include support for 64-bit applications. We are still investigating Fire Monkey support.