Legacy Modernization For a Better World
The Impact of the Corona Virus Pandemic on the IT World
In this ever changing world, since 2020, as the world changes yet again, while struggling with the Corona virus pandemic & governments are facing a possible economic crisis, it has become clear to everyone that many IT systems over the world have become indispensable, a necessity, and in some cases a real life saver.
As the Corona virus spread over the world, it forced us to obtain a social distancing. The lock down made us stay at home, work & operate in remotely fashion, where possible. Many daily activities have become online as a way of dealing with the situation, causing a spiked demand for online services on the client side, as well as high performance & steady service on the server side, in which made us truly depended on IT systems, like never before.
For an IT system to operate as required, and provide an adequate service to its users, it is depended on its resilience, operability, performance & connectivity.
The Corona virus revealed the naked truth of these IT legacy systems, of being unreliable, too slow, with low operability, and in most cases stuck in the stone ages, although they are connected to the Internet, they are simply not connected to the real world.
Technology is made to serve the people. If technology fail to serve its purpose, it will be dumped & thrown away to the recycle bin of history, whether it is a public service or private service provider.
Sadly & unfortunately, most of the IT systems that has become a necessity in this time, are outdated COBOL legacy IT systems, that are 60 years old, holding the most important data about us & our money, but also Borland Delphi has its share, and you may be surprised but, even Turbo Pascal for DOS is still in use in many legacy IT systems as well.
You cannot blame COBOL legacy IT systems for being old. The whole monitory system & our civilian lives are based on them. COBOL has a place of honour. It is the first ever software, made by the IBM, together with the Mainframes and the prehistoric database where they first store & manipulated data in huge tapes.
You can put the blame on the IT managers, and CEOs over the years (as well as the Board of Directors & the government) for not being responsible enough & not taking the required actions to make these vital IT systems more reliable, provide & operate as respected from them & to plan a long term strategy for the future & foresee the upcoming crisis.
You cannot blame the technology. The 20th century, has revolutionized our way of living. In the 21st century we rely on clean water, electricity, roads, transportation, sanitation, schools, hospitals, civilian life with law & order, police & armed forces, flights, shipping, private & public institutes & industries, markets, banks and many more. What do they all have in common? They all rely on technology. Specifically, in the 21st century they all rely on IT systems. Which many of them are legacy IT systems.
Borland Delphi is a Legacy System – Almost 30 Years Old.
Borland Delphi, also has its share in this crisis as well. but Failing Delphi IT systems in contrast to COBOL are unacceptable!
IT Systems built on Borland Delphi are young legacy systems, almost 30 years old. Closing this gap & bridging to 2024 can be done today, by migrating to the latest Embarcadero’s Delphi . The Corona virus pandemic made it very clear to everyone that legacy IT systems resilience & connectivity has become a life-saving necessity, rather then a wish-full-thinking.
It is high time to modernize these Borland Delphi IT systems, before it’s too late.
“Legacy” is not a dirty word, it should mean “Successful”, not “Failure”.
Legacy software runs companies and cannot simply be waved away with a magic wand. Whatever the legacy software does must be preserved. Legacy systems are successful and therefore mature, and likely have been in existence for a long period of time. A consequence is that legacy software is built using technologies available at the time it was constructed, as opposed to the most modern software technologies. Older technologies are more difficult to maintain, and this is a key point of pain for many legacy system owners.
Borland Delphi version 2 to 7, are respectfully entitled to be called “Legacy”, as huge worldwide IT systems are still running on them, providing services to millions of customers – if not Billions.
Borland Delphi started early in 1995, based on Pascal language, in a very defining moment in the history of technology, as most of the Windows based development in the turn of the millennium, where all the industry switched from DOS to Windows was made by Borland Delphi. Delphi version 2 to 7, although written in the late 1990’s are still amazingly survived through the vast technology changes in the past 27 years.
Delphi Code is Everywhere
Delphi code is spread all over the globe, in every industry, even more spread then COBOL, since it belong to a later era, in the dawn of the Internet, Borland Delphi was spread in the time of Y2K like fire in a field of thorns.
Therefore, it is no surprise, why in those golden days of the new millennium, all the major companies & organizations that wanted rapid database application solution for Windows chose Delphi, and still do.
Replacing the All Mighty BDE with FIREDAC
Embarcadero’s FireDAC Data-Access Control, is the perfect replacement of the all mighty Borlands BDE. It was built to replace the BDE, using the same class structure, with the same look & feel, but with a super-intelligent data access engine, ever made!
FireDAC, as well as BDE, is 100% pure Delphi technology. FireDAC is built to serve Delphi applications, unlike Microsoft ADO, or JDBC that are made to serve Microsoft & Java based application, respectively.
The Glory Days of the Delphi & BDE
What made the Delphi in those glory days of the 1990’s, the best development tool of that time, was the BDE – the Borland Database Engine. Back then, in the early days of the Internet & Windows 95, the ability to develop Windows form application with ClientServer architecture in minutes, quickly perform database queries & show them on a grid, was something that no MFC, Visual C++, Visual Basic or Java IDE can provide, and to the non-Delphi developer it was practically impossible, or presumed as a very hard & dirty job.
From 1995 until 1999, at the dawn of the Internet, as the whole world shifted from DOS to Windows XP, the BDE was also the only driver who knew how to connect to Paradox, dBase & legacy Oracle, the pre-historic Databases from DOS & Mainframes and to bridge the gap from the 1970-80’s legacy systems made in the with those green terminals – as the above photo, to the new & cutting edge technology of late 1990’s with Windows Forms & Event based 32bit application.
Back To The Future – with Embarcadero’s RAD Studio 11!
It’s about time to move forward, back to the future, where Delphi was the holy grail of Software Development. Once again, it’s time to move on & upgrade those legacy Delphi based systems to support Multi Platformed Operating Systems, Clouds Mobile & IoT technology with the new release of RAD Studio 10.4 Sydney.
As in past few years, it became very urgent to migrate the old code, since the BDE is no longer supported & Microsoft declared a war on its own users, that still use Windows XP, and won’t move on to Windows 10 or 11.
Emabarcadero’s Delphi 11 is Alive & Kicking!
Moreover, nowadays, since everyone wants to upgrade to Windows 10, old Delphi users faces migration for the first time, whereas the rest of the world have been battling to survive for more than a decade, with every version of MS Visual Studio .Net or Java. Furthermore, although many businesses wish to cross over to Linux or OSX while migrating out of Delphi to C# .NET or Java – it doesn’t happen & all those endeavours most likely to fail.
In 2022, Embarcadero claims to have 6 Million users.
According to Gartner, in 2008 there were 2 Million Delphi developers, and its population keep growing. The Delphi and C++Builder developers’ community is much more stable than people think. They stayed devoted to Delphi even though Borland was long gone & sold to Microsoft (in which gave birth to C#) , and is now being revived by the mass effort of Embarcadero’s development team.
The exact amount of Delphi based companies is unknown and is estimated about 100,000 software related companies worldwide using Delphi require a migration process, but reluctant to do it, or know how to do it right.
Leverage the Benefits of a Modernized IT System
1. Provide Adequate Customer Services
- Improve Resilience
- Improve Performance
- Improve Productivity
- Improve Customer Experience with new UIUX
- Enhanced Security
- Empower Your Developers
- Gain Better Control over the Code & Dependent Technology
- Reduce Maintenance on recurring legacy failure
- Reduce Possible Code Crash Crisis
- Reduce Expenses on Customer Services & Support
- Make You Customer Happier
- Increase Sales
2. Use Up-To-Date Architecture
- Connect to Clouds
- Use Multi-Tiered Open Architecture
- Open API Connection using: SOAP, REST/JSON
- DevOps
- Open Framework using Microservices
3. Make Use of Latest Technology
- Support Unicode
- Stronger & New Databases Servers
- Integrate with Big-Data
4. Support Multi Platforms
- Support Windows 64bit applications
- Support Development for Mobile & IoTs
- Support Linux & OSX
5. Empower Development & Knowledge Base
- Use the latest technology
- Increase Business Knowledge
- Update Business Documentary
- Improve Employees Involvement
- Increase Employees Motivation
Delphi Modernization Made Easy – Using The Delphi Parser Automatic Migration Tools.
Upgrading legacy Delphi IT systems & upgrading to latest Embarcadero’s Delphi 11 with FireDAC to support all the latest technology can be made very easy by using automatic code refactoring tools as the the Delphi Parser.