Thank you for your interest in our products and for choosing Data Abstract for Delphi.

Our goal with Data Abstract is to provide you with the best, easiest and most flexible database and multi-tier framework available for Delphi and other platforms.

We will continue to improve Data Abstract (DA for short) over time and these improvements will be available to you as part of your subscription. Please make sure that your subscription stays active to ensure continued access to the latest release to be sure you have the most recent fixes and new features.

Please check our website regularly to keep your product up to date with the latest additions. In particular, see the change log for details of recent changes to the product.

The following README contains a few guidelines that you should follow in order to install and get started with Data Abstract.

TRIAL Version & RemObjects SDK

Data Abstract relies on RemObjects SDK. To use the trial version of Data Abstract, you must have the exact matching version of RemObjects SDK (either the trial or full version) installed, and not have made any manual modifications to the RemObjects SDK library code.

TRIAL Version & Third Party Data Access

The trial version currently does not include support for static linking of the third party database drivers (such as SDAC, ODAC and IBO) provided with Data Abstract. Dynamic driver libraries (.dad files) are provided.

TRIAL Version Requirements

The following requirements must be met for the trial version:

Delphi 2007 for Win32

Update #1 required.

Note: the DBX driver is not available for the trial version.

Delphi 2006

Update Pack 2 required.

Delphi 7

No updates required.

Delphi 6

Update Pack 2
RTL Update Pack 2
RTL Update Pack 3

Please note that these requirements are for the TRIAL version only. Since the retail version comes with full source, you can easily rebuild it to match whatever exact version of Delphi you have installed, by opening the BuildPackages_Dx.bpg project group and doing a Build All Projects.

The current Data Abstract comes separated into several individual packages; these packages are provided in versions for Delphi 6, 7, 2006 and 2007 for Win32.

As well as several Data Abstract driver packages for ADO, dbExpress, InterBase Express.

The RO setup will install prebuilt versions of the packages in the Delphi 6, 7, 2006 and 2007 IDEs.

If you have a custom version of IBX (such as the version 6.5/7.5 that comes with InterBase 7) downloaded and installed to replace the default IBX, loading of this package will most likely fail when you launch Delphi for the first time after installing RO. If this is happens, you will need to manually rebuild the IBX driver package to match your specific IBX version, by opening the DataAbstract_IBXDriver_D6.dpk, DataAbstract_IBXDriver_D7.dpk or DataAbstract_IBXDriver_D9.bdsproj in the IDE and then building and installing it.

The current release of Data Abstract 'Vinci' for Delphi provides library support for Free Pascal 2.1.4 and above, allowing you to rebuild your projects for the Win32 (x86), Win64 (x64), Linux (x86 and x64) platforms. Compilation against other platforms provided by FPC might be possible, but is not currently supported; however, we are interested in your feedback if you do try to build against other platforms.

Official support for other platforms, as well as support for the Lazarus IDE, is under review for future releases.

The minimum version of FPC required is Free Pascal 2.1.4 or newer (which can be downloaded here). Please note that we explicitly do not support the 2.0.x release, as it is missing crucial functionality.

At the time of this release, only the new ZEOS database driver is supported for Free Pascal, as the underlying components for all the other drivers are not supported for Free Pascal by Borland/CodeGear or the third party vendors. Please contact the third party component vendors directly to inquire about support for FPC in future versions of their components.

License File

To avoid piracy and abuse, the Data Abstract Install contains a time-limited license for Schema Modeler and Service Builder, which will expire after 30 days of use.

You will be prompted to download your personal license file when you start Schema Modeler or Service Builder for the first time; you can choose to either download your own license file right away, or keep working with the trial license until such a time when the download is more convenient for you. Alternatively, it's possible to download it directly from http://www.remobjects.com/myro.

Later versions of Data Abstract for Delphi provide two modes for server applications. For backward compatibility, it provides the server interface you already know from version 3.0, thus allowing you to rebuild your existing server applications with only minimal changes. In addition though, a new service interface is provided matching the .NET edition that streamlines data access further, thus simplifying development of cross platform client/server solutions. See the DA26 article for full details, including the steps needed to upgrade version 3 applications directly to 'Vinci' (version 5).

To aid your conversion, we ship a tool to create Remote Data Adapters from your existing code (also described by DA26). You can find the DAConverter tool at: C:\Program Files\RemObjects Software\Data Abstract (Common)\Bin.

Data Abstract 'Vinci' employs the version 4 architecture, so there are no actual upgrade requirements. However, you may well wish to upgrade your applications to use the new TDAMemDataTable and TDABin2DataStreamer components. The DAConverter tool described above (see DA26 also) has been extended to do this as well (and will accept version 3 and version 4 project files).

A number of sample projects are included in the \Samples folder of your Data Abstract install. These sample projects will show you how to get started and how to use the various functions of Data Abstract.
A detailed overview of the available samples can be found in the Samples.html file provided.

For BDS2006 and later, after the first start of the Visual Studio IDE, the Welcome Page for Data Abstract will be presented, giving you the option to directly open any of the samples provided.

You can use these newsgroups to report any problems or suggestions you might have in regards to Data Abstract, you can communicate with fellow Data Abstract users and exchange ideas and solutions.

Please also make sure to check out our extensive Online Help to get started with Data Abstract; the online help is available integrated into the Delphi Help and also as a standalone .HLP help file.

More information about our support offerings, including the Premium Support subscription, can be found at http://www.remobjects.com/support.

Known Issues in this Release

While we try our best to get all known issues fixed and addressed for each build, sometimes less important issues need to be deferred for later releases in favor for getting a version released. Please check our list of known issues for any known problems with the current release

DevCenter provides hands-on developer resources such as articles (see article roadmap: DA00), videos and FAQs about all our products, including Data Abstract, and is the central hub for all developer-oriented information about our products.

Let us thank you again for choosing Data Abstract. We are confident that you will find it to be a worthwhile addition to your development toolset.

Should you, at any time, encounter a problem or need assistance using Data Abstract, please feel free to ask on the newsgroups or contact us directly via email at support@remobjects.com.