Updating from 6.24

[DPerkins]

I'm currently porting our application's comms over to use RTC and I'd like to update to the latest version of RTC (from 6.24).  I have a few questions if you wouldn't mind:

1. We're using BCB2007, are there any issues running the latest RTC on this old version?

2. Are there any major changes from 6.24 that I should be aware of?  The Release notes are a bit too extensive to see the meat of the changes.

3. I'm using TRtcMemDataSet and I understand this is now deprecated in favour of TRtcClientDataSet.  Do you have equivalent helper functions like DelphiDataSetToRtc?

4. Does TRtcClientDataSet have a simple way to copy data from any TDataSet descendent?

Many thanks, I'm seeing great speed increases when using RTC for our comms.

EDIT: Would you recommend using the very latest release, or the one from July?

[D.Tkalcec (RTC)]

1.) The latest RTC SDK version is compatible with all versions of Delphi, starting from Delphi 7 up to the latest Delphi 10.1 (Berlin) release, but ... since I am not a BCB developer, I can NOT comment on BCB compatibility, so you will have to try it out. Should you encounter any problems, please report them and I will look into it.

2.) It depends on the components you are using. There have been major changes to RTC Gateway and Gate Client components (protocol, methods, properties and events have been modified a lot), but most of the other components should only require a recompile when moving from any prior 6.x release to the current 7.62 release. For example, all RTC Portal VCL componens and Demos only have to be recompiled (no manual code changes in RTC Portal components or Projects) to work with the latest RTC SDK v7.62 update, even though some features available in the latest RTC SDK release (like the "ServerIPV" property) are not being used in RTC Portal VCL (yet).

3.) TRtcClientDataSet component is based on the TClientDataSet component from Delphi, which is a TDataSet descendant (just like TRtcMemDataSet). This means that all helper functions available in the RTC SDK which accept a TDataSet type and work with the TRtcMemDataSet component should also work with TRtcClientDataSet component.

4.) see my answer to question nr 3.

I always recommend using the latest version available and testing your Projects before deploying them to customers. If you encounter any problems, please report them and I will try to fix them ASAP.

By the way ...

If you have older Windows-only Projects that work well with the TRtcMemDataSet component and you do NOT plan on porting these Projects to target non-Windows platforms (like Android, iOS or OSX), feel free to continue using the TRtcMemDataSet component, even though it will NOT be updated anymore.

For new Projects, especially if you are using one of the newer Delphi/BCB versions and want to target multiple platforms, use the TRtcClientDataSet component instead.

Since the format used for sending and receiving data is the same for TRtcMemDataSet and TRtcClientDataSet components, you can also continue using the old TRtcMemDataSet component with older Projects while using TRtcClientDataSet in newer Projects, or ... you can gradually move away from the TRtcMemDataSet component by updating your older Projects module-by-module to use the new TRtcClientDataSet component.

Best Regards,
Danijel Tkalcec

[DPerkins]

Thanks for the reply.  I don't use gateway or portal components, so hopefully an easy upgrade.