Lazarus 0.9.28

It was released today, check the Release Notes. Lots of improvements and bugfixes, congratulations to everyone involved.

First module ported from Delphi to Lazarus

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)

During the last year we were busy designing the next major version (3.x) of our ERP. Of course, the current version (2.x) is being maintained and improved. It's like that TV ad for EDS: we're building a plane in the air. Our goal is to gradually port the ERP from Delphi 7 to Lazarus while we phase out the current version.

This week we released the first ported module: "Terminal de Consulta" (Price Check Terminal). It's a two-form application that uses SQLdb (connecting to PostgreSQL) and Synapse (to get images from webservers). It's also a proof of concept, as it tests several key features.

The SQLdb component is used in a potentially heavy query: the user can type the letter A, press ENTER and get all products with a letter A somewhere in the description (almost 30,000 items). The user can also use the barcode scanner to get basic information and F4 to get extra information (like the stock quantities in different stores). Pressing F4 requires authorization; if the current user is not authorized the application shows the second form, asking for a username/password.

The Synapse library is used in two different ways: to show the customer's logo from their website (using a proxy if needed) and to show the product's image from a local webserver (no proxy).

The price check module is being used for a couple days and the user's feedback is positive, as is the performance monitoring. The original module was improved with minor changes: we used bigger icons and made the interface more simple and straightforward during the port to Lazarus.

Thanks to everyone and stay tuned for more on porting to Lazarus!