Delphi 7 Enterprise or Delphi 2010 Professional

Question

At work I have used Delphi 6 & 7 Enterprise for several years. A few years back, I bought a personal copy of Turbo Delphi Professional. Because of this I am eligible for Delphi 2010 Professional upgrade. But I am not eligible for Delphi 2010 Enterprise upgrade though.

Is it worth buying Delphi 2010 Professional Upgrade or should I look for Delphi 7 Enterprise?

The purpose of me trying to buy Delphi includes writing Multi-tier database applications for learning purpose.

Any advise would be appreciated.

TIA!

Equator

this may be related (and answer some of your question) #1890990 – Electrotherapy

Reading more about Delphi Professional, it has the same level of features as that of Visual Studio Express editions. It may be complete waste of money to get Delphi Professional when VS Express is free. I like Delhi, it may be time to say good bye! – Equator

Answer 1

Delphi 2010 is miles ahead of Delphi 7, particularly DataSnap.

If I were you, I would contact Embarcadero directly and see what it would take to upgrade to Delphi 2010 Enterprise. I would also follow Bob's advice and get SA.

http://embarcadero.com/products/rad-studio/rad-studio-feature-matrix.pdf

Goldia

Thanks for the advice. I did contact Embarcadero and I am upgrading to Delphi 2010 Enterprise! I also bought Dlephi 7 Architect from ebay (nostalgia!) – Equator

Good news. Everything is negotiable. :) – Goldia

Excellent. Hope you enjoy D2010 as much as I have. Best delphi ever. – Bergren

Answer 2

Delphi 2010 Professional Upgrade only costs 399 Euro, and right now (until Monday, June 28th) will get you RAD Studio 2010 Professional delivered (plus a free download of Delphi Prism 2011 as well). Note that the Professional edition does not include DataSnap 2010 for multi-tier database development. For that, you'd want Delphi 2010 Enterprise - a New User license would cost 1999 Euro, and would get you RAD Studio 2010 Enterprise...

Delphi 7 Enterprise is only available as New User licenses, and costs 2490 Euro. More expensive than the Delphi 2010 Enterprise New User edition...

Personally, I would go for the Delphi 2010 - and make sure to include subscription as well (at the RAD Studio level), so you'll know for sure you get Delphi 2011 and RAD Studio 2011 when they become available...

Groetjes, Bob Swart (www.bobswart.nl or www.bobswart.com)

PS: all prices without VAT where applicable ;-)

Preservative

Delphi 7 is still available to buy? – Haematinic

I bought Delphi 7 Architect from ebay. (Sealed, brand new, retail, unregistered for about $1000) – Equator

Answer 3

Delphi 2010 Professional includes DataSnap's TDataSetProvider and TClientDataSet but only lets you use them in 2 tier applications.

That said if you were to upgrade to the enterprise level at a later date it would be a relatively simple matter to make these 2 tier DataSnap applications, 3 tier DataSnap applications.

There are also several other ways to write 3 tier applications using Delphi 2010 Professional that don't involve DataSnap or require the Enterprise level. Third party libraries such as RemObjects, kbmMW, RealThinClient all provide alternative multi-tier solutions to DataSnap.

Educe

+1 for pointing out that "Enterprise" primarily buys you stuff in the box for which there are cheaper/superior alternatives available elsewhere – Sufi

Answer 4

I agree with Lauchlan. I went with 2010 Pro for exactly those reasons. For personal projects I think you'll get 90% of the benefit by writing two tier DataSnap demo applications then building your three tier stuff using other libraries. I'm using Pro at work as well because the extra cost of upgrading is huge and there's no real benefit for us. It's not like Delphi 3 where database access was limited unless you paid extra.

I'd also look very carefully at the special offers. If you're learning about databases it might be worth seeing if you can get the "buy one get one free" (BOGOF) deal and use that to grab one of the Embarcadero database tools. My feeling is that there's a new special offer every couple of months so delaying your upgrade might pay off it you can afford to wait.

Splendent

I agree that all Delphi related stuff is too expensive compared to Microsoft's development tools. I finally bought Delphi 7 Architect from eBay and 2010 Enterprise Upgrade from Embarcadero. The free upgrade to RAD Studio and the free Prism 2011 was too good to pass. After all I worked with Delphi for most of the last 10 years! – Equator

Hope Embarcadero will consider reducing the price as well as do a better marketing to regain the lost crown of Delphi. – Equator

I don't think dropping the price will regain anything. I think progress forwards making the product better is the key. – Bergren

<late reply> Of course it will. There is no equivalent version of Delphi similar to the Express editions of Visual Studio. So there is no way (and reason) for some one new to Delphi to try it out. It is a known fact that Microsoft products became popular because of piracy. Nobody starts working on enterprise applications immediately after coming to the Earth. But eventually when they get a chance to work on enterprise applications they prefer to use what they are already familiar with. – Equator