[marcocantu]

"Delphi has a Community Edition now (which is free), but the fact that are excluded from a large portion of the library"

That's not really the case. With Delphi Community edition you get support for 4 operating systems, VCL and FireMonkey, it only lacks access to Enterprise databases like Oracle and some of the multi-tier architectures. Community has a large percentage (80%+) of the features...

[Svip]

You are correct, saying 'large portion of the library' was a mistake. But as I remember, you don't have access to the VCL source code with the Community Edition. The feature matrix says that this is 'limited in Community', whatever that means.

We wanted to do MongoDB connections, which comes with FireDAC. But that's only available in the Enterprise Edition. So we ended up rewriting TMongoWire[0] to fit our needs.

I am sure you can do most things in Delphi in the Community edition, but it's a little too late, unfortunately.

[0] https://github.com/stijnsanders/TMongoWire

[marcocantu]

You are right about MongoDB... as for "VCL source code" it is available, but with licensing limitations

[wila]

Oh FireDAC is no longer available for Professional version either? Geez.. really not going to lay down $3k for an EE.

How is that "professional" if you cannot even read/write to sqlite.

[TheJimMcKeeth]

Both Professional and Community Edition include FireDAC.

https://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/product-editions

"Build database apps with local/embedded connectivity" is in every edition.

The only difference is you need Enterprise or Architect to connect to "Enterprise class" databases like a remote Oracle server.

[nenadst]

unfortunately "Enterprise DBs" means also Postgresql, Mysql, SQL Server etc. (anything Client/Server)

you can probably just use another Framework like (free) ZeosDB (http://zeoslib.sourceforge.net/)

or some paid ones e.g. from Devart (https://www.devart.com/dac.html)

but still, its frustrating to have to use something else for such basic functionality ...

[wila]

Ah ok, it doesn't mention FireDAC, fair enough. At least you can save data in a database.

Thanks for the correction.

[wila]

@fmxexpress thanks for the info. That's exactly what I am doing now, but I am not on the latest version.

[fmxexpress]

This is incorrect. I have Pro. I use FireDAC. SQLite can be used with Pro.

[pkphilip]

As a person who has used Delphi since around 1997 and Turbo Pascal I find it frustrating and extremely disappointing that people like Marco Cantu who are leading figures in the Delphi community do not do enough to criticize the absolutely crazy Delphi pricing and products such as this ludicrous "community" edition with the $5K/year limitation.

Why would any company want to start developing in Delphi if the pricing/developer is suddenly going to jump to a ridiculously high number the moment they touch $5K/year limit?

But even the $5k/year limitation came in far too late.

I am very sad to see the way the Delphi community is languishing and slowly dying out.