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Delphi developers has several tools (several alternatives to ASP.NET) for building web applications.

While No.1 framework is Intraweb, there is a lot of interest around ExtJS, that has 2 incarnations: 1) the opensource ExtPascal 2) the closedsource Raudus

Now the products are different, Raudus never supports the latest ExtJS version (while ExtPascal does because as far as I read it "almost automatically updates itself to the latest ExJS version"), Raudus "seems" much RAD (much similar to Intraweb from the RAD point of view).

Anyway why chose one or the other?

Why Raudus (since it is free) cannot become Open Source? Or does Raudus use ExtPascal behind the scenes?

Comment: uniGUI seems at first sight to combine the good part of Raudus (the RAD part) and ExtPascal (being based on extPascal).

UnDiUdin
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8 Answers8

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Talking about Raudus, I'd be careful! You can download it for free, indeed. I was about to start using it when I realized there's no single word on its usage license. There's no license in fact, or I was unable to find it under "standard" locations (website? no. installer? no. README / LICENSE file? no.) Thus I'd be careful with using library which doesn't specify it's license. Especially if you're about to start some project which will use it intensely - just imagine what happens when it comes out that you need to pay big amount of money for using it ...

migajek
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  • good warning, but in any case there is always the chance try contacting the author if reachable and ask him to clarify the situation – someone Jun 12 '10 at 01:08
  • someone, I forgot to mention I did tried to contact the author. There's no contact email nor form, nor even an author name - thus I tried to contact him via blog comments, but no response so far (~3 months now). – migajek Jun 12 '10 at 08:43
  • I chose this as answer, even if no posted answer really answer the quesion, anyway the arguments you listed on Raudus are enough to make me think 7 times before starting any almost serious project with it. – UnDiUdin Jun 14 '10 at 08:12
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Why use any of them? RAD in the form of Intraweb and tools like it, is not appropriate for web programing. It doens't separate the GUI from bussines logic well. In other words there is no true MVC approach there. Maybe ExtPascal is different here, but the point is elsewhere.

ExtJS is a very well written RAI JS library. It feels almost like putting blocks of code together in a very object oriented way. You can easily build whole GUI with ExtJS without any backend support. This way your whole GUI is in javascript files and no backend is needed. Backend only processes the ajax call and provides data / processes data. This way you have a clear separation of concerns.

This can be easily done without any frameworks. Yes framework would come in handy but it would have to be done in a ASP.NET MVC or Ruby on Rails way. No RAD and no visual designers. New web developers often make those mistakes. But if you program for the web long enough you come to appreciate the separation of GUI and logic and the simplicity of HTML. Web programming is different from desktop programming at least to a degree.

To answer your question. From what I have seen, I like ExtPascal better. It seems a purer web development tool than Raudus. But I admit I have only seen both from the surface and from demo videos, so I cannot judge, only speculate :)

Runner
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    Sounds like you will be shot if it isn't MVC. Which is IMHO a bit too strong – Marco van de Voort Jun 11 '10 at 14:17
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    web is kind of MVC by default, with HTML, CSS on one side and Backend on the other. It is just that people are trying to negate that. But that is just my optionion ,aybe I am a little to harsh :) – Runner Jun 11 '10 at 14:20
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    I must admit it, I am new to web developement, I tried ASP.NET, tried Intraweb and saw a demo of ExtPascal. You are probably right about the MVC approach, anyway my question is specific to the Raudus vs ExtPascal. – UnDiUdin Jun 11 '10 at 15:29
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    Ok I updated my answer to give my opinion to your question. About ASP.NET be careful there are two approaches. The old one which is WinForms based and the new one with MVC framework. – Runner Jun 12 '10 at 06:59
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The Raudus developer put up a new blog post in late October and claims, well I'll let you read the snippet for yourself:

"Raudus license is freeware as written in license.txt. You CAN use Raudus in commercial projects. Raudus sources are not available yet."

Cromulent
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    ok, anyway the main problem of Raudus is that ir doesn't support latest Delphi versions. I have all my code in Delphi 2009. I tried unigui and it is amazing. I don't know intraweb in detail, but at least with unigui in 3 seconds you have a working web application with good look. MVC? No. But not all developers need to write the next facebook or the next stackoverflow. When the number of users are limited the RAD apporoach to webapplications in my opinion is perfectly suitable. Now if Raudus would become open source and starts supporting D2009 and newer it would be probably very good. – UnDiUdin Dec 02 '10 at 10:53
  • Anyway in Raudus blog (http://www.raudus.com/blog/) a roadmap has been published and says "Support of Unicode versions of Delphi". Moreover very interesting for me is "In far future Raudus will implement controls from other kits, (Sencha Touch, Apple DashCode, XUL/AmpleSDK, Bindows". – UnDiUdin Dec 02 '10 at 10:58
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Edit: There is a license statement at the bottom of the http://www.raudus.com/ page.

"License

Raudus is freeware. You can freely use Raudus for commercial purposes."

As to contacting the author, try this from the same page: E-mail: igor@klopov.com

Lloyd Linklater
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  • Yes it is freeware anyway you shuold buy an ExtJS license to use it commercailly. Now it has also the Sencha Touch support, in that case the license is not needed for a commercial application. – UnDiUdin Aug 24 '11 at 07:20
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After using Raudus for a few months I decided to post my own answer.

The framework is improving, Sencha touch support now it is not complete but sufficient to create usable web applications optimized for mobile devices.

RFE, a new front end, not based on Sencha Touch is under developement and in next Raudus release (that should be out soon) there will be a usable preview of the new controls set.

So while ExtPascal seems frozen, Raudus is in progress and promising.

Update: I stopped using Raudus, it dropped ExtJs support and now it ships with own controls, that will never match the beauty and richness of extjs components. I am now going for IW + cgdevtools components that are Jquery UI for IW.

UnDiUdin
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user193655 --> Depending on what you do be carefull with both approaches. I am really a big fan on Delphi or Freepascal/Lazarus - I am not very certain if the approach of bringing 3GL bindings to the Javascript stuff is wise.

MVC - depending on what you do - in PHP you have the Yii Framwork or Prado. Maybe the second has some ideas from .net built in which are very easy to understand by Delphi developers. PRADO is an event driven approach while YII Framework is absolutely cool and unix like.

Michael
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After using Raudus it seems that it is not practical for large scale of applications. According to their documentation and I have also sampled, it serializes all client request into single main thread. However it process client request and response generation part in multi-threaded enviornment.

But main thread issue is quite important as it directly impact the response time if one action is taking more time in the main thread, others will keep waiting.

Any suggestions to resolve this issue?

Arpan
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Raudus:

  • Relies upon Delphi, in which:
    • Is verbose;
    • Relies upon Microsoft Windows;
    • High-cost to adapt to or to maintain;
  • Quote from raudus.com: "Raudus is freeware. You can freely use Raudus for commercial purposes. Raudus sources are not available yet." — This, to me, will be never a license. On the homepage, simply there is no documentation about Terms of Service or something like that. Hence I won't deal with their services.