I'm going to publish a few blog posts about FireDAC, starting with some installation notes.
At this initial time, the FireDAC installer is a separate installer (separate from RAD Studio) and you need to close all RAD Studio instances to install. This is the initial page of the installer:
Second page will ask you to accept the license agreement. Third page prompts for the installation folder, by default (on a Win64 machine) that will be C:\Program Files (x86)\Embarcadero\FireDAC.
Following this step, you get a page with various options about what to install. Options include the sample applications, the sample databases (which are built at install time for the database servers you pick in an extra following page), the stand-alone tools (for configuration, monitoring, and the like), the optional SynEdit integration (which requires you to have the specific package installed), and the help files (help and PDF).
With the settings above, pressing Next the installer asks you for the Start Menu folder name (this can be de-selected), and brings you to the final confirmation page:With the settings above, pressing Next the installer asks you for the Start Menu folder name (this can be de-selected), and brings you to the final confirmation page:
If you select the Sample Databases option, you get to see another screenshot before getting to the final one, in which you can pick specific servers (which much be on the target machine, as the databases are created importing standard data into them):
If you are not sure about the database configuration, I’d suggest you to skip the Sample Database options, or just pick a simple one (like MS Access or SQLite): this will install the core data and database creation scripts you can use later on. Again, the sample databases are used only to test the sample applications coming with the product, nor for actual development.
For each of the following option you select you’ll get specific configuration page, like the following:
As an aside, the InterBase sample database construction code is actually (currently) tuned for Firebird, so you might see errors when running it.
Note about the package installation process . What the product installer currently does is to copy the source code and to compile the proper packages on the target machine, using the currently available compiler. By default, this is done for XE3. If you want to install for a previous version of Delphi or C++Builder, you can force the installer with a specific command line parameter /IDE:nn. For example, you can pass as parameter /IDE:DXE2. Given that source code is available, you can also manually recompile the packages with RAD Studio itself. More about this in a later blog post.
At the end of the installation process, you get a final screenshot like:
Now when you run the RAD Studio IDE it should tell you that FireDAC is installed, both in the splash screen and in the About box (which shows also a custom plug-in of mine, called Cantools):
That's all for the initial installation. I'll follow up with some more details on configuration, but first I'll introduce FireDAC development, as covered also in the video on my blog and on the product page.