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We are about to purchase Delphi XE3, but since installing the demo, I've noticed that I can't add the service reference to the WCF data services. I have tried using the MetaData URL of the service and the base URL of the service with no success.

We would like native support for this feature that handles the serialization/deserialization from the Atom feeds to objects on the client side.

The Delphi marketing material suggests native support for WCF Data services, and if we have to build the http requests, and then manually parse the returned XML, then we might as well not upgrade from Delphi 2010.

Does anyone have any experience with this? Do I need to output json only? Is there a specific component I need to use that handles this instead of the WSDL import in Delphi?

Thanks

Barett
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reckface
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  • I have never seen any marketing material showing 100% WCF compatibility. SOAP yes, WCF seems partially compatible with the WSDL importer but there are limitations. WCF servers have many capabilities beyond those that the Delphi WSDL importer generated clients can consume, and in fact, many WCF servers are written in a way that Delphi cannot connect to and consume. – Warren P Mar 16 '13 at 21:48
  • This EDN article is about the now defunct WCF features of Delphi.net: http://edn.embarcadero.com/article/36962 – Warren P Mar 16 '13 at 21:49
  • Thanks. I already have Delphi working with basicHttp, and recently wsHttp WCF services, but we were considering the upgrade to handle Atom pub or json feeds from WCF data services which don't have a wsdl, they have a metadata exchange url. I would even be happy with improved XML data binding, so I can handle the http requests manually, as long as Delphi can automate parsing the xml. So in short, the upgrade (for this reason) will be a waste of money. Shame. – reckface Mar 18 '13 at 09:15
  • The reasons why I think XE3 are worth upgrading to are (a) more stable IDE and compiler than all previous versions including especially 2010, and (b) proper 64 bit support, which you might not need now or maybe ever, but that's a big reason why XE2 and XE3 are worth using in my view. – Warren P Mar 18 '13 at 13:03
  • XE5 now has something usable for Querying OData! After proving the concept with the trial against our WCF data services I have reluctantly agreed to purchase the developer upgrade (from 2010 Enterprise) – reckface Sep 25 '13 at 10:44
  • Cool. I have built ODATA servers using RemObjects DataAbstract before. Does XE5 data snap let you make ODATA servers too? – Warren P Sep 25 '13 at 17:39
  • Haven't tested that yet, but their documentation seems to suggest you can. Plus there's now a new project called DataSnap Rest Application. The description contains: "with support for Rest communication" and "using Java Script and JSON" – reckface Sep 26 '13 at 09:16

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