Building a REAL database application using Datasnap
I have built an extensive 2-tier application in D2010, using ADO and devexpress. I want to upgrade this to using Datasnap mainly to provide HTTPS communication instead of just TCP/IP to the vulnerable SQL server. I have followed all the Datasnap tutorials I could find. I have Cary Jensen's Delphi In Depth: ClientDatasets. All good and well, but the examples are pretty useless because in a REAL database application, grids are populated from joining multiple tables together and almost never from a single table. This obviates the "autoresolve" capability of clientdatasets right off the bat. Even the proposed beforeupdateevent handlers won't work in a datasnap application because the DB is only accessible to the datasnap server. So it seems to me I have to create a method on the datasnap server for EACH insert/update I am going to need, then expose those methods to the client and call them from the client as required to request the datasnap server to perform the required update/inserts. This seems like a lot of work!
Is there an easier way to implement https comms to a SQL Server?
Oh in case you're wondering, the application is already pseudo 3-tier in that grids are wired to TdxMemData, and never directly to TADOQueries. I handle all insert/updates myself in the same way that I would have needed to if I had used TClientdatasets.
If you think your database is vulnerable think twice about using D2010 Datasnap. It is very, very vulnerable. Don't be fooled by HTTPS, there are still lot of pieces missing to fully protect the channel. For example once you use Datasnap, SQL server Windows integrated authentication (kerberos based...), is gone.
For a full explanation see: Why Datasnap 2010 is a toy library. It's of course my personal opinion, but is is based on my experience using Midas/Datasnap since Delphi 3, and my current work about IT security.
Anyway you're wrong about insert/updates/deletes. You have to use providers' events to control them on the datasnao server side. It's a bit more complex than handling them in a two-tier application, but you don't need ad-hoc methods for each operation.
[2016 Update: DataSnap in 2016 is even more woefully behind in terms of security and features now than it was when this question was written. I do not recommend its use in any new designs at all, ever.]
DataSnap is a solution to the problem of building multi-tier (Three or more) applications. Directly connecting to SQL over the internet from a thick client that contains all the business logic in the client has many well-understood problems, including the fact that business logic changes then require that you update ALL your clients at once. A middle tier improvement (business logic change) that is inside your data-snap (or other) middle tier logic, is not distributed to each client. The clients are thinner, and contain less of the business logic. Secondly, a well designed data-snap "API" that you build yourself only exposes you to the risks that you create yourself, rather than exposing you to the entire set of MS SQL vulnerabilities.
Frankly, losing Kerberos authentication from your thick client, is not a reason to abandon the idea of a middle tier. I don't understand ldsandon's point at all here. Is he advocating a two-tier application architecture that connects to internet or LAN clients, and that contains all the business logic, as "more secure" than a multi-tier application?
The implicit question suggested by your title is unanswerable, and undefined. What does "real" mean? Many industries deploy two-tier thick clients inside their own corporate LANs. Many have found it beneficial to use a middle tier inside their own LAN, and many have found that external applications that run over the internet should definitely NOT be surfacing the SQL connectivity to thick clients, and so they provide some kind of "web method" (SOAP, REST+JSON, etc) architecture. It has been carefully pointed out that Data-Snap is not a Purely "RESTful" architecture, but it does use JSON, and is in many ways REST-ful in design, although not fully.
If you don't understand the problem that DataSnap was created to solve, it is easy to think DataSnap is worthless, or (alternatively, and equally wrong) some kind of silver bullet. It exists for a particular purpose, one that many people find useful for their development needs. If you intend to take on the work of making a middle tier, DataSnap makes it easier than to do it 100% as a "roll your own middle tier", but it is more work than not having a middle tier.
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