RESTful architectures are a key driving force behind modern API first application design. This book focuses on the RAD Server framework included with RAD Studio (Delphi/C++Builder) for developing such platforms.

RAD Server is a full backend MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) that enables Desktop, Mobile and Web frontend development in any language, and this book is designed as a definitive guide for developers.

The benefit of a MEAP is that you have a pre-built cloud or on-prem server with many core capabilities (such as push notifications, user tracking and analytics) that you can plug into rapidly to deliver remote database and functional access.

This guide to Embarcadero RAD Server, originally authored by David I (2019), is in its second edition, revised by Antonio Zapater (2023), which includes many additional features added based on market demand since RAD Servers Launch. The second edition is also supported by a comprehensive video series supporting each chapter, along with source code examples on GitHub.  

RESTful architectures are a key driving force behind modern API first application design. This book focuses on the RAD Server framework included with RAD Studio (Delphi/C++Builder) for developing such platforms.

RAD Server is a full backend MEAP (Mobile Enterprise Application Platform) that enables Desktop, Mobile and Web frontend development in any language, and this book is designed as a definitive guide for developers.

The benefit of a MEAP is that you have a pre-built cloud or on-prem server with many core capabilities (such as push notifications, user tracking and analytics) that you can plug into rapidly to deliver remote database and functional access.

This guide to Embarcadero RAD Server, originally authored by David I (2019), is in its third edition, revised by Antonio Zapater (2024, 2025), which includes many additional features added based on market demand since RAD Servers Launch. This edition is also supported by a comprehensive video series supporting each chapter, along with source code examples on GitHub.

What’s New in this 3rd edition ?

The new release adds eight more chapters covering advanced features and real-world scenarios:

• Chapter 11: Authentication and Authorization
• Chapter 12: Documenting and testing your endpoints using OpenAPI (Swagger)
• Chapter 13: File management and storage
• Chapter 14: EdgeModules: Extending RAD Server
• Chapter 15: RAD Server and WebStencils
• Chapter 16: RAD Server Multi-Tenancy Support
• Chapter 17: Mapping Endpoints to External Classes
• Chapter 18: Extending RAD Server with Resource Interceptors

Combined with the original ten chapters, you now have complete coverage of RAD Server from basic setup through advanced customization and deployment.

As always, the guide includes downloadable source code examples and video tutorials for each chapter, making it easy to follow along and implement these features in your own projects. 

While Embarcadero keeps adding features to RAD Server (more to come soon) we have made some additional effort to help developers better understand how to use RAD Server for hosting REST APIs and building a modern web service architecture.

We have asked David I to help and he delivered for us an in-depth 200 pages e-book covering RAD Server development and deployment. It is available for free to customers of the Enterprise and Architect editions of Delphi and C++Builder, or RAD Studio.