Case study: migration and extension of a real estate management system in Delphi
A semi-public organisation had long relied on a custom Delphi system for real estate management. Apptimate migrated the application to Delphi 13, strengthened security, and extended functionality with configurable income assessment for starter homes.
Many organisations rely on long-standing custom Delphi applications perfectly tailored to their processes. A semi-public organisation approached Apptimate to modernise their real estate management system — a Delphi/VCL application used daily for property management, housing allocation and income assessments, processing sensitive resident and property data and forming a critical link in semi-public operations.
Migration to Delphi 13
Migrating to the latest version of Delphi provided the opportunity to address years of accumulated technical debt. Legacy language constructs from the application's early days were replaced with modern RTL equivalents. String handling was made explicit, memory management was tightened, and I/O-intensive logging functions were revised. The result is a codebase that is easier to maintain, runs more efficiently on modern hardware, and is ready for further development in Delphi 13.
Security strengthened
Alongside the migration, the application's security was thoroughly reviewed. Password hashing was upgraded to a current standard that produces a unique hash per user — even for identical passwords. The update was designed so that existing users are automatically and transparently migrated on their next login, with no manual intervention required and no disruption visible to the user. Transport security for outgoing communication was also improved and further security issues identified during the review were resolved.
New feature: income assessment method configurable per project
Certain categories of housing require different assessment rules than the default: income must be assessed on the basis of gross income rather than combined income. The underlying logic was already present in the application but could not be configured through the user interface, leaving staff reliant on cumbersome workarounds. Apptimate extended the project management module with a configuration option for the assessment method, so the correct setting can be specified directly per project.
Result
The semi-public organisation now has a modernised application that meets current security standards, is easier to maintain, and offers new functionality that matches real-world practice. The migration to Delphi 13 provides a solid foundation for further development in the years ahead.
Do you have an existing Delphi application that needs modernising or extending? Get in touch — we will bring your software sustainably up to current standards.
