Nicomsoft OCR SDK

Unique character analysis technology delivering reliable recognition of any fonts even in poor-quality images

Key features

• Excellent analysis algorithms for poor-quality text, distorted, connected and broken characters
• Dictionaries are used for the best recognition
• Supports 26 languages: Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
• Ability to scan documents from TWAIN-compatible devices
• Bar codes support: EAN-13/UPC-A, UPC-E, EAN-8, Code 128, Code 39, Interleaved 2 of 5 and QR Code.
• ICR module for handwritten digits
• Multiple-core CPUs support: speeding up analysis of even a single text fragment through efficient parallel processing of recognition
• Supports multiple image formats: BMP, JPEG, PNG, TIFF, GIF and many others
• Intuitive OCR API and sample projects with complete source code for various programming languages.
• Cross-platform: Windows and Linux platforms are supported

Nicomsoft OCR SDK is designed for using with:

• Microsoft Visual C/C++
• Microsoft Visual C#
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
• Microsoft Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET)
• Microsoft Visual Basic
• Borland Delphi
• Borland C++ Builder
• Java
• Other programming systems that can access functions in DLLs or can use COM objects.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) – How it works

• Loading image as bitmap from given source. Source can be a file or a pointer to a memory block, also good OCR system must understand a lot of image formats: BMP, TIFF (both one-page and multi-pages images), JPEG, PNG and so on. PDF files must be supported as well, many documents are stored as images in PDF format and the only way to extract text from such files is to perform OCR.
• Detecting the most important image features like resolution and inversion. Many OCR algorithms expect some predefined range of font sizes and foreground/background colors so the image must be rescaled and inverted before processing when necessary.
• Image can be skewed or it can have a lot of noise, so deskew and denoising algorithms are applied to improve the image quality.

• Many OCR algorithms require bi-tonal image, therefore color or gray image must be converted to black-white image. This process is called "binarization" and it is very important step because incorrect binarization will cause a lot of problems.

• Lines detection and removing. This step is required to improve page layout analysis, to achieve better recognition quality for underlined text, to detect tables, etc.

• Page layout analysis; this steps is also called "zoning". At this stage OCR system must detect positions and types of all important areas on the image.
• Detection of text lines and words. Sometimes it is not an easy task because of different font sizes and small spaces between words.
• Combined-broken characters analysis. It is very common situation when some characters are broken to several parts, or when a few characters touch each one; it is necessary to detect such cases and find correct position of every character.

• Recognition of characters. This is the main algorithm of OCR; an image of every character must be converted to appropriate character code. Sometimes this algorithm produces several character codes for uncertain images. For instance, recognition of the image of "I" character can produce "I", "|" "1", "l" codes and the final character code will be selected later.
• Dictionary support. This step can improve recognition quality, some characters like "1" and "I", "C" and "G" can look very similar and the dictionary can help to make the decision.
• Saving results to selected output format, for instance, searchable PDF, DOC, RTF, TXT. It is important to save original page layout: columns, fonts, colors, pictures, background and so on.

Direct Access Components for MySQL
MicroOLAP Direct Access Components for MySQL and Delphi/C++ Builder (also known as MySQLDAC) is a Borland Delphi/C++Builder component set for direct connect to MySQL database server. DAC for MySQL allows you to create Delphi/C++Builder applications without BDE, ODBC, ADO and without libmysql.dll. 

Top reasons to use DAC for MySQL

• licensed per a developer without royalty fee: you don't need to purchase end-user run-time licenses at all;
• no MySQL libraries (libmysql.dll) are required on a client workstation;
• 100% native Delphi code;
• support of Delphi 5-7, C++Builder 5-6, Borland Developer Studio 2005-2006 Win32 edition, Turbo Delphi 2006, Turbo C++ 2006, CodeGear RAD Studio 2007 (both Delphi 2007 and C++Builder 2007) Win32 Edition, CodeGear Delphi and C++Builder 2009, Embarcadero RAD Studio 2010 (Delphi 2010 and C++Builder 2010), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE (Delphi XE and C++Builder XE), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE2 (Delphi XE2 and C++Builder XE2), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE3 (Delphi XE3 and C++Builder XE3), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE4 (Delphi XE4 and C++Builder XE4), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE5 (Delphi XE5 and C++Builder XE5), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE6 (Delphi XE6 and C++Builder XE6), Embarcadero RAD Studio XE7 (Delphi XE7 and C++Builder XE7);
• support of MySQL™ 3.xx/4.x/5.x/6.x;
• only 300-400 Kb are added to your .exe file;
• full support of stored procedures (with IN, OUT and INOUT parameters);
• full compatibility with all the existing data-aware controls and report designers;
• full support of the BLOB fields;
• TDBImageEx component for JPEG images support included in the package for free (with sources);
• TNT Unicode Controls Wrappers package for Unicode applications for free (with sources);
• detailed help system and a lot of various demo applications;
• and much more. Please find more details in the online documentation.

DAC for MySQL Components:

TmySQLDatabase provides discrete control over a connection to a single database in a database application. Use TmySQLDatabase when a database application requires any of the following control over a database connection: Persistent database connections; Customized database server logins; Transaction control; Single-value queries.

TmySQLTable encapsulates a database table. Use TmySQLTable to access data in a single database table. TmySQLTable provides direct access to every record and field in an underlying database table. TmySQLTable can also work with a subset of records within a database table using ranges and filters. At design time, create, delete, update, or rename the database table connected to a TmySQLTable by right-clicking on the TmySQLTable and using the pop-up menu.

TmySQLQuery encapsulates a dataset with a result set that is based on an SQL statement. Use TmySQLQuery to access one or more MySQL tables in a database using SQL statements. TmySQLQuery component is useful because it can: Access more than one table at a time (called a "join" in SQL). Automatically access a subset of rows and columns in its underlying table(s), rather than always returning all rows and columns. Access multi-resultset queries.

TMySQLUpdateSQL applies cached updates on behalf of queries or stored procedures that can't post updates directly. Use a TMySQLUpdateSQL object to provide SQL statements used to update read-only datasets represented by TMySQLQuery component. A dataset is read-only either by design or circumstance. If a dataset is read-only by design, the application itself does not provide a user interface for updating data, but may institute a programmatic scheme behind the scenes. If a dataset is read-only by circumstance, it indicates that the MySQL returned a read-only result set. This usually happens for queries made against multiple tables. Such queries are, by SQL-92 definitions, read-only.

TmySQLStoredProc provides functionality for using stored procedures in MySQL. TmySQLStoredProc works with two types of stored procedures: with or without a result set (for the first type use Open() method or set Active property to True, for the second - use ExecProc() method). When the procedure name is put in the ProcedureName property, the component fetches information on parameters of the procedure from the server and puts it in the Params property according to parameters' types. This component provides full support of IN, OUT and INOUT parameters.

TmySQLDirectQuery is component for high-speed (3-4 times faster then with TmySQLQuery component) data fetching. But it is not TDataset compatible.

TMySQLBatchExecute component can execute SQL scripts containing more than one SQL statement.

TMySQLMacroQuery is the descendant of TMySQLQuery component and supports all of its properties, methods, events, and functionalities. The difference is in Macros and MacroChar properties which help to modify SQL script text in design-time and run-time with easy.

TMySQLMonitor monitors dynamic SQL passed to the MySQL server.

TMySQLDump allows to get SQL script with a dump of a DataBase. This script can be executed on another MySQL server by TMySQLBatchExecute component.

TMySQLTools component allows to run MySQL diagnostic and repair operations such as Repair, Check, Analyze, Optimize, Backup and Restore.

TBDE2MySQLDAC class is intended for the easy conversion of BDE Database Objects into DAC for MySQL Database Objects.