BlaisePascal magazine - special edition -

since today is a special edition from the BlaisePascal Magazine available.
This is a special issue with over 100 pages and can be downloaded for free.

Interesting read (here in a coffee shop in munich)

DelphiLive - where legend meets tomorrow...

The main conference have yesterday finished.
We've get a lot of news from the developers "behind the code of Delphi". A great "zip-version" is here and I'll not repeat it in my posts (except that I use a MacBook and happy about ProjectX ....).
Beside all the informations it's everytime great to see on all on a face-to-face-conferences and make new experience on the talks with many friends of the Delphi-community (where I spend many conferences and so on for the last 14 years). Hopefully see you next year here in US again!

Rave 7.6.2 for Delphi 2009 is available...

after a long time it's ready and available:

the 7.6.2 patch for Rave BE for Delphi 2009. Especially the Scripting is working again and some other important things works now....

http://cc.embarcadero.com/reg/rad_studio

And now I'll start my session-work for the delphilive-conference in San Jose :-)

Delphi and Oracle

In may I make a 1-day training for the german entwickler-akademie with the subject "Delphi and Oracle".
I'll explain the database "Oracle" for developers with some dba-secrets, connecting Delphi 200x with Oracle-databases and more.
I love (and work of course) InterBase and BlackfishSQL, but many companies or authorities have Oracle in use and won't "insert" another database in the network / on the servers...
I will show that Oracle is a normal database and not a mystical software-product for dba-professionals only on this training. Introducing the architecture of Oracle, understanding the communication form the delphi-app with the database over the ora-client (and the oracle instantclient, which works with dbx4...) and creating trigger and stored procedures with PL/SQL, a pascal-like language.

Beside this Oracle-stuff I'll use and demonstrate dbx4 and show some secrets of this framework, like the handling of streams with dbx4:

FileStream := TFileStream.Create(EInfoPDF.Text, fmOpenRead);
TDBXStreamValue(Command.Parameters[1].Value).SetStream(FileStream);
Command.ExecuteUpdate;

Last week I finished a small (db-)application with Delphi and dbx4 and it's pretty easy to send (pdf)files into the database with dbx4 ...

And after this training I'll fly to California...
Why: A face-to-face conference for all Delphi-Developers around the world .... (great news that in US is a conference again ...)

Rave AddOns

Many developers have noticed that the Nevrona-Page isn't at the moment ready to use.

Especially the AddOn's aren't available. I've created a link-list to download the files from the nevrona.com-folder.

Rave 5:

GreenBar

Rave 5.0 5.1 6 7

GIF

Rave 5.0 5.1 6 7

JPEG

Rave 5.0 5.1 6 7

Grid

Rave 5.0 5.1 6 7

EAN8 Barcode

Rave 5.0 5.1 6 7

Datalinks

Advantage 6 7

InterBase

Oracle

If a link is broken please insert a comment here, thx!

And after release of Rave 8 Nevrona Design will activate the homepage again and this blog-entry will be obsolete;

Rave and the old preview...

Rave have since version 3 the same preview-form. Many users of Rave don't understand why it's not with a newer design available. 

First the BEX users have the complete source and on the other side (for BE-users and corporate-design-developers) you have with Delphi and Rave all the flexibility you need for your own preview in your application-form, with your look&feel.

In the following example you see how easy an own preview in your form is:

You must only insert a TScrollBox from Delphi and instead of the RvSystem the RvNDRWriter for the engine of your RvProject. To render the report into the scrollBox you need the RvRenderPreview-component from the Rave-register;

you can insert the componenta on your form or create on runtime:

      RvRenderPreview1: TRvRenderPreview;

    RvNDRWriter1: TRvNDRWriter;

    RvRenderPreview1 := TRvRenderPreview.Create(Self);

    RvNDRWriter1 := TRvNDRWriter.Create(Self);

Now you can show the report inside your application and don't need a special (old) form ...

procedure TForm1.Button2Click(Sender: TObject);

var

  MeinNDRStream: TMemoryStream;

begin

  MeinNDRStream := TMemoryStream.Create;

  RvProject1.Open;

  RvProject1.Engine := RvNDRWriter1;

  with RvNDRWriter1 do

  begin

    StreamMode := smUser;

    Stream := MeinNDRStream;

  end;

  RvProject1.Execute;

  // the report is now written into the TMemoryStream;

  // you can use the report for many things without regenerate

  // the report again!

  // e.g. preview, print and render into PDF/HTML or whatelse

  MeinNDRStream.Position := 0;

  with RvRenderPreview1 do

  begin

    ScrollBox := ScrollBox1;

    NDRStream := MeinNDRStream;

    Render;

  end;

 MeinNDRStream.Position := 0;

// here I use the report again for rendering into a pdf-file

// without regenerate it again ...  

  RvRenderPDF1.PrintRender(MeinNDRStream,'c:\hello_world.pdf');

  // with RenderPage you can define a page and only 

  // this page is   rendered:

  RvRenderpdf1.RenderPage(1);

end;

To navigate in your report you have the following possibilities:

  RvRenderPreview1.PrevPage;

  RvRenderPreview1.NextPage;

  RvRenderPreview1.LastPage := RvRenderPreview1.Pages;

  RvRenderPreview1.FirstPage := 0;

Here you get the total pages outside Rave:

    RvRenderPreview1.Pages

the programmers...

I noticed on delphifeeds this sunday morning the blog about "Do all great programmers start young".
Some month ago I found another blog: Can A Programmer Be Ten Times More Productive?
(it's from NetApp, a storage company with high-perfomance software inside to make all the possibility of iSCSI, SAN, NAS and so on availble).

I think with learning you'll get more and more skill, but to have more than other you need to look around your dev-world and combine all the complexe informations. Only with developing (in ObjectPascal) you're sometimes an expert in Pascal, but this isn't enough in our time. You need more than this. A good developer must understand the complete architecture and how software-products need to be developed for current and future needs; and this is very important for the complete architecture. And with the experience of many years you learn from the feedback of your customer the "usability" of your applications and beside this is the high performance software design only possible when you know more then (pascal)-programming. A reference to many other areas expand the skill day by day.
A good programmer brings a rare combination of breadth, depth and vision to his daily work and an architect or programmer must make many decision every day (also the explanations behind the decisions should be good / excellent) quickly and effectively and directs the product very well.
I always wonder about many programmers how they manages the spare time to be proficient in the current and future technologies which are happening in the industry all the time...