Rave, Delphi and more

Time to say “Goodbye“

2010-02-27T02:54:00.000-08:00

It‘s for me time to say goodbye ... don‘t worry, not to Delphi!

I‘m a long time user of Rave Reports and a TeamNevrona member since 2002. Many know me from the newsgroups or met me on conferences and so on. During those years, I gave more than 50 trainings and a lot of reporting-sessions on conferences in Europe and the US about Rave Reports.

I really love the power of RAVE Reports, but must admit that Rave has a high learning curve for developers who come from another report engines. In my trainings I tried to open „the door into Rave“ and I got a lot of positive feedback over the years from many attendees. All my reports in my applications use Rave and customers are happy with the performance and quality.
But I noticed (like many others, I get every weeks many emails from Rave-users all over the world ) that it seems that Nevrona Design does not have the power to publish a stable Rave8 version or a BE-version for Delphi 2009 / 2010 which I can use in a production environment with complex reports ... (I don‘t talk about a new IDE, which they have announced in 2007, I mean only the support of Unicode and so on, the IDE is another story which I don‘t comment upon right now).

It is unfortunate....

I‘ll move on to a new reporting engine with my change to Delphi 2010. But believe me, it‘s not an easy way to take, however, I see no alternatives at the moment. A lot of developers must stay with Delphi 2007 or older because they need a stable Rave BEX with their additional components or customized sources, like me.
More than two years we are anticipating the release of Rave 8, yet Nevrona Design has not published a stable version. I‘m in the situation to switch to Delphi 2010 with the really cool Datasnap-Framework and I need a stable reporting engine.
I‘ve ordered FastReport 4.9 and have made my first steps in FR in the last weeks...

I‘ll not update this blog in the future, only one new thread about my new blog will be coming in the next couple of weeks. The content of the new blog will be focused on Delphi & SQL-language & Database development (well, I‘m a database-junkie since over the last 20 years now).

stay tuned...

Rave - Localization - Setup and Preview-Form

2010-02-11T08:34:00.000-08:00

It seems that the Nevrona Server haven't all files from the Tip&Trick-Page.

I've received this week two emails with the "I miss the zip-file from Tip #72".
Well, here is the zip-file to download.
In the next link you see, how easy you can write your own preview without the old-style Preview from Rave BE(X) (many developers in my trainings define the built-in forms "ugly"...) in your application. Link

Rave 8.0.1 Developer / Architect is available...

2010-01-08T23:28:00.000-08:00

After a really long time Nevrona Designs have published Rave 8 BEX for Delphi 7 - 2010.

It's available on the "registereduser"-Page from Nevrona. I plan this weekend to update the AddOn's for Rave8, which many developers need to start the update-tests! Especially the JPEG and GreenBar-component is very important for a lot of reports.
stay tuned.

JPEG-AddOn for Rave 7.7 and Delphi 2010

2010-01-02T12:13:00.000-08:00

The christmas-vacation is a good time to look into Delphi 2010 & Rave 7.7 BE and try to create an update of the AddOn from Rave Reports. I started with the JPEG-AddOn and I remembered that the VCLJPG-package is changed since 2009 because Embarcadero adds new GIF and PNG-format. Here you'll find a beta-version of the JPEG-AddOn for Rave 7.7 and Delphi 2010 for testing (and using, on your own risk, of course). Thx for a feedback if it works in your environment..

Nevrona Rave 8 ....

2009-10-14T15:02:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

believe it or not, I've the Rave 8 version here in my VMware-Machine with Delphi 2010 and Delphi 2007...
Jim told me, that this is the RC-candidate, meaning that the member of TeamNevrona test at the moment the version and the release-date is very close.... Installed and worked well in Delphi 2007 and Delphi 2010 here.

Please don't ask me why exactly the release of Version 8 had needed so long ....
Nevrona Design will sending out an email to every Rave8-customer very soon with the detail-informations about download, serial....

Beside this Jim Gunkel promised me that the website and the communication will be re-activated after the "suspend"-mode in the last timeframe.

DELPHI-IDE and the Virus INDUC.A... !!!

2009-08-20T23:35:00.001-07:00

Some days ago I read in a german-page an information about infected Delphi 4.0-7.0 IDE ...
Well, I work with Delphi 2007-2009 and only from my legal version, no hack or anything else, I have a good (I hope..) virus-scanner. And in the hot summer this information is for the press a thing that they can publish ..

But today I realize that this can be a real problem... in one of our department is an application active (from a card-machine vendor) that is written in Delphi. Every virus-alert I receive from the virus-server over email and this is the mail from this night (after update the pattern from TrendMicro and) while the backup runs and copy the folder to the ultrium-drive:

Well, the application is definitly with the virus infected and the vendor of the application have admited: yes, they have an infected Delphi active ...

result: be carefull with other applications in your network.... and update the virus-pattern...

Gesendet: Donnerstag, 20. August 2009 22:23
An:
Betreff: Viren/Malware entdeckt

Virus/Malware: PE_INDUC.A
Computer: WALLY
Domäne: Domlla
Datei: D:\app_folder...\Data$$$$$$$Service.exe
Datum/Zeitpunkt: 20.08.2009 22:22:29
Ergebnis: Es wurde ein Virus entdeckt. Quarantäne nicht möglich.
---------------------------------------------------
Virus/Malware: PE_INDUC.A
Computer: WALLY
Domäne: Domlla
Datei: D:\$$$$$\Classic.dll
Datum/Zeitpunkt: 20.08.2009 22:22:30
Ergebnis: Quarantäne
---------------------------------------------------
Virus/Malware: PE_INDUC.A
Computer: WALLY
Domäne: Domlla
Datei: D:\$$$$$$\G$$$$$.dll
Datum/Zeitpunkt: 20.08.2009 22:22:35
Ergebnis: Quarantäne
---------------------------------------------------
Virus/Malware: PE_INDUC.A
Computer: WALLY
Domäne: Domlla
Datei: D:\$$$$$$\$$$$$$ctor.exe
Datum/Zeitpunkt: 20.08.2009 22:22:40
Ergebnis: Quarantäne
---------------------------------------------------
Virus/Malware: PE_INDUC.A
Computer: WALLY
Domäne: Domlla
Datei: D:\$$$$$\paycon.dll
Datum/Zeitpunkt: 20.08.2009 22:22:40
Ergebnis: Quarantäne

Delphi and Oracle ....

2009-07-16T08:30:00.000-07:00

Next month I will make a training here in Germany about Delphi and Oracle.
Delphi Developers can choose between many databases on the market available, both commercial and freeware. Embarcadero offers InterBase and BlackfishSQL, both are really great. But in many discussions with customers we often hear that another database then the "house-database" isn't "good", the zero- or low-administration isn't an argument for them. The reason is usually that the administrative effort is very high when several databases are used on the network (backup, ressources, patch-installation, update). Oracle is very often used in big environments and then it's good when the developer can say: "Oracle database, no problem" ....
I will open the door to this database, explain the basics, what is different to smaller databases and what are good db-tools to connect and work with Oracle. Well, we have with the DatabaseGear-part of Embarcadero really great opportunities.
Perhaps we'll see us in Frankfurt in August, or in October in San Francisco on the OpenWorld2009-conference.

BlaisePascal magazine - special edition -

2009-05-20T06:30:00.001-07:00

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

DelphiLive - where legend meets tomorrow...

2009-05-16T08:35:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-04-01T04:29:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-07T11:45:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-19T00:42:00.001-08:00

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...

2009-01-07T03:36:00.000-08:00

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...

2008-12-14T02:16:00.000-08:00

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...

Delphi 2009 and Rave 7.6 ...

2008-11-03T12:05:00.001-08:00

D2009 is a whole new game - Unicode and a NEW binary format and there is no simple update for Rave 7.0x BEX available. With Rave 8 BEX is a version for D2009 beside the included BE-version available (if it's released from Nevrona Designs). I know, a lot of the readers wait for Rave 8 ... at the moment is Rave 7.6 the show stopper ....

Delphi 2009 is CodeGear's first release of a Unicode enabled version of Delphi for Win32. That is a very major change for Delphi and it has been (still is) a challenge. The first release of Rave BE 7.6 (bundled edition) included with D2009 has a few problems that were not discovered during the beta process. One problem is that there are some files ( .RVC and RptChart) that inadvertently were missed and not included in the installation program, meaning you're not able to use rave scripting in this version.

Another problem is that "some" users are having a problem selecting a printer. I recommend to insert a "simple printer driver" like a HP Laserjet 4 and the IDE should start now.

Nevrona has already submitted fixes and CodeGear QC is reviewing the fixes and I hope they will publish very soon an update when the QC process is completed.

Back from California ....

2008-09-30T00:31:00.000-07:00

Two weeks ago I spent some days in Scotts Valley, visited the HQ of CodeGear there again and last week I attend the oracle conference "Oracle OpenWorld 2008" in San Francisco.

Big, Grand, Huge, Oracle.
With more then 43.000 attendes was this a really big conference in downtown of SF ....

I spent a lot of time on sessions and on talks in the exhibition halls (yeah, I visited Embarcadero in Moscone south and talked to DavidI and AndersO).
On some sessions the speakers are afraid and worked only with powerpoint and prepared movies, no live coding :-(

Very interesting is IMO the idea and architecture of Oracle Beehive, meaning that Oracle plan a solution like Microsoft Sharepoint. The future will show the how it compared against Sharepoint and the market will accept/support this and not like the old unsuccessfull OCS from Oracle.
the secret "the X is comming" opened Larry Ellision on his keynote. The "exadata" combination from HP and Oracle should realize performance for (big) databases; we'll see it.
IMO moves Oracle with this from the virtualization to application-grid technology. Not that virtualization is out for Oracle but the combination from hardware and software and database have another focus.
It is sometimes interesting that a big company like Oracle publish solution like SecureFiles for the database that are a long time available in smaller databases, like BlackfishSQL (calles Filestreams) from CodeGear.

All in all it was a great experience for me and I hope to attend on the next OOW in October 2009 again.

EKON 12 - with a compiler engineer from CodeGear!

2008-09-03T12:42:00.000-07:00

Today I visited the page of EKON12, the german conference for Delphi and all the other stuff from CodeGear. And, wooow, there are in the Delphi - area two very, very interesting sessions with Barry Kelly, who is one of the software engineers working on the Delphi compiler at Embarcadero's CodeGear.

Here are the details from the EKON-page:

New Delphi for Win32 language features

Barry Kelly - CodeGear

This session provides an overview of the new Delphi language features for RAD Studio 2009 - Unicode, generics and anonymous methods, and some intermediate and more advanced usage scenarios, including generic collections and concurrency idioms enabled by anonymous methods.

Advanced anonymous method and generics usage

Barry Kelly - CodeGear

This session covers more advanced usage scenarios for anonymous methods and generics. For anonymous methods, it will show a survey of closure-passing idioms as well as uses in threading: marshalling, futures, parallel-loop constructs. For generics it will be about escaping from constraint limitations via helper interfaces.

Delphi Code Camp

2008-08-29T05:50:00.000-07:00

At the end of September there will be yet another Delphi Code Camp which is always organized by the "Entwickler Akademie". Last time, we dealt with exactly one topic per day. These topics were Vista, VCL for the Web, Multithreading, Reporting and some others. This time, we will start with two trainers on the first day. They will talk about Object-oriented programming. A lot of developers working with Delphi every day, do not realize the full power of OOP.

The two other days will have two different tracks. I really enjoy trainings with Delphi Developers and will talk about reporting in Delphi 2009. Especially with regard to Unicode, DBX4, Blackfish (as well as some other database systems). Nevrona Rave will be my main focus as it will be bundled with Delphi 2009 yet again. This talk can be applied to older Delphi versions as well, only the Unicode specific features are exclusive to Delphi 2009.

Rave and CRLF......

2008-08-27T12:53:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I've developed on an application with reports and there I need CRLF inside Rave Scripting... (Beside the application I've updated the rave-script-chapter of my RaveBook (sometimes it will be ready, promised ))

If you need a CRLF in the Rave Script there is at the moment no way to use "our" delphisyntax with #13#10..... you must know C ...

In the OnBeforePrint-event of the Memocomponent is the following correct:

Memo1.Text := 'Information 1' + \13\10 + 'Information 2';

But beside this solution is another, more Delphi / Pascal-like way. You can define in your application a paramter like

RvProject1.SetParam('CRLF',#13#10);

in the Ravescript you can use the parameter :

Memo1.Text := 'Information 1' + RaveProject.GetParam('CRLF') + 'Information 2';

In the codebased-area have Nevrona included the CRLF very easy:

With Sender as TBaseReport do begin
CRLF;

CRLF;

Print('the line after 2 empty lines');

CRLF;

PrintCenter('next line ',Pagewidth/2);

CRLF;

and so on ....

OOW 2008

2008-08-19T15:59:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'll attend the Oracle Open World 2008 in San Francisco end of september. I hope I'll see Delphi and some other (new?) tools from Embarcadero CodeGear in the exhibition area of the Moscone Center.
Is anyone from the Delphi Community of the San Francisco Bay Area or from CodeGear from Scotts Valley there ?

Time to say Goodbye Borland...

2008-07-01T05:23:00.001-07:00

well, it's time to say goodbye…

I've called today www.codegear.com and, no surprise, I see the Embarcadero sign…

Last week I prepared a powerpoint-slide about one of my db-projects for a company and on my about-slide I inserted my experience and some other informations. After typing "1983 UCSD-Pascal" I realized that I have 25-years pascal experience. That's a long time, especially in the IT.
My first pascal with with the p-code card on a TI-99/4A computer from Texas Instruments, 16-bit in 1983 ....

I use Pascal from Borland Inc. from Turbo Pascal on Borland Pascal towards Object Pascal (started with Delphi 1 ... Delphi 2007 ehm Rad Studio 2007).
Meaning Borland & Pascal is for me a relation in the past and it's hard to remove the "Borland" but I'll make it....

I have a good feeling about the new company...

Both companies are not too big... this is for me an insurance that they don't include parts and destroy the other products of the smaller company.

Both companies are expert in a special market ... CodeGear have learned from the past and dropped some products (e.g. quattro pro, dBase, Paradox) that don't fit to the primary area of the company.

Now CodeGear offer IDE's for the market and with InterBase and BlackfishSQL smart and high quality databases. EMBT offers database-related stuff ....

I know the products from my trainings where I teach Oracle and MS-SQL administration and sometimes SQL-language and the quality are okay.

Both companies don't support only one OS/DB or so ....

Before I get some feedback about my opinion: I must admit that I'm a database-junkie, meaning I create over 95% db-related applications with InterBase, BlackfishSQL and Oracle (and perhaps in the future we'll see in the bigger db-market less Oracle and more MS-SQL, the market change IMO from Oracle more and more to MS-SQL). I compare it sometimes with the NDS from Novell and ADS from Microsoft.. The ADS isn't on the same level like the NDS but the administration is easier, e.g. in Oracle you need more expert-know then in MS-SQL to backup or
restore, with BF/IB you need less to nothing know-how but the db-market is very complex.

Best wishes to the Embarcadero CodeGear-team in Scotts Valley and all
the best for the next versions of RAD Studio!

After some quality problems in Delphi 8 and 2005 the team have found the right way and they improve the quality and the performance!

edit ... here a picture the p-code-card for the expansion-box from Texas Instruments:

and the TI-99/4A have many languages in 1981/83:

http://thomas.pfister.googlepages.com/MeinTI.jpg (German, I know but readable...)

Rave 8 is around the corner...

2008-06-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

After a long time of development is the version 8 of Rave very soon ready (or RTM-ready..).

There are some new, exciting features in the version:

- A new debugger for scripts in your visual reports
- Native charting components and classes for both code based and visual reports
- Report Summary expert to print out the contents of your visual report designs
- Properties on mirrored components can now be overridden for even more reuse flexibility

With Rave 8 have Nevrona Designs to Rave BEX version available:
Rave 8 Developer and Architect

The developer edition is like the old BEX-version Rave 7. Rave Reports Architect will further include a license to ship an end user version of the Rave Reports visual designer with your applications (EUDL) and an unlimited user version of the Rave Reports Server.

Rave 8 will support Delphi 4, 5, 6, 7, C++Builder 4, 5 & 6, BDS 2005, 2006 and RAD Studio 2007.

Blackfish SQL deployment license is changed ...

2008-05-31T02:31:00.000-07:00

CodeGear have in the RAD Studio 2007 (and JBuilder, but this isn't my world) the new database Blackfish SQL for the .net-Framework included. BF in the package is not only a developer edition it's a real deployment licences with some (IMO small) restrictions. I've written some informations about this database here some weeks ago.
Beside the "big" restriction (Memory, Storage-Size, connection-limit and remote/local) CodeGear have included a text about the one (1) CPU on the destination machine. This text "provided each computer has only one (1) CPU" has been removed from sections 2.2(a) and 2.2(b).

This are great news, not only that the CPU-text is removed, the bigger news is for me, that CodeGear listen to the Customer AND had made a fast decision to help us, the developer who works and develop with Rad Studio, dbx4 and BlackfishSQL.

Congrat CodeGear to this sign!

PageNumInit in Rave

2008-05-14T07:32:00.000-07:00

I'm near the finish of my Rave-Book. At the moment there are two chapters not ready: Rave Scripting and Rave with VCL for the web (or better known of IntraWeb). I'll include the new features of Rave 8 for the scripting (with the new debug options and more) and I must look into IntraWeb.

I've received a question from a company, where I made some weeks ago a Rave-training, about the PageNumber. The report should start on overy group-header with the page-number 1 and increment till the next group-header will printed. I've made a short example to demonstrate the solution. But the PageNumInit-component can do more, I've added in the meantime this chapter with the other the possibilites.

Important is the correct order of the components in the tree on the right side!!

The rav-file is here for downloading, you need only the good old BDE with the DBDemos-alias and there the orders.db-table, that's all. I've used the DriverConnection inside the Rave-Project, meaning no TTable is needed. But Rave BE - users must open the RAV-file with the running Delphi-IDE.

Borland Object Vision 2 ...

2008-05-08T23:55:00.000-07:00

At the moment everybody write about the Embarcadero-deal.
I have a big advantage: I make Oracle-trainings and demonstrate since 2000 or so the products from Embarcadero in the trainings and can pronounce the word correct ...
I'm happy with this new constallation! I think with this combination we'll get in the future a lot of powerful tools for db-work, Delphi for writing db-applications, db-admin and developing tools and this remembered me on a discussion with Nick Hodges in autumn 2006 in Scotts Valley (a sunny day in the forest of northern California). I tried to explain that Delphi is like a swiss knife, you can use it for every type of restaurant, picknick, survival-tour and so on. But if you go to a steak-house or a fish-restaurant (e.g. in Santa Cruz on the coast) you'll get special knifes and not a general knife... With this deal I hope we'll get from Code_and_Database_Gear some special (db-)knifes to create db-oriented application. And Delphi is and will be the best db-oriented IDE. With this IMO it's possible that many developers stays AND new developers will go with Delphi in the db-future .... and I hope to see this year a DBArtisan-Version for BlackfishSQL ....

But back to the topic.... Anyone remember "Borland Object Vision" ??

I reorganize at the moment my homeoffice and found a great treasure: Object Vision from Borland 1992. It's a long time ago and on the package is the old address from Borland included.
I tried to install it on my XP-workstation and, yeah, it works like in the good old past. Now I have a QuadCore with 3 GHz in 1993 I had a Pentium Pro (I think so) with 200 MHz. No compare with the speed now....
I loved this application, my way from the DOS-Pascal to the Windows Programming. David I had forgot this tool in his 25-years-blog ....

Okay, you can't compare this with a real IDE or a programming language. The result for the customers was a form-oriented application with Paradox in the Background and a event-oriented developement. Don't forget: 1992, over 16 years old, older then Delphi 1 on Windows 3.1x

Here from the example-folder some impressions of Object Vision. You'll see the events-area, the paradox-engine (not BDE, older ....).

Blackfish SQL ....

2008-04-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

Why should a developer choose Blackfish SQL instead of other databases for a Client/Server-Project with Rad-Studio 2007??

I made yesterday on the Delphi CodeCamp in Frankfurt, Germany a training about Blackfish SQL and thought that I’ll blog about one of my favourite database. Every developer with RAD Studio 2007 has the Blackfish SQL – server on the machine and the service is normaly active… but many don’t know details about BF….

Blackfish SQL for the .net-Framework and for the Java platform was introduced with the latest version of Delphi ehm Rad Studio 2007. The developer can think now, well, this is a complete new database with release number 1.0 …

This is wrong because Blackfish SQL is the successor of the well-known database JDataStore in the Java-area from Borland/CodeGear. The latest number of JDataStore was 7 and with increment we’re on Version 8 with Blackfish SQL for the Java platform. For the .net framework we’re IMO on the Version 8, too. The explanation is that the kernel of BF is the same like for Java because the guys at CodeGear had translated the Java code into C #code and not write the database from scratch with a “Java to C# translator” http://blogs.codegear.com/steveshaughnessy/2007/09/06/38776

This is important to know because everyone has normally problems to use any application or database with the version number 1.0.

Before we go into more details of BF it’s important to define the position in the database-area. We have normally four areas in the database-market:

Enterprise
Standard
Desktop
Embedded

And here I see one of the advantages of BF: You can use it in Standard, Desktop and Embedded.

My biggest BF - database in a production environment is in the meantime (running since last summer) 1,2 GB big, there are a lot of NDR-Files in VarBinary-fields stored (NDR-files are created by Nevrona Rave Reports and they included the complete generated report and from this NDR-file you can render to PDF, HTML and printing to printer). My other project isn't finished but use the BF-database to store and read Flash-movies (more about this exciting project in some weeks here!).

The Enterprise-area isn’t so important because we have only 3 players and it would be very naïve to fight in the market against the real big players like Oracle, IBM, Sybase or Teradata. I haven’t made for myself the decision if MS-SQL is ready for the Enterprise-market…but with version 2005 the opened the door of this area.

Back to Blackfish SQL…

With BF you can use one database on all three areas and that is a great advantage because you haven’t any limitations’ of the database. BF supports all the three areas. Normally a database have one or two areas and the other areas perhaps are supported but with reservation. With Blackfish there are no reservations and you using the full power of every area!

The database is fully SQL-92 compliant with supporting all four isolation levels specified by the ANSI/ISO SQL (SQL/92) standards.

Support the .net-framework and the Java platform. The datafiles of BF are binary-compatible and with this information it’s clear that you can copy (e.g. with FTP) the database between the two frameworks…

Programming

This is IMO the one of the biggest advantage: You can write all your database-objects like Trigger and StoreProcedures with your IDE, meaning with Delphi.net or other IDE’s in the .net-Framework and JBuilder or other IDE for the Java platform. You must only create a .net-Package and this assembly is to register in the Blackfish-database with “create method”. And now you can extend your SQL with Pascal. And compared with the UDF in InterBase it’s more “secure” that on an error not the server-process or the OS will crash…

In one of my next blog's I'll show you some examples of SP and Trigger, created with Delphi.net and running on Blackfish SQL server.

You can connect with ADO.net2 and dbx4 to the database, meaning from every application in your RAD Studio (Win32, VCL.net, IntraWeb, ASP.net,…).

And on the end of my blog the best … With RAD Studio you’ll get not only a developer edition of the database, like InterBase. You get a Blackfish SQL Studio Pro Edition for deployment in any production environment without any runtime-costs…

With the Enterprise / Architect Version of RAD Studio 2007 you have the following restrictions:

5 User / 20 connections

2 GB database-size

1 CPU (with unlimited cores)

With Pro Edition

1 local user / 4 connections

512 MB database-size

1 CPU (with unlimited cores)

The RAD-Pro developer can now update all the paradox-application to Blackfish SQL and the RAD-Enterprise-developer can create C/S-application on a server with 5 user-connection and 2 GB database-size. If this are limits a problem, you can buy unlimited versions, look on the codegear-page for price-info.

Look into the Developers Guide of Blackfish SQL (it’s on your RAD Studio DVD) and in the Codegear Developer Network. You’ll find some interesting articles like the following:

http://dn.codegear.com/article/36955

http://blogs.codegear.com/steveshaughnessy/2007/09/06/38776

Source beautifier for SQL statements

2008-04-14T23:40:00.000-07:00

A lot of developers uses source code beautifier tools for their source code, e.g. our ObjectPascal. But I found a nice online-tool for SQL-statements. You can not only format the SQL-command for the Database-server (Oracle, MSSQL and other) like the following result:
SELECT HHJ,
CUSTOMER,
ORDER_ID
FROM TABLE

On the right side you have some options for formatting.

You can format this SQL-Statement for Delphi .....

var1 := 'SELECT HHJ,' ;
var1 := var1 + ' CUSTOMER,' ;
var1 := var1 + ' ORDER_ID' ;
var1 := var1 + ' FROM TABLE' ;

And other languages... e.g. for C# you can choose between
String var1 = "SELECT HHJ," ;
var1 = var1 + " CUSTOMER," ;
var1 = var1 + " ORDER_ID" ;
var1 = var1 + " FROM TABLE" ;
and
StringBuilder var1 = new StringBuilder("SELECT HHJ,");
var1.Append(" CUSTOMER,");
var1.Append(" ORDER_ID");
var1.Append(" FROM TABLE");

I found this very usefull for formatting my SQL-statement to read it sometimes later better..

Here you'll find the Online SQL and PL/SQL Formatter

Rave BE and Windows Vista

2008-04-13T22:42:00.001-07:00

I received last week an email about problems with Rave BE and Windows Vista. I installed a version of Vista in VMWare and then Delphi with Rave BE.

Rave Version 8 (it should be available in the next few days!) works with Vista, of course.
Rave BE and BEX < 8 works with Vista, too

If you have problems try the following:

Rave BE is installed in the same directory structure as the version of Delphi was. In general, this will be the "c:\Programme" here in Germany or "c:\Program Files" in english. To attempt to resolve the Windows Vista security restrictions, you need to make sure that your "Group" or "User Name" has the "Full Control" permissions set to "Allow".

Go to Program Files directory where you install the CodeGear / Borland product Program File\CodeGear\RAD Studio\5.0
Highlight RaveReports
Right Click on RaveReports and Open properties
Click the Security Tab
Select your own user name from the list displayed
Click the Edit button
Select your own uses name again
Go to the "Permissions for Users" dialogue box
Click the 'Full Control' Allow box
Click Apply
accept all the prompts

In my next post I'll explain the steps for Rave Reports BEX (Borland Edition eXtended) versions 7 or earlier.

Thomas Pfister: A huge thank you to Bruno Fierens and TMS Software!

2008-04-11T04:50:00.000-07:00

Due to recent blog postings about TMS Software and their Ribbon Toolbar Component set I do feel the need to state a few things about a fellow CodeGear Technology Partner.

I know Bruno for a long time, I've visited trainings from Bruno (IIRC in Frankfurt) and know some products from TMS. Everybody has realized in the last few months that the Delphi-area is not prospering like 12 years ago and the number of 3rd-party tools companies is significantly lower than 10 years ago. TMS - Software is one of THE software-companies which support Delphi. Well, this is not enough for a blog, but TMS is one of the few companies which supports not only Delphi Win32. They do support VCL.NET, ASP.NET and the VCL for the Web (better known as "IntraWeb"). This is IMO not very often the case in the Delphi-area.
Beside the support of all these plattforms, TMS creates new components and, if it makes sense, buy other components to integrate them in the TMS-products like the TNT Unicode-components from Troy.

I've noticed all the blogging and, please, Cool down!!
Don't forget: we're a small, active, friendly and healthy community and this should be the case in the future. It makes no sense to build to split up into different groups! Everybody here is a developer and no developer has made bugless-software and it is always a process of optimizing a first product and make it more "complete".

Delphi Code Camp in April in Frankfurt

2008-03-30T10:41:00.000-07:00

In April is the next Delphi Code Camp here in Germany, organized by the Entwickler-Akademie.
On the last Code Camp in December 07 in Munich I talked about Rave Reports from Nevrona Designs. In the next Code Camp I'll talk (and make live coding, of course) about dbx4, the new database-framework from CodeGear (2/3 of the day) and on the other 1/3 of the day I talk (and make practice) about Blackfish SQL, the new database from CodeGear for the .net Framework. I know a lot of developers who still uses the "good old BDE" from Borland but it's time to change....dbx4 and Blackfish SQL are great solution for the change from BDE / Pardox or dBase.

Beside my database-dayon the other days are sessions about Delphi and Vista, Delphi and multithreading and the VCL for the Web.

You'll see on the code camp a lot of practice for your daily work with Delphi and I hope we'll see us on the Code Camp in Wiesbaden, near Frankfurt in April!
btw: the sessions will be in German.

Blackfish SQL and InterBase from CodeGear

2008-02-29T12:46:00.000-08:00

I attend on the EKON12-spring conference this week, like every year. One of my sessions covered about Blackfish SQL, the new database from CodeGear. In the discussion inside the session and after the session in the exhibition-area of the conference I realized that not all have understood the differences between these two databases.

I’ll try to explain it in this blog.

First: InterBase isn’t deprecated! The InterBase-Team works in Scotts Valley on this unmanaged database for the OS Windows, Linux and Solaris (Sparc).

Second: Blackfish SQL is a database for the both frameworks, .net from Microsoft and Java from Sun.

secret It’s not really new, it’s IMO version 8 of JDataStore and this mean you will get a very stable and optimized database! /secret

Well, if you’re a native-win32 developer your first impression is perhaps: “I use InterBase on Windows” and the Blackfish SQL for .net is only for a VCL.net or ASP.net-developer with an ADO.net provider interesting. This isn’t correct.

Codegear of published an interesting article (FAQ) about Blackfish SQL.

Blackfish SQL for .net is ideally suited for

• ASP.net data storage
• embedded .net application
• Delphi application (Win32 and VCL.net)

Blackfish SQL for java is ideally suited for
• Java data storage,
• Embedded Java Swint/SWT apps,
• Java application

InterBase 2007
• Workgroup to Small Enterprise Databaseapplications
• Embedded Apps

OS / Framework

Blackfish SQL for .net

.net framework (at the moment not for the CF.net available but I expect a version for this)

Blackfish SQL for Java

Java Framework from a big server to a cellphone with JavaVM

InterBase 2007

Windows, Linux, Solaris (Sparc) and, new(!), MacOS X

Programming

Blackfish SQL for .net

Delphi 2007 (Package.net for .net2 Framework); and C#/VB.net

Blackfish SQL for Java

JBuilder and other Java-IDEs

InterBase 2007

Case IDE of (in my Blog I can use the Case with strings… I miss it in Delphi! Nick, I would buy a big bavarian beer for this feature :-) )

Delphi for PHP -> InterBase 2007

3rd Rail / Ruby -> InterBase 2007

RAD Studio 2007

Asp.net / VCL.net -> Blackfish SQL for .net or InterBase 2007
Win32 -> Blackfish SQL for .net or InterBase 2007

JBuilder -> Blackfish SQL for Java or InterBase

End;

You see, both databases have special areas and IMO makes both databases sense because with this YOU can make the choice for the best solution for your customer!

Well, after this short explain of BF <> IB I’ll blog in the next few weeks about more information’s and experience with Blackfish SQL for .net in my blog.

And if you wonder about the "Why BF, compared with other databases on the (.net/Java)-market": There are many reasons and I collect these and will make another blog with answers about this question....(next week )

Stay tuned.

In April I make in Germany a one-day-training with the content “dbx4 (2/3 of the day) and Blackfish SQL for .net (1/3 of the day) @Entwickler-Akademie near Frankfurt.

Nevrona have announced Rave 8 today!

2008-02-21T14:30:00.000-08:00

Nevrona Designs have announced today the Rave 8 version! NEWS

And they've sent a email to all registered RAVE BEX users, see later the text of the email.

IMO is the Architect-version very interesting because you'll get the EUDL-license for your customer to modify the reports and you'll get the Rave Report Server with unlimited user.
A first-step-article about Rave-Server you'll find here (about V5, I'll update the article asap ).

__________________________________________________________________

Rave Reports 8.0 Announced
==============================

We're happy to announce the release of Rave Reports 8.0 in March, 2008.

Rave Reports 8.0 will be available in 2 new flavors, Developer and
Architect.

Both Developer and Architect will include the Win32 and VCL.NET components
and will support Delphi 4, 5, 6, 7, C++Builder 4, 5 & 6, BDS 2005, 2006 and
RAD Studio 2007.

Rave Reports Architect will further include a license to ship an end user
version of the Rave Reports visual designer with your applications (EUDL)
and an unlimited user version of the Rave Reports Server.

Between now and the release of Rave Reports 8.0, we are offering significant
discounts on pre-order upgrades to all current owners of Rave Reports.

The pre-order prices are as follows:

Rave Reports Developer 8.0: $99 (lists for $299)
Rave Reports Architect 8.0: $199 (lists for $599)

Pre-orders can be placed by visiting http://www.nevrona.com/order

These discounts are our way of thanking our loyal customers who have
supported Nevrona Designs for the 13 years we have been in the Borland and
CodeGear markets. If you are still using an older version of Rave Reports
this is a great opportunity to upgrade to the latest and greatest features
and functionality.

Nevrona Designs Unicode policy
==============================
In line with CodeGear's recent announcement of Unicode support
http://blogs.codegear.com/abauer/category/codegear, Nevrona Designs is
announcing our intention to fully support Unicode as soon as the technology
is released by CodeGear.

Nevrona Designs has a long history of quickly supporting new technologies
with Rave Reports as they have been released by CodeGear (and previously
Borland). We are quite excited about the impact Unicode support will have
on Rave Reports and our support for many new languages and applications
around the world.

Thanks for your support!

_____________________________________
Nevrona Designs - http://www.nevrona.com
1-888-776-4765 (Toll Free in U.S. and Canada)
1-480-491-5492 (U.S.)
sales@nevrona.com

Last Call for EKON SPRING next week

2008-02-21T14:11:00.000-08:00

Like on the airport: This is the last call for EKON SPRING ....

I hope to see a lot of delphi developers on the first spring edition of the EKON in Frankfurt next week again. This is my 11th EKON (I've haven't attend only in sep2001) and it's every year a great event with news from Scotts Valley, other Delphi Developers and interesting face-to-face-talks.

I've finished my slides today on the ICE for my session about the database "BlackfishSQL" and beside this topic I'll talk about Rave and the "Oracle of Delphi" (this slides are ready, too).

Check for a valid printer on the system

2008-01-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

Today I've received an interesting problem with one of my applicatons. On a Win2003-Server the application should crash... I tried to reproduce it on my Win2003-System@home and no problem, the data (over dbx4) - connection and the preview or creation of pdf-files, created with Rave Reports (what else ), works on my system fine. On the WinXP on the customer-side it works, too.
The solution was easy, after I noticed that they haven't installed any printer-driver on the system:

include RpDevice in the uses and then you can check before the rave executes the existence of any printer:

if RpDev.InvalidPrinter then
showmessage('no printer'); -> and you should disable the execute of RvProject in the application

The older way with printers count can make trouble with network printers and isn't recommended (RPDev.Printers.Count).

After installation of a small printer driver (I prefer the HP LJ4 for things like this) the application creates reports with Rave on the customers server without any problems....

Reader's Choice 2008

2008-01-14T13:16:00.000-08:00

From the german "entwickler magazin" is a new Reader's Choice 2008 available, this remembers me on the"Delphi Informant" Readers Choice a long time ago ....(with TurboPower and so on)

Make your choice (if you work with Rave, make sure, that you check Nevrona Rave Reports for the best reporting tool ) and perhaps you'll win RAD Studio 2007, a ticket for the spring editon of EKON in February in Frankfurt or interesting (german) books....

Rave and delphipraxis.net

2008-01-08T03:25:00.000-08:00

Daniel, the adminstrator of the german delphi forum delphipraxis have published some informations about statistiscs of the forum after more then 5 years (congrat Daniel for this friendly an helpfull place in the internet-world for every delphi-developer; and, yeah, I'm member #488 of this community since "5 Jahre, 3 Wochen, 3 Tage")

Especially interesting is the in the 2nd post the search-word "Rave": 11 !

# Begriff Häufigkeit
1 delphi 31.801
2 string 27.290
3 datei 26.631
4 dll 22.553
5 indy 18.343
6 stringgrid 17.215
7 listview 16.497
8 array 16.260
9 programm 15.410
10 form 15.189
11 rave 13.595
12 listbox 13.292
13 dbgrid 12.568
14 text 12.497
15 löschen 11.949
16 sql 11.535
17 xml 11.408
18 url 11.401
19 auslesen 11.256
.........

If you search for Rave-related problems, questions and solutions ....
look into the delphipraxis (if you have problems with german translate with google)

Rave Reports and problems with (HP) printer drivers...

2008-01-08T03:21:00.000-08:00

I read sometimes in newsgroups about problems with Rave and printer drivers, especially HP, e.g. 2600.

The interesting thing is, that the customer can print without any problems with MS-office or other application, but with Nevrona Rave Reports there is a Division by zero exception with some drivers. An update of the driver sometimes solves the problem but not 100%.

With the following solution is a workaround available that create the reports without exceptions.

Try this and if you found another problem (or solution, of course ) in this area, write me an email.

Some programming libraries (and perhaps MS-Office?!) contain such procedure

call: Set8087CW($133f);
this disables FPU exceptions....

Normally there is some bad code (in the driver) that is changing the FPU control word to cause it to ignore some exceptions and not properly resetting it.

The default value of Default8087CW is $1332, with the following code you can check it in your pascal-code.

If (Get8087CW and $1F3F) <> $1332)
then ShowMessage(Format('CW=$%4.4x',[Get8087CW]));

To make your rave-reporting with "every" driver stable, the following code should work;

var
CW: Word;
begin
CW := Get8087CW;
try
Set8087CW($133f);
RvProject1.ExecuteReport('Report1');
Set8087CW(CW);
except
..
end;
end;

or the asm-way

asm
FLDCW cw
end;

with C++ the workaround should be the secureFPU (I’m not the C++-expert, I hope this is correct !?)

#include "float.h";
void secureFpu() { _control87(PC_64|MCW_EM,MCW_PC|MCW_EM);}

Another trick especially for HP-printer driver is setting in the application the SkipAbortProc to true:
RPDev.SkipAbortProc := true;
(you must insert the RpDevice-unit)

Now your customer can print with Rave and don't get an exception....

Use of Printers/Trays/Papers with Rave

2007-12-09T23:48:00.000-08:00

Today I'll describe the basics of printer-control in a Delphi application with Rave (possible with all versions of Rave 3.x-7.x and BE/BEX!).

A lot of Rave-user haven't realize that Rave can manage the destination of the print result with out the way of the printer-class, especially the choice of the bin/tray ...

Of course, you can use function like the following to read out the tray from you printer-driver and develop a solution
....
GetPrinter(ADevice,ADriver,APort,hDMode);
pDevMode := nil;
Res := DeviceCapabilities(ADevice,APort,DC_BINNAMES,PCHAR(@(bin[0][0])),pDevMode);
....

But there is an easier way with Rave.
Nevrona Designs have built a "Printer device manager class" called RpDevice.
Insert RpDevice in your uses and then you can work with RpDev.
This function return the current RPDevice object for manage the printer in your app.

RpDev.InvalidPrinter is the first command and with this you can check on the user-machine if there is a correct printer installed or not, e.g. on some servers with running applications aren't installed any printer.

RpDev.Device shows the (selected) printer and RpDev.Printers shows the installed printers on the system.
RpDev.Bins read the installed trays for the selected printer.
RpDev.Papers for the papers (from the driver)

I use Duplex-Mode where ever I can...
With RpDev.SupportDuplex exits an easy way to check if the printer(driver) support duplex or not...

The previous commands only read informations, with RpDev.Select... you can define the destination printer, tray, paper and more

RpDev.SelectPrinter(ComboBox1.Text, true);

To save properties on the printer in the OS you can use RpDev.SaveToPrinter;

Before you execute a report you should define all the things in your code and the result is as expected .

In the RpDev-class you'll find many more and I hope I've opened the door to the possibilities!

A new virtualization player is on the horizont...

2007-11-13T06:21:00.001-08:00

I develop in the meantime virtual, meaning I have on my workstation (an Intellistation with Dual-XEON 3,2 GHz and 4 GB RAM) for the XP-Prof-System with RAD Studio 2007 a SCSI-Ultra-320 solution with two 15k-harddrives and for the Windows 2003-Server a Firewire-800-system; it works under VMWare Server 1.0.4. The backup is on a USB2-HDD and I think this is a highly performance solution. I tested the MS-solution but the VMWare is in my IMO faster..
And today I received the info hat there is till tomorrow another player in the virtual-world (not the 2nd-life ): Oracle ....
Oracle VM is "is three times more efficient than other server virtualization products", wooow this is a big promise.... and:
"Oracle VM software is available for free download."

There are some interestings things of Oracle VM in the doc's:
"System Requirements
Oracle VM installs directly on server hardware and does not require a host operating system."
this means no guest-os-layer....

from the FAQ:
Who can use Oracle VM?
Any user can get Oracle VM and associated support from Oracle whether they use Oracle products or third party applications.

I wonder about the first impressions of this virtual-solution in the next days on my workstation....
Oracle VM can be freely downloaded starting Wednesday, November 14, 2007 at oracle.com

Namespaces and Types of the .net framework 3.5

2007-11-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

I've done in the past few weeks some small projects with win32 (I know, it's death but it really works, believe me) and if I need things from the .net-world I've written the assemblies and application in BDS2006 and RAD2007 and it works fine, e.g. I noticed that the log-file from the Microsoft Fax solution in WinXP is Unicode and to read information I made an .net-application. The main application use this "translated" information in non-Unicode.

Today I noticed that there is a new poster from Microsoft.com about the namespaces and types in .net 3.5 (actually 2.x ) here available:
.net-Namespace-pdf-file

-> I think we must be on the top of any changes in the .net-world but it can co-exists with Win32-development and with Delphi we have both worlds, the old, stable and the new (not un-stable!) for our daily work.

F# in the next VisualStudio release ??

2007-11-02T03:57:00.000-07:00

In the Blog from Soma Somasegar, Corporate Vice President der Developer Division of Microsoft he thought about including the language F# in one of the next Visual Studio release....

F# is a functional programming language, objectoriented and high performanced for a scripting language....

Delphi Code Camp on Tour

2007-10-29T06:43:00.000-07:00

After Daniel and Olaf I'll announce the Delphi Code Camp, too.
We'll cover Vista, VCL for the web and Reporting with RAD Studio 2007.

The Reporting with Rave is my part of this CodeCamp.

On Tuesday, 04. December 2007 I will talk, show and discuss about Rave Reporting and Delphi / C++Builder 2007. We'll make a lot of practice and use RAD Studio 2007, Rave 7 (BE and BEX), InterBase2007 and the new database BlackfishSQL.net from (both with dbx4) CodeGear. We'll create reports in Win32 and VCL.net.

The language on this stop of the DCConTour will be German, d.h. ich werde ab hier in deutscher Sprache fortfahren:

Wir werden Rave Reports 7 intensiv kennenlernen und insbesondere die Architektur und effiziente Nutzung dieser Reportengine an diesem Tage ausführlich behandeln.
Insbesondere kommen die Möglichkeiten von band- und seitenorientierten Reports, GlobalPages, DataMirrorSection, PDF-Erstellung, Rave Scripting und RaveServer 7 zur Sprache.
Mehr zu den Themen im CodeCamp hier.

Auch Entwickler von älteren Delphi bzw. Rave-Versionen können einen Großteil dieses KnowHow-Transfer für ihre tägliche Arbeit nutzen.

Obwohl jedes der 3 Seminare auch einzeln gebucht werden kann, sollte man sich bei diesen drei interessanten Themen für alle drei Tage anmelden!

Rave AddOns for Rave 7.5x BE

2007-10-24T08:42:00.000-07:00

On the AddOn-Page from Nevrona.com are some AddOn for Rave, e.g. JPEG, GridBox, GreenBar Rectangle.

I hope that I have in the next few days time for creating a version for the BE-versions of Rave 7.5x for the 2007-IDE's. At the moment you'll find there only versions for Rave 4-7.0 (without BE 6.5x, if you need a version for this, insert here a comment and then I'll create the 6.5x-AddOns, too).

I hope every Rave-User have looked into the GreenBar Rectangle-component.. This AddOn is really a must-have-AddOn because you can set to alternate colors each time it prints, e.g. every 2rd line on long list-reports different background color. Now is the reading of reports with a lot of lines much better! Your customer will love this feature in your reports, try it! (but please use only white and silver for background and not red and blue or other funky colors ).

Delphi 7 and the Rave 5 BE Patch

2007-10-24T08:23:00.000-07:00

I read last week in the nevrona-newsgroup a question about the location of the Rave 5.0.8 BE update for Delphi 7. On the CodeGear-page this important patch seemed not to be there.. I looked there and found it, of course, but another said, he have checked too and no, it isn't there....
Then I go to the CodeGear-page again, and yeah, it's tricky to found on the first vist.
You must go to the Delphi 7.1 update and on the next page you'll find the 5.0.8 patch for Delphi 7.... see my hardcopy on the right side.

Sometimes I'm surprised about questions for the 5.0.8 patch because Delphi 7 and Rave 5 are in the meantime very old...
But a lot of developers use the old IDE successfully...
If you are a Delphi 5-7 developer: look into the 2007-version of Delphi, this is a fast, stable and very powerful IDE.
Delphi 8 was a first try, but not a delphi as expected, Delphi 2005 was version 1.0 of the new IDE and Delphi 2006 was version 1.1 and 2007 is 1.5; meaning the first Delphi with the same properties like Delph 7!
And on the Rave-side Nevrona in Arizona have developed with Rave7 a fast and stable version of the report engine too! Look to the Nevrona-page for the new features of Rave7. I like especially the new JPG-Render and the improved and stable Rave Scripting in Rave7.

Download the trial of RAD Studio 2007 and Rave 7.5 and you'll stay on the newer versionsfrom Delphi and Rave after some hours.....

Oracle 11g - 1st impression

2007-10-19T07:56:00.001-07:00

I've installed the newest version of Oracle Database 11g (11.1.0.6.0) on a vmware-system and searched for new things for developers.

First thing is that Oracle now checks upper- and lowercase passwords..
older versions works with DES and the 11g release use SHA-1. I noticed this because my sys and system-user have the "masterkey" for password and I've defined "Masterkey" on installation

They have optimized the Oracle TimesTen In-Memory Database. I looked into this nearly real time data caching in Oracle 10g and wonder about the next step in performance.

Really new is IMO the Database Resident Connection Pooling. This feature allows multiple middle tiers to share the same connection pool and provides improved scalability for Oracle customers. The new feature will be available through Oracle's Call Interface API (OCI).
An interesting feature especially for Ruby or PHP-developers, perhaps with Delphi.PHP or 3rd Rails from CodeGear.

I found in the PL/SQL-area a really cool thing with sequences (same like Generators in IB/FB): normally you must read the next value into a variable and this variable you can use for the ID-column in a trigger. With SQL-words it means:

Select SCHEMA_NAME.SEQ_T_EMP.NextVal into (a declared variable) xyz from dual;

with 11g you can minimize the coding in

xyz := SCHEMA_NAME.SEQ_T_EMP.NextVal;

Why have this simle way Oracle not earlier integrated, perhaps to simple for the developers in Redwood Shores ?!

I wonder about the publishing dates of a Oracle 11g XE Edition and the 11g-Edition for Windows and Solars/Sparc.
CodeGear have published the new database-framework dbx4 this year and consolidation the db-driver from many (bdp, dbx, bde/sql-links, ibx) to only this framework for win32 and .net (single source).
I think we'll see in the next time a dbx-driver that supports 11g offiicial.

Oracle 10g - hidden function with "is null"

2007-10-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

after some features in Rave I'll blog today about an undocumented feature in Oracle 10g ...

Every database-developer know the sql-statement "where column IS NULL", no problem I think
BUT how can you extend the statement into "where column1 IS NULL = column2 I IS NULL" ??
This type of query is IMO not defined in the SQL-standard or possible with a SQL-database, or ?

In Oracle 10g is an undocumented function: sys_op_map_nonnull

...where sys_op_map_nonnull(column1)=sys_op_map_nonnull(column2) ...

this makes sometimes my developer-life easier

SAP acquires Business Objects (with Crystal Reports)

2007-10-08T05:19:00.000-07:00

SAP acquired BO (4,8 billion EUR!) and they own Crystal-Reports since yesterday ...
In the last few months I noticed in the reporting area that CR loose market and with this step I think CR will go more into the enterprise and especially SAP-area.
We'll see the result of this acquitation from SAP....

Next hidden feature of Rave

2007-10-07T23:58:00.000-07:00

Rave have the powerful DataView-Area in the project-tree on the right side of the IDE.
There are all DataConnections stored and you can modify every datafield (e.g. DisplayFormat).
I read often in the newsgroups that there isn't the feature to dragn'drop the fields into the report. Thats wrong....
Nevrona have included this feature, of course, and not only this. There is a hidden (?) feature in this area of creating reports with Rave:

You can insert the DataField with the CTRL-Key and you can insert a Textfield with the name of the DataField with the ALT-Key. Look into the picuture. With this two keys you can insert all the informations of your DataView very quick.

Quality of software-products...Excel 2007

2007-10-05T11:24:00.001-07:00

Today I read the blog from an employee from Microsoft about the Excel-2007 bug.
We're in the year 2007, the excel is not new and Microsoft isn't an one-developer-company and there is a problem like this, crazy or ??
A lot of delphi-developers are in a small team or one-man-"team" only and if they develop applications and there is a bug inside, no one will accept this... is a bug from Microsoft more accepted ?!

I have a very good book at home with the name "code complete" from Steve McConnell, this is a good book about software construction... there is a 2nd edition available and I recommend this book (I admit that I only know the 1st edition (yeah with Pascal example instead of C#-examples, but I think the 2nd edition is good, too) for every developer. It's available on amazon, too.

Will the ALM-way avoid this type of bug ?? I don't know ......

some hidden (?) Rave-features....

2007-09-30T23:36:00.000-07:00

in the other post I said, that I'll publish a "Rave-Book" in the next few weeks on lulu.com....
I finish at the moment the german version (I think more then 250 pages!) and get on the EKON11 some feedbacks and some interesting questions about Rave.

Here is one, that every Rave-developer should know:

Rave-Icons

Have you ever noticed the differences on the icons in the RAVE-IDE ?

dark background -> this is a visual component
green background -> in-visual component, will not print
red point -> dataview-connection

of course, there are some inconsequent things, e.g. the bmp-component is only available without the red-dot, but works for both things....

all the green-background-components will triggered on the order in the project-tree, very important, especially when you work with report calculation....

I'll insert here in the next weeks some other features / informations about Rave....

The next feature is the intuitive use of DataFields.

stay tuned...

EKON / CodeRage II face-to-face or virtuell...

2007-09-28T06:08:00.000-07:00

Today I noticed from Anders Ohlssen in the borland-newsgroups that everyone can submit abstracts for the next CodeRage from CodeGear.
There are no new informations about a BorCon or with new word "CodeGearConf"... I hope CodeGear will plan a conference like in the past with BorCon..... but I don't know and haven't find any public information about a timefrime or location for an US-BorCon.

And Marco Cantu have in his "News #3 - September 21, 2007" the same informationstatus:
* No CodeGear US conference planned so far. I'm toying with the idea
of setting up a small Delphi event myself. Maybe I'll give it a go in Europe first, though.

There are only informations about a brasilian BorCon in October this year.

As posted in my blog from yesterday, I spoke on the EKON11 this year again and my feeling about THE face-to-face-conference in Europe for CodeGear-Tools is only two days old .....

What is the better way to transfer the know-how or new features of the new version of Delphi from speaker to attendees .....

I have looked into some sessions from the CodeRage in spring this year and visited on the EKON some sessions.....

I think you can't say "face-to-face" or "virtuell" is better then the other....
We're all int the IT and know the decision tables.... well, I will start with some advantage and disadvantage of both possibilities of making a conference. Feel free and add your ideas here.

CodeRage-Way:

+ every developer of the world can visit this conference
+ every "attendee" can better choose the tracks which are interesting (after download of the replays)
+ speakers from all over the world can make sessions, thanks to the internet and the connectivity over them!
+ speaker who don't love the publicity, meaning talking about stuff in a room with xxx attendes, will prefer this way and submit sessions and transfer their know-how!
+ cheaper for the organisation / sales departmnet of the company
+ cheaper for the attendes
+ indepent from the count of attendees
+ you can organize the time for the sessions better, just-in-time-presence is possible

--- you haven't social contact to other developers
-- you don't expand your "developers"-network and offers sometimes an ideal plattform to expand your business with other (programming, training, consulting) .
-- loosing of the feeling and wishes in the (delphi-)community for the developers in Scotts Valley (how will they get the wishes from us, the customers ??)
- there are different timezones in the world, somewhere in the world you must visit the session at 03:00 am and work on the next day @work
- you don't see the speaker / trainer and loose some non-verbal informations...
- IMO there are more ppt/pps-related sessions and not "live coding"

BorCon/EKON- Way

++ sessions are more for the people in the room because everyone can ask everytime and "interrupt" the session and the speaker can explain the way to solve; especially in the advanced sessions interesting...
++ in-deepth-sessions or advanced session with experts on both sides are possible, e.g.
+ workshops and codecamps available, I haven't any idea how this could be realize in the virtuell way ?!
+ discussion on the end of every session and after the session in the lobby
+++ talks, discussion in the lobby, at restaurant with speakers, attendees;
+++ talk with employees of CodeGear in the lobby (face-to-face talk with DavidI and NickHogdes) and they get a good feedback and wishes of the customers.... It's great that on the EKON or BorCon (I remember interesting talks, e.g. with BlakeS about C++, with Charlie Caro about InterBase, Steve Shauhgnessy about databases in San Jose on BorCon03, DavidI in US or Europe, NickHodges, and a lot of other CodeGear-guys on conferences, book-writers (e.g. Marco Cantu, Dr.Bob...) and guys from 3rd-party-companies, like DevExpress, Gnostice, Nevrona, AToZed, )
+ see other areas and countries, like California

- you must spend the complete conference time and have only 4-6 interesting sessions for your work (but if you use the time you can look into other "uninteresting sessions" and, heh, I haven't know the things I can solve this or this and I'll use it in my developers-work in the future ).
- expensive for the attendes, costs of hotel, flight,
- not easy to calculate the costs on the side of the organisation team, will be there 50, 500 or 5.000 attendes and 5,50,100 speakers on the conference.

Attention: this list isn't complete and in the correct (what is here correct?) order......just writing in on step!

Overall I'll prefer the EKON-way and see all the other developers and talk with them (not only about programming, yeah there are other things in the world to talk about, @Matthias I haven't forgot the D1 thing and the pictures!!) . The CodeRage-way is in my opinion a good addition to a real conference and great for developers to get knowledge about basics of new techniques and see trends and hypes in the programming world, but not an alternative to the face-to-face-conference.

What do you think about this two ways ??????

-take care

:-) thomas

EKON11 / EuroDevCon

2007-09-27T00:39:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my 10th EKON (I missed only the EKON 2001) and it was a great conference for me. The number of attendes was smaller then the last conferences. Talking with a lot of friends and attendes is everytime interest. I made my two sessions and both are with 40-50 attendes.
Nick Hodges from CodeGear have made a great job on the keynote and have made good explanations about the public roadmap and the news in the next versions, but all without any promises, of course.
He talked about Delphi, no surprise and about BlackfishSQL, the new database from CodeGear, ready for both frameworks: .net and .java.

In this area there was one very interesting message: CodeGear haven't forget the set-based databases, meaning the good old and still alive BDE is alive. Okay, if I have understand Nick correct, there isn't a BDE V 6.0 in the lab, but update based on BlackFish SQL: The result could be some compatible TTable/TQuery-component which allow the the table" browsing like a long time ago with Paradox and dBase.
I showed the dbx4-framework and hope to transfer the bascis of the new architecture of dbx4 from the database-team in Scotts Valley with possibilites like Delegate dbxTrace and dbxPooling;
I visited Olaf Moniens session about IntraWeb ehm "VCL for the web". IW is an interesting Tool, and if I have understood Olaf correct, especially for creating web-applications and not web-sites like content-mangement-system.
I think I'll look with my RAD Studio in the next few month more into this tool and especially into reporting with IW.
On the 2nd day I made my "Reporting with Delphi2007" session and showed the Rave 7.5.2 BE version in the RAD Studio 2007. There was a lot of QR-users and I think some of them think now about a move to Rave because it's with more features and with complete support of vcl and vcl.net.
-> with the word vcl.net I remember my "private Rave session" with Holger Flick in the afternoon. Holger have prepared a session about ECO and Blackfish and we optimized the report and included the covers on the report, changed the MemoryMode of the RvSystem because the report consume a lot of memory to create the NDR-file and using the power of GlobalPages.
Perhaps Holger is a new fan of Rave Reporting ?
After some interesting talks with attendes about Rave and documenation and tips&tricks like a cookbook I announce here my plan:
I started a long time ago with writing of a Rave-Book. Started with Rave 4 and over Rave 5 (with a chapter of Rave for Kylix, installed and used on a linux-system on my old workstation "HP Kayak XW Pro" with a Pentium Pro 200 )) to the latest release Rave 7. Beside Rave there all the other 3rd-party-stuff, like Gnostice, esbconsult and other described. Rave Server 5 and 7 is included and the mystery of Rave Scripting (not yet finished (80% complete in this area). And a chapter about IntraWeb and Rave will go into the project, too. I'll go over the lulu.com-Way and hope some Rave-developers will get knowledge of my Rave-experience of the last 9 years.
There is only one small print info: the 1st edtion is available in German-language only.

Neal and Ray made a great session about Polyglot programming and effective user design on the 2nd day of the conference. The session was very, very interesting; funny and attractive talking of both speakers and I took some great ideas home.

Thanks to all where I met and talked about Rave, Delphi and a lot of other stuff and Masoud an this team for the good organisation of the conference.
See you all on the next EKON - 12 in Frankfurt again!

The new Delphi is around the corner…

2007-09-02T14:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Nick Hodges that he released me from an NDA to blog about the upcoming new Delphi version – codename “Highlander”.

There are some interesting things in and some not in the package of the RAD Studio 2007 (instead of BDS2007).

The new Delphi version supports .net 2.0 and 3.0 because this isn’t a new version of the .net-framework, the core is 2.0 but some assemblies are updated or added to the framework.

But Codegear have minimized the C#-part of the developer studio. I think this decision is a good decision because the C#-part is always one step behind the C#-part of the competitor (I forgot the name, sorry). But it isn’t dropped completely. You can use C# assemblies like in the older BDS in your Delphi-project and this is the important thing.
If you’ll write a big application in C# then you must move to another IDE with less power (IDE-related) compared with the Developer Studio (IMO…). But don’t forget the Microsoft have WinForm deprecated….

The IDE is in my opinion very fast, and stable. Delphi 8 was version 0.9 of an IDE, Delphi 2005 the Version 1.0 and Delphi 2006 the Version 1.1 and the new version is like 1.5 (if I’ve written 2.0 then mean this a zero again, and this could make a wrong impression about the RAD Studio). On all of my working with this version I haven’t big problems or crashes of the IDE.

But every developer should have enough memory and a fast harddrive in the year 2007.... I recommend 2 GB and fast harddrives (I have 4 GB RAM and an U-320SCSI-subsystem on my Intellistation with two Xeon and I haven’t any speedproblems in the VMWare-area).

BlackfishSQL-database

Really new is a database called “BlackfishSQL” from Codegear. A long time ago Borland have written a database in and for Java, called JDataStore. On the BorCon 2004 have Borland showed a version for the .net-framework, called NDataStore but they haven’t finish this work. However, three years later the database is ready. It’s written in C# and use the same datafile like JDataStore. Now you have the chance to support with one database the .net-world and the java-world, meaning your database works on both areas. And these databases have a very small footprint, the administration is less and the database works very stable. BlackfishSQL supports transaction, the SQL-92 and Unicode storage of character data. You can start the server in application or service-mode, like InterBase.
Codegear have here a lot of experience with the JDataStore-database in the last years and included this in the BlackfishSQL-database. Meaning: this database is not complete new, it works now not only in the java-framework it works in the .net-framework, too.

If you think, nice info about a new database but not excited because I work with the xyz-database:

This database can use Trigger and other db-stuff written in Delphi.net (or other .net-language)… There is a “Borland.Data.DataStore” namespace and for the .net-area you can write in the future your trigger inside your Delphi. If you'll support the Java-side of the database, use the com.borland.datastore package and create for this plattform the sp and trigger in java.

In the Screenshot you see the Database. You can connect over the DBX4-framework (available since Delphi 2007) or ADO.net2. JDBC is possible, too.

This database is fast, I've test with some sample data (400 MB) and the response and fetch of the result was great. I wonder about a compare between BlackfishSQL on a Windows Server and BlackfishSQL on a Sparc-Machine. Interesting idea for the cold winter here in Bavaria .
Blackfish supports incremental backup and failover.

DBX4

The new (in Delphi2007 published) database framework DBX4 is with this version of Delphi for managed and unmanaged application available. Steve Shaughnessy and his team have made a great job in the last year and build a complete new dbExpress-version. It’s more then a new version of dbExpress, it’s a complete framework. The developer can use this framework and expand it very easy because it has included a lot of interfaces and layers. It’s single sourced and create with a high skill of programming. I’ve read in the source and it’s amazing to learn from this framework-source (and I work with Pascal since 1982).

If you need a other datatypes, no problem write your own custom command type and use it in your applications. And with the option of Delegation, e.g. Trace and Pooling in this version you have more control of the database-connection then in the last dbExpress-versions or other database-connections. And you can use the framework in vcl.32 and vcl.net. This is IMO a big advantage of the next version. Delphi is IMO the best IDE for database-application because you have the choice of the best way to your database(s). No special support for the company-database, they support the most used databases. And with the stop of the BDP-development Codegear must only maintain one database-layer, and here we can expect in the future fast support of new database-versions with new features. In the past they must realize the support on more then one database-connection component. Congrat to Scotts Valley for this decision!

Generics

Generics complete new in the next Delphi version. The use of generics is normally to define a class that has generic type parameters and you can consume and create generic types inside your Delphi. Now every Delphi Developer must learn this new feature (I think in the next few month there will be enough information about this area on the dn.codegear.com-page or in lulu.com-area from Marco Cantu, Bob Swart and other) and after this the developer must make the decision “I need it or not for my type of application”. It’s like a lot of other features in the language and compiler-area of Delphi.

But this feature is at the moment only in vcl.net-applications available, the win32-support will included in the next release of Delphi (see the Roadmap here http://dn.codegear.com/article/36620)

Reporting

The upcoming Delphi version has Rave Reports, of course .

Since Delphi 7 is Rave the standard report engines and supports VCL.32 for Pascal and C++ and VCL.net for Pascal. And the last mean you can use ADO.net2-provider over DBX4 for your reports in Rave. The version will be RAVE BE 7.5.2 (7.5.0 was Delphi 2007, 7.5.1 was BCB 2007). The differences between RAVE BE and RAVE BEX you’ll find here.

You can create simple to complex reports, render the reports into HTML and PDF and have the possibility to use scripting inside your report. And besides this feature you have with Rave a really high-speed optimized report engine.

I think at the moment about "Generics and reporting with Rave and the custom connection" .

The RAD Studio 2007 is a consistent step in the correct direction and you'll get a stable product for developing applications for Win32 and the .net-Framework.

In the winter can Codegear make a facelift with the VCL and integration of Unicode. Last week I've made the experience that the Microsoft Fax service write the log-file in Unicode and I have a win32-application.. after some minutes I've written a .net-application in BDS2006 (.net 1.1) and this application (called with parameter from my Win32-application) convert the unicode-log-file into a vcl.32-readable log2-file and it works, but not very elegantly.

The Power of Rave

2007-08-31T10:17:00.000-07:00

the headline remembers me on Huey Lewis and the news hit "the power of love" a long time ago .... but back to Rave.
I'm sometimes read and answer Rave-questions in the nevrona-newsgroups and yesterday I found an interesting thread from a Rave-User:

nevrona.public.rave.reports.general
Re: Order is important!!

".... Lastly, I've used both Crystal and Rave, and I gotta say, I wish more people
could see just how awesome a product Rave is. And how much more power you
have with Rave.

--
Christian Wilkerson"

thanks Christian for this!

I'm a TeamNevrona-member and when we say "Rave have power and is a phantastic product for reporting" is this not the same like other developers who works with Rave because the people think we must only talk positive about a product...
I work with Rave round about 10 years and I've realized all my reporting-issues with Rave.. and on my consulting-work on many companies (from small to really big companies) in europe (with Delphi, Rave and databases like Oracle) I can't remember any report-issue that the reporting - engine from Nevrona don't create with success.
Yeah, I haven't wrote "Rave" because Nevrona have two report engines, one is visual: Rave and the other one is code-based: Report Printer Pro, available since April 1995, two month later then the first Delphi Release!
And if the report design is too complex for a visual report then you can do it all in Pascal-code inside your Delphi-Application. You'll find a good demo in the Rave-folder.
On the nevrona.com/rave-page are good information about this report-solution and on CodeGear-Network page is another good introduction from Leonel about code-based reporting...

Rave and unicode

2007-08-14T03:46:00.000-07:00

I read very often in the newsgroups or in email about supporting unicode in Rave ....

The status is at the moment:

Rave for Win32-developement doesn't support unicode
Rave for the .net-Framewok support unicode

Rave for Win32

Rave is based on the VCL, no surprise. and the VCL isn't unicode-ready at the moment.
There is an interesting article in the blog from Hallvard about "unicode and VCL" with Danny Thorpe. It's not new but unchanged in the year 2007....
In the Delphi-Roadmap from CodeGear is the support of Unicode for the Win32-plattform for the first half of 2008 announced:

Delphi "Tiburón"
Time Frame: First Half 2008
Theme: Delphi and VCL development with Unicode and Generics

Delphi Win32 Unicode This means that the IDE, the VCL, and all types of development should be made fully Unicode-compatible. The standard string in the Delphi language will become a Unicode string, meaning that the IDE, the VCL – that is, the entire product – will be Unicode-based. Developers around the world will be able to develop applications for use in any language using the Unicode standard.

meaning: when the VCL inside Delphi supports unicode Rave should support unicode as well .... but this need a lot of patience.
But Nevrona have done good work in the past, since Rave is working with unicode strings and such in .NET, the conversion to the unicode for Win32 will be a lot simpler (i.e. Nevrona already have code to handle strings of different character length).

Rave for the .net-Framework

that's easy
Rave for the .net-Framework supports unicode because .net framework supports unicode ...

But don't forget that you need the right font with unicode-support... I recommend that you work inside Rave with the FontMaster. Insert a GlobalPage and name the Page into GPFonts and here you can insert FontMaster for every Font / Size / Style (I called the components in my Rave-projects FMArial12bold, FMArial10, FMArial10bold ....) and define the FontMirror of the (Data)Text and (Data)Memo to this FontMaster. Now you can define very easy on one place (!) the correct font with unicode-support. And this is the only way at the moment to change the font of (Data)Text/Memo-component inside the Rave Scripting. And you have in all your reports of the application a good corporate design-feature included.
You see, a lot of advantages for using the FontMaster-component in the Rave-Project!

RAVE 7 BEX and Delphi 2007

2007-08-11T06:47:00.000-07:00

I read in many newsgroups in the last few months threads with the subject "Rave 7 BEX and Delphi 2007".

Rave 7 BEX is binary compatible with Delphi 2007 for Win32. However, the current installer from Nevrona Designs does not automatically install into Delphi 2007. You'll need to install the package dclRave.bpl from the BDS2006 files included with Rave 7 BEX within the Delphi 2007 IDE.

But please make first the following : modify the RpDefine.pas (remember, you have the source with BEX!) like the following

in the RpDefine simply change the last statement to be a >= instead of just the equal

{$IF CompilerVersion >= 18.0} { Delphi 10.0 }
CompVer = '10';
{$IFEND}

CodeGear haven't created a MajorRelease in the compiler-area with Delphi 2007; the version have only changed from 18.0 to 18.5 and all (*) the BDS2006-files working without any changes in Delphi 2007.

that's all!

I admit that my production environment is BDS2006Arch and not Delphi2007 but I have test the installation of Rave BEX 7.05 in a VMWare-machine with Delphi 2007 Enterprise without any problems! I created an application with dbx4, Rave7 and an oracle connection and it works fast, as expected from the Win32-Compiler Delphi

keep hacking and coding with CodeGear Delphi
(some years ago a friend of mine have a great signature: "Delphi or notepad"

:-)

(*)
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
But, in practice, there is.

Rave BEX and BE - the differences

2007-08-11T03:11:00.001-07:00

yesterday I received an email about the question for a version 7.5 BEX because in Delphi 2007 is Rave BE in the version 7.5 included.

Many rumors are on the different newsgroups about this. In fact, there are differences, but with BE bundled with Delphi (7, 8, 2005, 2006 and 2007) you have a full version of RAVE and can create reports (and deploy, of course) in your application.

The greatest differences are:
• Source code – the BEX version comes with full component source code (not the IDE source, like Delphi).
• “Archived” Code Based Components (including the powerful Shell-components) are included with the BEX version for backwards compatibility.
• More frequent updates.
• Support for TeeChart Pro – the BE version only supports the bundled TeeChart.
• Improved Scripting
• The BEX have backward compatibility, meaning a Rave 4/5/6 Project can be used in the Rave 7 BEX-version with all code- and class-changes.
• Since the latest version of BEX (not BE) you have a new JPEG-render, especially interesting for store the reports with a small file size
in the database and you can view this file without installing a pdf-reader (e.g. on a server, where you should only install important app's!)

So we are getting a “reasonable” version bundled with all Delphi-version since V7 and if any of the above matter to you, then you should consider getting the BEX version on the nevrona.com-page. Especially the source and the technical support is very valuable!

But now back to the question about 7.5 of RAVE BEX....
If you have are a good observer then you have in the past noticed that with Rave 6 the BEX version had 6.0x and the bundled version of RAVE BE in Delphi 2005 and and later had 6.5 and in in version 7 it's the same, meaning the Rave 7.05 BEX is not older then the Rave 7.5 of Delphi 2007, and believe mit there aren't differences in the rav or ndr-file between 7.05 and 7.5.... and Jim Gunkel have written about the next Rave Version 8 (see an earlier blog here) and not about 7.1 or 7.5 BEX ....

iPod Protection against theft

2007-07-21T11:16:00.000-07:00

My brother-in-law have sent me today a funny link for the security of my iPod.
Funny the idea with a Zune to secure the iPod....
I admit that I love my iPod (o.k. exactly I have in the meantime two of these cool music player) and use especially the shuffle for hearing my Huey Lewis and the News songs (only this artist is on my shuffle with 512KB mem) ...
With a cool design, cool features, good quality and a good marketing you can win in the windows-market new users; but you must offer not only the player, all the additions around equal important then the other keys! Please, CodeGear learn from the iPod-success and Delphi will get the success which this cool and productive IDE and the Pascal-language have earned, it's not to late for this. If the pascal-language haven't advantage the C#-Architect Anders Heijlsberg didn't include a lot of AlGol/Pascal/Modula into the language C#...

alternative to YouTube

2007-07-15T01:19:00.000-07:00

I found yesterday a great alternative to youToube: Dailymotion ....
Better quality of the videos/sound and IMO better videos then yT, and in my area where I searched better movies of HLN.org

CodeGear Delphi.PHP and Borland IntraBuilder

2007-07-09T07:00:00.000-07:00

well, it's over ten years old and I admit that I don't work with IntraBuilder anymore, meaning it's here@home not a software, it's a shelf-ware

Who knows this IDE ? I think less people....but I'm not alone : Dr.Dobbs have an article about this from 2001.

This product was a cool and powerful designed JavaScript IDE that was clearly ahead of its time, like other tools from Scotts Valley:
ObjectVision from Borland, a great tool to move from DOS ot Windows AND to the basics of objectoriented working.

10 Years ago there was an IDE for JavaScript that puts the likes of Adobe Dreamweaver or ActiveState Komodo to shame, believe me. Okay, not the full AJAX but IntraBuilder would have been a natural testbed for testing early HTTPRequest and other AJAX framework ideas.

With the new spirit in Scotts Valley (I love this area and hope to visit SV again) and the loyal customers around the world they can go into this area with Delphi.PHP and Ruby, it's not to late but after the splash of the availability of Delphi.PHP I wait for the waves in the internet-area...
Andreano have insert in his blog great ressources to read and learn about the possibilites, try the examples with the Trialversion!

EKON - 11 CodeGear-conference in Frankfurt

2007-06-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

End of september is "EKON 11", the german BorCon or new "CodeGear-Con" (http://entwickler-konferenz.de). This is my 10 EKON where I visit / speak (only 2001, after 11/9 I don't go to the conference... ).
This year I make a Rave-session and a session about DBX4, the new database-framework, released with Delphi 2007.
I planned a session about "WebParts with Delphi for Microsoft SharePoint" but the .net2/3-support in the Developer Studio isn't available and I don't know the release date (before or after EKON11).... -> perhaps next year.

CheckPoint Firewall-1 and Script Kiddis

2007-05-23T06:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I've received a funny letter @work.....
CheckPoint FireWall-1 is the solution for officials and organizations with small security-requirements. Only 1-2 points on the 0-10 list.... and every semi-prof hacker AND script kiddis can go through checkpoint into the local network....
This statement have made an IT-expert and he recommend no firewall and on every machine the user must start with a knoppix-cd and then connect to the internet in the box....
I work with CheckPoint since 2001 @work and @home I have a safe@office-solution appliance with CheckPoint-technology. I think no firewall can realize 100% security but CheckPoint is definitly not a low-security solution... It's a scalabiltiy solution and with the correct configuration it's one of the leader in the security-area....
But it's funny to read this letter with no content but a lot of wrong information... I'll answer with facts because some people have read this letter......and this is like some newspaper, the big headline, no true but someone believe this.....

-take care

Rave 8

2007-05-15T12:27:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting information about Rave (Monday, 7. Mai 2007 18:26) in the nevrona-newsgroups from Jim Gunkel, the CEO of Nevrona Designs:

"We're all alive and healthy here working on Rave Reports 8 which is shaping
up to be one of our biggest releases in a long time. Some of the new
features include docking and restructuring of the tool windows within the
designer, band logic revamp and an exciting new template system integrated
with a new 2-way report wizard.

More details on these and the other new things will follow as we get closer
to Rave Reports 8 release. We're not giving out any timeframes yet but stay
posted (I can tell you that anyone that orders Rave 7 now will get a free
update to Rave 8 when it's released)."

great news !

new Client/Server-Application in 2007 with .net or win32 ?

2007-05-15T11:51:00.000-07:00

Well, is this a question in 2007 with the stable .net version 2 (perhaps 3.5 in the next month)??? Microsoft latest Win32-development is with VB6 very very old and all the newer visual studio version creates .net-application in Basic, C# and so on....
And CodeGear create a Delphi-Version in the year 2007 with Vista-support, but for Win32....

I remember the blog from holger about managed code or not on this blog Managed code is too slow... yeah, right... and the following discussion ...

I have a new project this month, and surprise surprise, a database-application with Oracle in the background.
I've moved all my application since last september from Delphi 7 to Delphi2006.win32 and I'm happy about the IDE-feature and the speed. I think it's really fast and we can compare it absolutely with Delphi7. With the BDS I have the choice to work on both world... but last weekend I made the decision: the project will be a Win32-application. I admit that I haven't found anything in the .net-framework that make the decision to .net ...
Remember, this is "only" a c/s-application, no 3-tier, webapplication or other remote dataconnection.....
I started a new Win32-project with the DOA-components from allroundautomations, the QuantumGrid v5 from DevExpress and Nevrona Rave Reports, of course.

Perhaps someone can give me a hint why this is the wrong decision for a new application in the year 2007.......
In the meantime I will develop and have finish my database-modelling (Tips for Datamodelling).... and learn at the moment the power of Castalia 5.1 for my daily work. In this tool there are really cool and powerful features included, congrat Jacob, great job!

the only point for .net is at the moment ECO, but I admit that I haven't found the door to go into this new house and use this Framework in my BDS2006.... Sometimes I will read the ECOBook from Alois and hope to realize the help of ECO to do my job better and faster.... but you know: things.take.time.

-take care

Oracle, Rave, Delphi and a lot of lakes

2007-04-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

in the last few weeks I've made some Oracle, Rave- and Delphi-Trainings in Bavaria and Italy. I saw the beautiful Ammersee on an Oracle-Training, one week later the Chiemsee (both in south bavaria) on an Oracle-Workshop and then I changed through the Brenner and Lago Magiore to Piacenza in Italy, where I made a Rave-Workshop at Marco Cantu's Company WinTech.
on the evening I go with Marco to a local restaurant and learned a great dish: "pisarei e faso". pasta and beans and cheese, delicious!
After this workshop I visit the Comer Lake and some other not so well-known lakes and made a special Delphi-Oracle-Training with interesting contents (but I have a NDA.... )
Over 2.500 km with my Quattro in this timeframe and I've learned a lot of smart and nice guys in all of this location..... thanks to all and cu sometimes somewhere again!

Rave BEX 7.05 is available

2007-04-09T02:14:00.001-07:00

After a long time of waiting Nevrona Designs have published the 7.05 version of Rave SE and Rave BEX. Beside a lot of small changes and fixes there are two interesting features now included:

They have added RenderBitmap/RenderJPEG/RenderMetafile components and the ability to compile scripting from Delphi code.

The rendercomponents works like the well known html- and pdf-components, of course. The compile scripting is really cool. To compile code that is already there it's as simple as calling RvProject1.ProjMan.Compile.
I'll prepare a first-step tutorial about Rave Scripting in the next few month and publish it on the nevrona.com-page. stay tuned!