The Power of Rave

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

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

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

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 ....