Delphi Code Camp on Tour

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

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

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

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"

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)

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

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

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 ......