Delphi Code Camp

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......

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

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...

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...

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 ...

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

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.