Delphi 2009 and Rave 7.6 ...

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 ....

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!

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

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...)