Oregon Delphi User Group

Delphi® is one of the most respected and widely used Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments today. Over 1.7 million developers worldwide choose Delphi over other tools because Delphi radically speeds desktop, workstation, touch, kiosk, and Web application development without sacrificing an ounce of programming power or control. Applications built with Delphi are lightning fast, compact, provide rich UIs, and can connect with virtually any database or data source “out-of-the-box”. RAD Studio 2010 helps you go further and get there faster with more than 120 new and enhanced features that help you finish projects faster and reach more users.

CodeGear Delphi 2010 Launch tour!

We will have one final “regular” meeting of the Oregon Delphi User Group. It’s been a good run, lasting 15 years, but as things change and people move on, other venues of networking and professional development will, and have already begun, to take its place. There is no prepared topic as there will likely be reflections over the past years and discussions of future trends. However, continuing the theme of our March meeting, another project, a very different one (involving GUIDs, Unicode, and reporting), has had its own “Conversion Story” and several lessons learned from that experience could be shared as interest dictates.

The following is a preview of the March 15, 2010 ODUG meeting… It is a story of corruption in high places, and the daunting task of doing away with the evildoers – at least those responsible for the unrest. To the casual observer, everything seemed normal, but down deep, where access to the critical information took place, events unfolded with far reaching implications. Some said that corruption was just a fact of life.

Delphi® is one of the most respected and widely used Rapid Application Development (RAD) environments today. Over 1.7 million developers worldwide choose Delphi over other tools because Delphi radically speeds desktop, workstation, touch, kiosk, and Web application development without sacrificing an ounce of programming power or control. Applications built with Delphi are lightning fast, compact, provide rich UIs, and can connect with virtually any database or data source “out-of-the-box”. RAD Studio 2010 helps you go further and get there faster with more than 120 new and enhanced features that help you finish projects faster and reach more users.

This month’s meeting will be a demonstration of three commercial applications written in Delphi: File Extractor Pro, Cell Phone Analyzer, and SIM Analyzer Pro. File Extractor Pro is a data carving tool. It allows the user to carve deleted files from a logical partition in either NTFS or FAT12/16 and FAT32. A standalone image file in both raw bit stream format (think DD file) and compressed sgzip with 64k size clusters.

Using DLLs when you distribute your application allows you to replace individual components of your application suite without having to kick all users out of the program. For instances, the Accounts Payable module can be replaced without shutting down the shipping department. DLLs can be very useful in many situations and once you learn a few tricks, are really quite simple. We will talk about how to structure your application to use DLLs to make updating installed applications much simpler to manage and keeps customers working happily.

It’s the middle of the summer, so let’s set the serious work aside and have a little fun for a change. I bet we can still learn something… First, I found an old OpenGL program that displays fireworks and thought it would be fun to look at the code and watch splashes of color explode–especially since some major fireworks displays in the area were canceled this year due to budget constraints.

There is a saying that any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic! There are a lot of new features and language enhancements in the last three versions of Delphi that may seem like magic to those who do not know about them. And there are some features that have been in Delphi for a long time that some don’t realize are there. On May 18, 2009, the mysteries of the unknown and the secrets of the masters will be shown in real applications.

Anders Ohlsson from CodeGear will be at our group in Portland to talk about the latest Delphi products for both Windows 32 and .NET, show how to move your existing projects to the new environments, demonstrate modeling techniques to improve your code, and give you insight on rapidly creating web applications. There will be discounts on Delphi 2009, C++Builder 2009, or RAD Studio 2009. And one lucky winner will walk away with a free copy of RAD Studio 2009 Pro!