Oregon Delphi User Group

Did anyone “attend” the virtual CodeGear conference last week, CodeRage? There were some good sessions, although I didn’t have time to listen in on all I wanted to. If you missed any of them, they’re all available at the CodeRage web site. The topic this month is just a loose discussion around Borland/CodeGear and speculation about how they’ll do this year. Delphi 2007 for Win32 was announced on Friday and has several really nice features and improvements.

There is no planned presentation tonight. However, if you want to influence this year’s schedule, discuss programming concepts, debate politics, or hear some home remodeling stories, meet me at the Lorenzen Center Monday night. I’ll be there around 5:30 PM. PRESENTER David Cornelius has been using Borland’s software development tools since the mid-80’s. He is the coordinator of the Oregon Delphi User Group, works for Retail Dimensions, and runs a contract software development business (CorneliusConcepts.

Less than half of our meetings this year have covered Delphi (1 month on FinalBuilder, 1 month skipped, 1 month on Java, and 3 months on PHP), so I decided it would behoove us to finish out the year with an actual Delphi presentation. While trying to figure out what would be a good topic and who I might be able to get up on the platform, I happened across an interesting blog.

Due to the high interest in Content Management Systems (CMSs) and PHP scripting, we’ll spend this month’s meeting discussing them. There won’t be a formal presentation, but there will be a laptop with a working copy of WAMP (Windows/Apache/MySQL/PHP) and at least Drupal and Joomla! loaded. To get you started on a good discussion, here are some web sites for reference you can browse beforehand: Read independent evaluations: CMS Watch Explore and test: Open Source CMS Compare and discuss: CMS Matrix PRESENTER David Cornelius has been using Borland’s software development tools since the mid-80’s.

In our continuing exploration on other programming langages and platforms, we cannot ignore Java. By using the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), the programmer can write once and run (almost) everywhere–at least more places than .NET can currently boast. Developers can write GUI client apps, enhance web pages, and build back-end server systems. Perhaps one of the more appealing aspects for Delphi Developers is the fact that Java is stronly typed and fully object-oriented.

This month, the topic will continue our exploration of PHP. Last month was an introduction, this month we’ll get more advanced. The topic will largely be directed by the audience, but will try to at least touch on the following topics: Setting up PHP, Apache, MySQL on Windows (WAMP) Configuration of PHP.INI (Development vs Production) How to control your web application with .htaccess Security issues We’ll also see some sample web pages generated with PHP and try to address any other topics the group wants to talk about.

PHP - that’s the P from LAMP - is essentially a scripting language used inside HTML code to build dynamic web pages. Tonight’s talk will be an introduction to PHP. Examples of different coding structures will be given, presented from the perspective of what the PHP equivalent is to the familiar Delphi structures. To illustrate these concepts in a practical way we’ll go through the steps to build a simple website for a small store.

If you didn’t get your copy of FinalBuilder in February, come to the meeting in April to learn about setting up batch files with command-line compiler options to automate your build tasks. And even if you do have FinalBuilder, come anyway to learn how to use a free, but commercial-quality setup-building tool, InnoSetup. David Cornelius has been maintaining his own scripts since he started programming in the 80s on DOS PCs.

FinalBuilder is a powerful Automated Build & Release Management tool which makes it easy for software developers to define and maintain a reliable and repeatable build process. FinalBuilder includes integration with version control systems, file and directory operations, iterators, source code compilers, testing tools, database systems, installation tools, as well as actions for deployment over the Internet and CD/DVD burning built in. Don’t forget we’d like to give away a free license of FinalBuilder 4 Professional worth $499 as a door prize.

There will be no “formal” presentation, but we’ll have a couple of laptops available and at least one member will be showing an application that “takes various text files as input, formats them into PDF invoices, statements, etc. and delivers them via email or fax to the customer.” We’d be interested to see what others are working on as well, so please come and share. PRESENTER David Cornelius has been using Borland’s software development tools since the mid-80’s.