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.

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!

The end of the year is fast approaching. Since we only meet every other month, this is the last meeting this year. I had asked CodeGear to come out and show us Delphi 2009 and talk about new developments, but that doesn’t seem to be an option for us right now. So for our November meeting tomorrow night, I would like to open up the floor to discussion on Delphi news and developments and invite you to share your opinions on where the programming tools are heading.

Several months back, we had a meeting on XML and I promised a “Part II” that would go into web services. That will finally be fulfilled at our next regular semi-monthly meeting. There will be a brief introduction to web services, what they are, and who might be using them. Then we’ll get into the code by creating three web services in Delphi 2006, each increasing in complexity, and each with a VCL client to use them.

This month, the trials and tribulations of creating and running DLLs in Delphi will be discussed. We will talk about whether or not you really need DLLs, how to handle versioning, and interface design. PRESENTER Gene Juhos of Sysmatics started his programming career writing code for an IBM 3741. He’s written useful code in COBOL, FORTRAN, C, C++, Assembler, CADOL and lately mostly Delphi. He took his first Delphi training class in 1996 using Delphi 3.

We don’t have a formal presentation planned, but will discuss whatever topics arise from the group. Delphi on a laptop will be available to write sample programs wherever the night’s discussion takes us.