Oregon Delphi User Group

It’s too easy to intertwine the Graphical User Interface (GUI) with the data. But what if you want to later use the data in a different context? You either have to extract the code, or re-write it. Event-driven programming can help significantly to keep your application looking sharp and responsive while keeping the data as a separate entity. PRESENTER David Cornelius has been a developer for 15 years working mostly on the DOS and Windows platforms using Borland’s Pascal compilers.

Firebird is a relational database offering many ANSI SQL-92 features that runs on Linux, Windows, and a variety of Unix platforms. It has been used in production systems, under a variety of names since 1981. Much development has occured since Firebird rose from the ashes of the Open sourcing of Interbase. In this presentation some of the topics we’ll explore and demonstrate include: A brief history of Firebird/InterBase A review of Firebird’s Features What’s new since the open sourcing of InterBase What’s new in the forthcoming release of Firebird 1.

CodeWright and Delphi are a perfect combination for Delphi programmers. Delphi provides necessary tools for developing applications. CodeWright supplies invaluable tools for analyzing and editing Pascal and other Delphi code. This presentation shows some of the ways that Delphi development tools and CodeWright editing features complement each other. It first shows how CodeWright works with Delphi through environment synchronization, project creation, command line configuration and file support. It then describes some of the features that make CodeWright a useful tool for Delphi programmers.

As mentioned during past meetings, a copy of Kylix 2 Enterprise was given to the Oregon Delphi Users Group to rebuild their web site and learn about and help promote both Kylix and web site development with Borland’s Object Pascal tools. That was over a year ago. Well, instead of waiting for someone to have time, we might as well just do it during one of our meetings! We will start off in Delphi 6 Pro tonight and move to Kylix 2 Enterprise at a future meeting (possibly January).

Homer Jones will present a commercial document management application built around ImageEn version 1.97 ImageEn is a set of 100% vcl Image processing components. It is a little-known, but viable alternative to ImageLib and LeadTools. While documentation is marginal, the Delphi code examples make up for the deficiency. Using ImageEn enabled Homer to build his own Twain user interface. While one might ask “why”, having a uniform user interface makes customer support much easier (you don’t need to know every user interface of every scanner manufacturer).

ModelMaker is a modeling / UML tool written in Delphi for Delphi which provides fast class design, diagramming, and code generation. It can also import existing units, provides a structured differencing engine, and can apply templates and patterns to class designs. The presenter has no vested interest in ModelMaker, but has found it to be an invaluable tool. Also demonstrated is the ModelMaker Code Explorer, which is a Delphi plug-in that provides a subset/superset of ModelMaker functionality directly to Delphi.

What do you do when an application gets too large for the OS to handle? Modularize. See how to easily create packages (.BPLs) and load them dynamically from your applicaiton. PRESENTER Kevin Stanton is an independent consultant doing business as RDB Solutions and has been working with Delphi since version 1.0 dealing with client/server databases and comes from the Paradox and IBM Mid-Range worlds.

FinalBuilder’s primary purpose is to allow developers to automate their software build process in a repeatable, predictable manner. FinalBuilder allows you to define your build process easily, allowing you to focus on more interesting and important tasks! Anyone can run the build, with one click (or keystroke!) in FinalBuilder. Builds can be scheduled via the windows scheduler, so automated nightly builds are easy to setup. FinalBuilder saves time, often doing in seconds task that take minutes or hours if done manually.

Raize Software has been providing high-quality, innovative developer tools since 1995. In this presentation, Ray Konopka will show how developers use Raize Components and DropMaster to build sophisticated user-interfaces in less time with less effort and CodeSite to ensure that their underlying code is working correctly. PRESENTER Ray Konopka is the founder of Raize Software, Inc., and the chief architect for CodeSite and Raize Components. Ray is also the author of the highly acclaimed Developing Custom Delphi Components books and the popular Delphi by Design column, which appeared in Visual Developer Magazine.

This year’s Borland Conference, BorCon 2002, highlighted .NET and the exploding Web Services market. Anders Hejlsberg, a former Borland employee now spearheading the C# language and a key participant of the .NET framework at Microsoft, gave Monday’s keynote talk and announced Delphi 7 coming later this year. These and other highlights will be shared at the June meeting by a panel of BorCon attendees from Oregon. If you couldn’t attend BorCon, you gotta come to ODUG this month!