Oregon Delphi User Group

This month’s presentation is on EDI, a Business-to-Business (B2B) data transfer protocol. Just about any industry you can think of uses EDI in some form or other. Generally, EDI “documents” (AKA “messages” AKA “transaction sets”) are transmitted from one business to another. For example, a subset of EDI, called HL7, can be used to transfer a patient’s lab test results from a medical laboratory to a doctor or a clinic. But it’s also used to transmit data from a device to a service; for example, to transfer readings from medical equipment such as blood glucose monitors or even treadmills (in a “wellness center”) to a service that stores the results in a database for later processing.

There is no particular topic for this month’s meeting but I’ll have my laptop with several versions of Delphi and we can discuss whatever comes up–whether it’s related to programming or not. In any case, join us for pizza!

People develop strong opinions about things they do or believe and sometimes have a difficult time seeing another point of view. This certainly exists for politics and religion but is also strong in the technology sector. Whether you use Mac or Windows, Android or iPhone, C++ or Delphi, it’s not hard to find heated discussions about what is the best or “right” choice. Embarcadero is hosting a series of online discussions to weigh in on some of the hot topics in the Delphi programming language.

In August, we’ll be honored with a special guest, Ann Lynnworth, co-founder of HREF Tools who will talk to us about their full-text search component, Rubicon. We will meet online in August in order to host Ann who will be presenting to us remotely. Here’s an introduction to the topic: “Rubicon allows Delphi and C++Builder developers to add full-text search capabilities to their database applications, retaining control of data and indexing and providing both simple wild-card queries and complex search expressions.

With several people unable to attend this month, we’ve decided to move our topic to the September meeting.

Embarcadero has a contest going on right now for creating the most beautiful GUI with Skia for Delphi. Skia is a 2D graphics engine, sponsored by Google, that provides a common API across various hardware and software platforms, including all the major web browsers. A couple of smart guys in Brazil have created an open source library called, Skia4Delphi to make this API work in both VCL and Firemonkey applications. We’ll run their sample programs and perhaps even show some of our own creations at the June meeting.

What kind of logging do you implement in your Delphi apps? Do you simply write out a few lines to a .LOG file? Or do you use a library that has detailed and highly structured logging for every action your users take? What about remote usage reporting? If you distribute a desktop app, how do you know how many people use it and how often? There’s no one true way for everyone or every application.

We’re meeting in person this month–and at a new location! No specific topic planned but we will, as usual, catch up with what we’re doing with Delphi and technology in general, share pizza and laughs, and evaluate the new location.

The latest version of our favorite development tool, Delphi 11.1 Alexandria has been announced! What are you looking forward to in this upgrade? We’ll chat about technology, avoid depressing world events topics, and think about where we want to meet next month.

February 14 marked the 27th anniversary of the release of Delphi. The meeting this month will focus on the history of Delphi, both reviewing products released over the years and how Delphi has impacted your life, career, or business. Please join us online and share your experience.