Delphi XE2 - A few of my favourite things...

If you follow Delphi at all, then you will have noticed lots of recent activity around the upcoming release of Delphi (Rad Studio) XE2.  And with big ticket items like native 64 bit, Mac and iOS support, FireMonkey, VCL themes, data binding (VCL and FireMonkey), etc, there is a lot to be excited about.  I find myself looking for opportunities to use some of these new features.

However, and with Embarcadero's permission, I'd like to point out a couple of features that don't necessarily get as much press, but are immediately useful to me.

ODBC support in dbExpress

I've been a fan of dbExpress since it was introduced, but the biggest drawback has always been that you need a driver for the specific database you want to use.  Otherwise, you're out of luck.  XE2 (finally) helps fill in the gaps by adding ODBC support for dbExpress.

HTTPS in stand alone DataSnap servers

DataSnap (formerly Midas) has been around since Delphi 3, but (IMHO) really became useful when it was overhauled in Delphi 2009 and later with features such as being decoupled from COM, adding filters for encryption and compression, REST support, etc.  If pressed, you could argue that DataSnap supported SSL, but this was only when used through IIS, which is a bit of a cop out (again, IMHO).  In XE2, you can build stand alone DataSnap servers that support HTTPS.

If you want to learn more, Embarcadero is currently on a World Tour (initially 70 stops in 30 countries, and more stops are being added), Delphi Live starts September 12th and CodeRage 6 starts October 17.

The Toronto stop for the World Tour is Wednesday, August 31 at the North York Regional Library.  Note that it starts at 6:00 PM instead of 7:00 PM, like the user group meetings.  If you will be attending, please register online so they can plan accordingly.

RAD Studio 2010 in Toronto Wednesday, Sept 23rd

TDUG: The Delphi 2010 Tour with Anders Ohlsson is coming to Toronto Wed.Sep. 23.

All attendees will be entered in a drawing for a free copy of RAD Studio 2010 Professional.*

Learn from the experts, hear from your peers and talk to our
evangelists in person. See how Delphi 2010 and RAD Studio 2010 can
take you to a new level of productivity with touch/gesture
application development, Firebird support, RTTI in the Delphi language, Windows 7 support and much more.

* Must attend the event, and be present to win.

Date/Time: Wednesday, September 23
7:00 to 10:PM

Location: Northern District Library
40 Orchard View Blvd.
NOTE THE CHANGE IN VENUE FROM OUR USUAL LOCATION
Toronto, ON, M4R 1B9
416-393-7610
Room 224BC

Directions: Closest major intersection: Yonge St. and Eglinton
and Eglinton Ave. Located 1 block north of
Eglinton Ave. on west side of Yonge St.

Public Transit: Eglinton subway station, walk 1 block north on
on Yonge Yonge St.

Parking: Paid - Limited parking in metered spaces under
library building,
- Side street parking,
- Several paid parking lots nearby.
Admission Free

Registration: http://update.codegear.com/forms/AMCA0909RAD2010TourToronto

Delphi 2009 - Generics.Collections

CodeGear has given me permission to blog about the upcoming release of Delphi 2009 (Tiburon).

By now, you've probably heard that Delphi 2009 will have generics for Win32. The first thing I always think of is type safe collections that don't require casting. Someone asked what has been added to the RTL to take advantage of the feature. In this first release, the following were added to the RTL in Generics.Collections.pas.

TList
TQueue
TStack
TDictionary

Descendants that optionally manage ownership of objects in the list:

TObjectList
TObjectQueue
TObjectStack
TObjectDictionary

Nick Hodges will be exploring TList in more detail in his "Delphi Language Features" launch webinar on September 3rd.


For And for good measure, Allen Bauer and Barry Kelly have been blogging about less stereotypical uses for generics. Stay tuned for more.

Multicast events using generics
Multicast Events - the cleanup

Tiburon: fun with generics and anonymous methods

Delphi 2009 - PasswordChar

CodeGear has given me permission to blog about the upcoming release of Delphi 2009 (Tiburon).

If you've seen some of the Delphi 2009 demos, you might wonder why they're showing off PasswordChar in TEdit. After all, the feature has been available since Delphi 1.

You'll miss it if you aren't looking closely, but what they're showing is a minor fix in Delphi's Windows theme support. If the password character is an asterisk (*), Delphi 2009 now correctly displays black circles. As Nick Hodges pointed out, it's a small improvement, but certainly one more step in the right direction.

Delphi 2009 - TextHint in TComboBox

CodeGear has given me permission to blog about the upcoming release of Delphi 2009 (Tiburon).

Delphi 2009 adds TextHint support to edit controls, a nice feature that lets you show a grayed out text watermark. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Delphi 2009 extends this support to TComboBox on XP, normally only supported on Vista. Under the covers, they send the Windows message CB_SETCUEBANNER to the ComboBox on Vista and EM_SETCUEBANNER to the ComboBox's edit control on XP.




I've seen a few of these "minor" tweaks in this release, which suggests that CodeGear is spending some time on cleanup and improvement of smaller details and not just big ticket features.

Delphi 2009 - New help content

CodeGear has given me permission to blog about the upcoming release of Tiburon.

You'll find significant new content in the Delphi 2009 help. For example, protected events, fields, methods and properties are now listed with each class's Members. A definite improvement over previous releases.

Delphi 2009 - One less prerequisite

CodeGear has given me permission to blog about the upcoming release of Tiburon.

Here's a small but welcome change. Recent versions of Delphi required the full .Net SDK, at least partly for the help system, and this takes up quite a lot of space. Delphi 2009 doesn't need all of this and just installs the latest version of the Microsoft Document Explorer (or version 8 for Win2K). For the sake of clarity, Delphi 2009 still requires the .Net runtime.

Of course, you can also expect other help improvements, including more content (new classes, components and properties) and improved indexing.