Delphi keeps on getting better...

Programming Language Popularity: The TCP Index for August, 2004
http://developer.com/java/other/article.php/3390001

Apparently Java is on the way down (yeah! suck it!), and Delphi is on the way up (and PHP and Python, whatever...)

Delphi 8 wins big awards

It looks as though Delphi 8 is beating MS at its own game... check out the awards...

"In a ceremony held at TechEd Europe, Windows & .NET Magazine, SQL Server Magazine, and Microsoft judged the industry's best products in 9 categories - Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework was voted 'Best of Show' in the Developer Tools category."

And there's more, check it out here...

oops

For any subscribers, I had a post show up here a moment ago (now deleted) that was meant for my other blog (virtualemlyn.blogspot.com). Apologies.

Compact Framework Development without Visual Studio .Net

This must be applicable to Delphi 8, don't you think?

Ongoing D7/D8 work

I've been a bit quiet on this blog, but I'm still at it with Delphi 8. After settling on only using non-dataaware stuff (for now) in ASP.net, D8 seems very solid, and furthermore you can avoid using any borland specific stuff and have deployments which will go on a plain vanilla .Net framework box (not requiring any borland libraries be deployed), which can be a big advantage in a virtual hosting arrangement.

I've settled on two kinds of basic architectures for client apps at the moment...

If I need really rich client behaviour, or offline functionality, I use Delphi 7 for client apps & ActiveX stuff. To make these disparate pieces talk I use D8 to build ASP.net web services which I put somewhere central.

If I can get away with a web interface then it's D8 asp.net all the way.

D7/D8 are a good pair to work with, because hybrid Win32 & webservice based stuff is a nice choice in the present computing environment (if you need more than a web app can provide, like windows services, or offline stuff, or a more complex interface, as I said above).

I'm looking forward to D9 where all this should come bundled in one package.

10 Must have tools for .Net programming

Another one that I haven't read yet, but it looks like a definite must read.

The article covers the following:

• NUnit to write unit tests


• NDoc to create code documentation


• NAnt to build your solutions


• CodeSmith to generate code


• FxCop to police your code


• Snippet Compiler to compile small bits of code


• Two different switcher tools, the ASP.NET Version Switcher and the Visual Studio .NET Project


• Converter


• Regulator to build regular expressions


• .NET Reflector to examine assemblies

Delphi and .net site

I need to go through this guy's site (maybe "page" is more appropriate) in more detail. He's not actually talking about Delphi .net (ie Delphi 8), he's talking about communication between Delphi for win32 (ie: 7 or below) and .net apps.


(open the site in a new window)

Delphi .net ASP.NET tip #2

A basic ASP.NET installation tip...

If you install the .Net framework, then install IIS on the same box afterwards, you'll have issues. Specifically, IIS wont understand your funky .net jive... damn, man! But you can fix it. Just run the following command at the prompt and everything will be funkylicious!

%comspec% /K %windir%\microsoft.net\framework\v1.1.4322\aspnet_regiis.exe -i

Delphi .net ASP.NET tip #1

Normally when you go to deploy a Delphi based ASP.net app, you need to deploy a bunch of borland dlls with it, at least Borland.Delphi.dll, and say for bdp based SQL Server apps you need Borland.Data.Common.dll, Borland.Data.MSSQL.dll, and Borland.Data.Provider.dll (you also need to put bdpmss15.dll in your system folder for the SQL driver, bummer ey?).

If you don't use any of the Borland components, just use the .net data components, then you don't need these dlls (which isn't clear from Borland's deployment instructions).

So you can write an ASP.net app against SQL server, and only need the following on deployment to a windows box:

• The .net framework


• IIS installed


• MDAC 2.6 or later

Easy!