ADUG Meeting April 97

ADUG Meeting April 1997

At this month's meeting on 15th April we had record attendance with nearly 50 attendees. As the large seminar room was in use by someone else we had to squeeze everyone into our normal room. We managed to just do this by removing all the desks and synchronising our breathing.

Apart from the announcements the evening was entirely occupied by two first class presentations by Randall Sell from Borland with a short break between.

The first presentation was on Borland's new C++ Builder product, also known as BCB or "Delphi for C++".

As a C++ hacker from way back, and a Delphiphile (pardon my stutter!) since the start of last year I'm very excited about this particular product. It's very impressive but there are still a couple of potential gotchas, especially where you want to combine Delphi and C++ development. Here is a quick rundown based on my notes taken on the evening.

	BCB IDE and component palette are virtually the same as Delphi 2.
	BCB has a case tool API and an open tools API identical to Delphi 2.
	You can write not only C++ but Object Pascal as well.
	The VCL is still in Object Pascal and is thus identical to that in D2.
	BCB can use components created in Delphi 2, but needs the source code from which to extract the type information. It wasn't clear if .int files would be enough or the whole source file was needed.
	You can inherit from Delphi (Pascal) forms.
	The C++ language has been extended with new keywords like __fastcall that allow access to Object Pascal constructs such as properties.
	Compiles somewhat slower than Delphi. This is because it produces standard .OBJ files rather than Borland proprietary .DCU files and also has to read separate header files.
	Header file caching can improve compile speed but occupies a lot of memory.
	BCB can be used to create components but they are not compatible with Delphi. So it looks like Delphi is still the best (only?) choice for VCL writing.

Randall's Delphi 3 presentation was also excellent, but unfortunately we ran out of time before he covered everything. There were simply too many wonderful new things to talk about.

All attendees had to fill out a non-disclosure agreement and in return each received a beta copy of Delphi 3. Thanks Borland!

Under the NDA I'm not allowed to tell you much about D3, but it certainly looks like the tool of choice for three-tier and web-enabled development.

For those who missed out I have a couple of extra copies of the D3 beta for the library, but you may have to sign an NDA before taking one.

I will also be getting Randall back to give more on D3 sometime soon. Hopefully this will be in June when the product should finally be released.

The meeting closed (late) at around 8:45 and was followed by the usual committee meeting. Committee meeting minutes are available to ADUG members from the ADUG Secretary.