Australian Delphi User Group
Incorporated - reg A0038181F

Past Meetings

July: Client DataSet Support using Microsoft Remote Data Service (RDS). This was the title of the presentation by Mark Weston, member and Principal of Real Solutions. Follow this link to the PowerPoint presentation. Ten minute tute was from Bryan Dayton on Console Applications.

June: How long is a piece of string. This was the title of Michael Stringer's presentation on Project Metrics. Based upon significant personal experience of delivering software projects on time and on budget for commercial clients, Michael presented the evidence and the principles to follow. The essential principle is that you must maintain your project metrics, meaning some measure of your productivity. This means having a basis for measuring output, whether it be use cases, function points, forms or lines of code, and then making sure that all projects are measured in terms of the output unit and resources consumed, so that they can deliver updates to the productivity index. Of course, an estimate cannot be given until you have an estimate of the size of the task in terms of a relevant unit, eg use cases.

The ten minute tute was delivered by Grahame Grieve, on the subject of herding cats, sorry, make that managing programmers. This was based upon a book "Managing Technical People" by Watts S. Humphrey, the originator of PSP, the Personal Software Process. This book was an eye opener for Grahame, and Grahame's thoughts on the subject were well received.

May: The main presentation was from Glenn Stephens, fresh from presenting at the Autumn Symposium the previous Friday. His subject: "State and its Natural Enemy: HTTP". You ring for a taxi to take you to the airport. You leave it at the airport and hop on your commuter plane. Upon your return, there the taxi is, where you left it. No? This story was actually from Malcolm Groves, but it got a mention in Glenn's presentation. Ten minute tute was replaced by a sort, performed on the assembled company by Peter Hinrichsen, with the aid of a rubber ball.

April: The main item this month was a talk by Darius Zakrzewski entitled "The Pattern Movement: A New Culture". Darius is the founder of the Melbourne
Patterns Group and Conference Chair for the first Australian Patterns conference. He is also the lead of the architectural board responsible for setting and overseeing software directions at Cybergraphic Systems, a Melbourne company with some 140 in-house developers. Darius's talk was something of a commercial for the patterns approach, suggesting that patterns were a way to transform software development such that mature, sophisticated and proven techniques for solving design problems became communicable and learnable, to coin a word. The talk was well received, and subsequent discussion revealed that it was a useful contribution to many. At present we do not have a copy of Darius's paper, but we will post it when we do.

Instead of a ten minute tute the main item was preceded by a reading of a dramatization of the Visitor pattern. Follow this link to read the script.

March: The topic this month was Delphi's 'Open Tools API'. Part I was a comprehensive introductory coverage by Paul Spain, which included a refresher on interfaces, a feature of the Open Tools API since D4, and ended with a demonstration 'Hello World' expert. Part II was delivered by Paul Gilbert, and consisted of a demonstration and explanation of two experts. Altogether the two Pauls were effective in giving us access to the insides of the IDE we work in every day. Follow this link for presentation material and this link for the demos.

February: This month we were treated to an excellent "Ten Minute Tute" on "Object tracking" by ADUG member Ian Krigsman, followed by an enthusically received key note presentation by Graham Grieve of Kestral Computing on the subject of Web Development - benefits and pitfalls. Many thanks guys.

January: The theme of our first meeting for the new year was "Version Control". Grahame Grieve from Kestral Computing presented an enlightening talk on version control practices used at Kestral and demonstrated a custom made version control system that they use. Paul Spain then presented a first class demo of the open-source version control system CVS. Follow this link for Paul's presentation.

1999

December: This our last meeting before Y2k began with a first class 10 minute tutorial on UML by ADUG member and La Trobe University associate lecturer Arniban Bhattacharya. Arnie did a great job of introducing a complex topic in a very short time - thanks Arnie. Our keynote presenter was ADUG member Andy Bulka who gave a very well prepared and well received demonstration of the Delphi OO design tool ModelMaker - thanks Andy. At the end of the meeting we held a draw for the door prizes. Winners were: Peter Evans - ModelMaker generously donated by the author; Fred Orford - Simply Objects for Delphi generously donated by Adaptive Arts; Paul Klink - $20 book voucher generously donated by Dymocks Greensborough. After the meeting about 20 people stayed back for a very convivial session of curries and drinks organised by Don Macrae and Peter Hinrichsen, thanks guys.

November: This meeting began with a 10 minute tutorial on "Using IInterface" by Don Macrae. Thanks Don. Our keynote presenter was Tony Alan of Fulcrum Consulting who gave an excellent presentation on XML. His very informative powerpoint slides han be found here. Many thanks Tony. After the meeting some people stayed back to see Glenn's video of this year's Borland Conference that happened the week before.

October: This meeting began with a 10 minute tutorial on Dynamic Arrays by Don Macrae. Thanks Don. Our keynote presenter was ADUG committee member and international author Peter Hinrichsen who gave a well received presentation based on his latest article for the Delphi Magazine. The topic was on "Using the Observer Design Pattern in Delphi" and generated much interest and discussion. Peter has promised to publish his slides here. Watch this space. Many thanks Peter.

September: This meeting began a 10 minute tutorial on Binary Search techniques by Paul Spain. Thanks Paul. Our keynote presenter was ADUG member Graeme Chandler who spoke on the topic of the Win32 API. Thanks Graeme A copy of his presentation can be found at his web site here. The GST was a hot topic in the Q&A session so I have compiled some relevant links here.

August: This meeting incorporated the ADUG AGM official minutes of which will be available from the ADUG Secretary. The following members of the D5 beta test team received a special thank you and were presented with T-shirts: Paul Gilbert, Jason King, Glenn Crouch, Peter Evans, Robert Zolkos, Roger Connell, Laurie Shipp, Henry Yong, Andrea Coffey. Borland generously donated some "door" prizes. Winners were: $2000 training voucher - Tony Rietwyk; D5 Pro - Colin Kemp; Team Source for D5 - Stewart Dobrzynski, BorCon tutorials - Peter Hinrichsen, Paul Klink, Paul Gilbert. After the break we were then treated to a first class presentation entitled "Client Server - Counting the Cost" by ADUG member and Inprise consultant Mark Richards in which Mark treated us to the benefit of his experience in moving from a desktop database environment to full-on client-server.

July: Timed to coincide with the world-wide announcement of Delphi 5 at the Borland Conference in Philadelphia, ADUG member and D5 beta tester Paul Gilbert presented a candid, thorough and very well received demonstration of Delphi 5. We were also treated to a very professional presentation on the Personal Software Process method by ADUG member Nick Argall.

June: Instead of a 10 minute tutorial and a main presentation, ADUG members were treated to two generous presentations by ADUG members Paul Spain and Tony Reitwyk. Paul spoke on the subject of Class References in Delphi, and Tony presented an example of using Class References to implement the Factory Method design pattern.

May: Our first meeting at our new home at the venerable Royal Society's Hall in Melbourne. This month's 10 Minute tutorial was by Ms Cher Page, who spoke on the subject of Exception Handling. The main presentation was by ADUG member Iris Radalescu. Iris presented a well received paper written by Peter Szymiczek and himself in the subject of BDE Networking.

April: This month's main meeting began with a Special General Meeting at which proposals to re form the ADUG as an incorporated body were all unanimously carried. This was followed by announcements and our usual Q&A session. Andrea was unable to give the planned 10 minute tutorial on her bar code component but has promised material to be posted on the web, so watch this space. Steven Healey, member of the UK-BUG, who was currently visiting Melbourne, told us about his very successful Delphi Prefix Registry and his ComDesk product. The main speaker of the evening was ADUG member Andy Bulka who gave a well received presentation on using Delphi's component-based streaming mechanisms, and in particular using the TreeView components as the basis for a hierarchical object persistent storage mechanism. Here are Andy's excellent presentation notes as well as a demo project.

March: "10 Minute Tutorial" this month was by ADUG member Peter McNab of Aviation Data Systems on the topic of "Rebooting NT from within your application". A "10 minute demo" of an RPN calculator application was given by ADUG member Jason King of AdvaTel. The main presentation was then given by ADUG president Glenn Lawrence and covered issues relating to date-time conversion and Y2k compliance. Notes, source code and other material is being prepared. Watch this space, or tune into the mailing list.

February: Back in RMIT (although now on level 17) we were treated to a "10 Minute Tutorial" on writing OLE Automation Clients by ADUG member Brian Watson of Desktop EDA. Follow this link for his powerpoint slides. The main presentation was then given by ADUG member Graham Pitson on the topic of creating your own TDataset derivatives. Follow this link for notes and source code.

January: This month the meeting venue was temporarily moved to salubrious surroundings of the R&D Technology Park at La Trobe University. Following the tradition of past year's it was a relaxed meeting focussing on round-table discussion. There were short presentations by Mark Brooks and Don Macrae, with pizzas and beer afterwards. Mark gave a very informative "10 minute tutorial" on the subject of Object Pascal Variants. Don presented a nifty report writing unit/component that he is working on.

1998

December: ADUG member John McDonald gave a "10 minute tutorial" on "When to create your own components". This was followed with a presentation by Graham Grieve on the topic "Trials and tribulations of C/S development: Server programs in Delphi". For pictures and more information please follow this link.

November: ADUG member Don Macrae gave a "10 minute tutorial" on records and memory allocation. This had the desired effect of sparking an interesting discussion on the "evils" of pointers. This was followed with a presentation by Peter Collas of Collas Consulting on the topic of Form Inheritance. Peter has promised some material for us to post here, but in the meantime you read the informative introduction to his talk.

October: ADUG president Glenn Lawrence and ADUG member Peter Hinrichsen gave a report on the recent ICON '98 Inprise Asia-Pacific conference that they recently attended. This was followed with a presentation by ADUG member Peter Evans of CocolSoft who demonstrated his new Cogencee parsing engine for Delphi.

September: Presentation: Matthew Boyce and Adam Satori of Soft Gen, distributors of Interbase, generously gave their time to demonstrate the latest version of Interbase and a number of third part support products.

August: Presentation: Glenn Stephens of Code Rage came down from Sydney to present DBOvernet, a simple third party Midas replacement for connecting a remote client to a server-based database over the net. Glenn generously presented a copy of DBOvernet which was won by Richard Czerwonka in WA. This month was also the ADUG AGM, minutes of which are available from the secretary. Inprise generously donated some "door" prizes which went to ADUG members as follows: Jason King (Vic) T-shirt, Glenn Crouch (WA) T-Shirt, Wally Ripper (Vic) J-Builder Pro.

July: Presentation: Andrew Rutherford and David Gorton principals of Classworks Australia came down from Newcastle to present a "technical preview" of their DCOM Development Infrastructure and Knowledge Manager products. Once again, two great Aussie products that deserve to succeed. Andrew has kindly placed a copy of their powerpoint slides on their web-site that can be reached through this link and the handout (in RTF format) can be accessed via this link.

June: Presentation: Derek Renouf, lead developer of Adaptive Arts came down from Sydney to present the Australian modelling and design tool Simply Objects. This looks like a great Aussie product for object modelling and reverse engineering. He also gave away a couple of free copies - thanks Derek!

May: Presentation: "Comparison of Intrabuilder and CGI-Expert" by Wally Ripper see Wally's speaker notes.

April: Presentation: "Windows 95 Registry with Delphi" by Mark Brooks of AIMTec download Mark's paper.

March: Presentation: "Controls Demystified" by Glenn Lawrence see Glenn's paper.

February: Presentation: "Writing Server-side Web Applications in Delphi with CGI Expert" by Glenn Lawrence see Glenn's paper.

January: Round table discussion on various subjects raised by the group.

1997

December: Presentation on "Mapping OO models onto Relational Databases" by James Thorpe of CSAA.

November: Discussion forum on software design issues hosted by Don Macrae. See Glenn's notes on this meeting.

October: Presentation "Software Configuration Management" by Steve Forbes. See Steve's handout material and Glenn's notes on this meeting.

September: Special meeting open to the general public at the Hotel Sofitel, featuring Graham Porter and Randall Sell of Borland Australia demonstrating Delphi 3, Intrabuilder and JBuilder. See Don's notes on this meeting. See also Leon's pictures.

August: ADUG AGM and presentation on "Drag and Drop in Delphi" by Paul Spain. See Paul's presentation and Glenn's notes on this meeting.

July: Presentation: "COM in Delphi" by Mark Weston. See Mark's presentation and Glenn's notes on this meeting.

June: "The view from the top" from Ray Bradbery - CEO Borland Australia. See Glenn's notes on this meeting.

May: Presentations on "Team development support tools" by Steve Forbes and "The object browser (and other things)" by Davyd Norris. See Steve's paper and Glenn's notes on this meeting.

April: Demos of Borland C++ Builder and Delphi 3 by Randall Sell of Borland Australia. See Glenn's notes on this meeting.

March: Summary of Microsoft Developers Conference by Peter Szymiczek and a case-study moderated by Don Macrae. See Glenn's notes on this meeting. See also Leon's pictures.

February: Presentation on TeeChart, IncCombo and Apollo by Grant Dunoon. See Glenn's notes on this meeting.

January: Round table discussion. See Glenn's notes on this meeting.

1996

December: Presentation on "A Visual Component Builder" by Steve Moller. See Steve's preview summary and presentation for more information. Glenn Lawrence also presented his new "scaler panel" component and explained how it worked.

November: Demo of IntraBuilder by Randall Sell of Borland Australia. See Glenn's notes on this meeting.

October: Presentation on drawing to the TPrinter canvas by Don Macrae. See Don's paper on this topic. Glenn Lawrence also presented a short demo of Michael Kochiashvili's TRunLabel component.

September: Presentation of Per Larsen's MemMonD and Memory Sleuth by Mark Weston of Real Solutions.

August: Demo by David Szkylnik of Jan Strube's DBScroll component.

July: Presentation on "Using text files with Delphi" by Glenn Lawrence see Glenn's paper on this topic.

Prehistory: ADUG has been meeting regularly since 1994, but notes of early meetings are no longer available.

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Australian Delphi User Group Incorporated - reg A0038181F