Adelaide Meetings
September
Thursday,
15th September 2007, 7:00 pm
RAD Studio XE2 World Tour
Damien Bootsma from Embarcadero presented the RAD Studio XE2 World Tour.
Door prize winner
Neville Cook won the door prize of a LaCie Minimus 1Tb Desktop Drive. We thank Arena Business Techology for this kind donation valued at $119.00 RRP, and their continued support and sponsorship of ADUG.
Damien Bootsma from Embarcadero (left) and Neville Cook (right).
February
Wednesday,
20th February 2008, 7:30 pm
ASP .Net introduction.
We discussed general matters relating to developing Delphi ASP .Net applications.
January
Wednesday,
16th January 2008, 7:30 pm
Future topics.
We held a general group discussion on various matters, and discussed possible future topics.
November
Wednesday,
21st November 2007, 7:15 pm
Useful Delphi components.
We discussed various third party Delphi components.
November door prize winner
Peter Hancock won the November door prize of the Microsoft LifeCam VX-1000. We thank Arena Business Techology for this kind donation valued at $59.95, and their continued support and sponsorship of ADUG.
Peter Hancock (on the right) being presented with the LifeCam door prize by Committee member Adam Webb (on the left).
October
Wednesday,
17th October 2007, 7:15 pm
Its Delphi, Jim, but not as we know it.
Brief intoductions to Delphi for .Net, Delph for PHP were provided. We also discussed hosting web apps on Apache Web Server.
September
Wednesday,
19th September 2007, 7:15 pm
Its Delphi, Jim, but not as we know it.
Unfortunately, the proposed presentation on Delphi for .Net/ Delphi for PHP didn't occur due to work pressures. Instead there was a general group discussion.
August
Wednesday,
15th August 2007, 7:15 pm
Virtualisation using Virtual PC
Virtual PC is a free product from Microsoft that lets you create separate virtual machines on your Windows desktop, each of which virtualizes the hardware of a complete physical computer. Virtual machines are very useful for developers as they can provide: eg, - multiple environments for testing; - a standard development environment; - a simple demo deployment.
At the meeting we explored the installation and use of Virtual PC, and discussed its many uses.
July
Wednesday,
18th July 2007, 7:15 pm
Exploring Delphi 2006
We explored some of the new(ish) features available in Delphi 2006, including templates, sync-edit, code-completion and code insight.
The door prizes, courtesy of Arena Business Technology, were drawn. Peter Herriman won the Pretec 512Mb 'I-Disk Tiny' USB drive, and James Afford the Belkin 'USB 4-Port Micro Hub' USB hub.
"Think Codegear - Think Arena Business Technology"
June
Wednesday,
20th June 2007, 7:15 pm
'Personal Delphi Background'
Due to the strength of the group discussion, we only managed two more 'episodes' of 'personal Delphi background' stories.
May
Wednesday,
23rd May 2007, 7:15 pm
Inaugural 'new' Adelaide meeting
A group discussion on Delphi was held, and we commenced 'personal Delphi background' stories.
October
Monday,
24th October 2005, 5:30 pm
Presentation 1: ECO
III and Compact Framework by Tim Jarvis
Tim Jarvis from
Borland Australia will give a practical demonstration on using
Enterprise Core Objects (ECO) III and .Net Compact Framework support in
Delphi 2006. Tim may also have the time to show the new C++ features
that will be part of Delphi 2006. All these topics should be a huge
interest to Delphi users looking to upgrade, especially since ECO will
now be available in Professional Editions of Delphi 2006.
August
Monday,
29th August 2005, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Darren's box'o'bits by Darren Snodgrass
Darren will open
his box of bits to demonstrate and
discuss the following 3rd party components and tools he uses regularly.
- KWizard
- Toolbar 2000
- Dream Memo
- XDOM (XML)
- CPort (serial port)
- Castalia
Presentation 2:
Using Developer
Expresses Flowchart Component by George Kozaderov
George will
demonstrate using the Developer Express
Flowchart components. More than just flowcharting these flexible and
extensible components can be used for all manner of diagramming
applications.
July
Tuesday,
26th July 2005, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Adelaide Chapter - Review Time
The ADUG Adelaide
chapter has been going now for nearly 2 years with
steady attendance at all our meetings and functions. Recently meetings
have been a bit sporadic due to commitments of the local chapter
organisers. To that end we have asked a few more people to join the
sub-committee to help us keep things going. So now that has happened we
think it would be a good time to have a round table forum to introduce
the new committee members, discuss ideas and suggestions for
presentation topics, possible events and meeting formats. So come along
and contribute so we can make the Adelaide ADUG even better.
Presentation 2:
.Net Compact Framework by Jon Roder
Jon Roder will be
relating his early experience with .Net compact
framework and the new Delphi preview compiler, and anyone else who
would
like to contribute a quick 10 minute presentoid or technical
question/example would be welcome to break up the discussion time.
June
Monday,
27th June 2005, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Inside the C-Bus Toolkit by Duncan Margetts
Duncan Margetts
will demonstrate and discuss the software product 'C-Bus Toolkit'
created by Clipsal Integrated Systems.
Toolkit was written
using Delphi. The application is used to configure the C-Bus
intelligent home and building range of automation products such as
Dimmers, Relays, Light Level Sensors, Key Input Units, Temperature
Sensors, Movement Sensors, Bus Couplers, and many other C-Bus Units
(totalling 220 different products).
Duncan will
demonstrate the operation of C-Bus Toolkit on a real C-Bus Network and
discuss the design and architectural challenges that confronted the
team and the software.
February
Monday,
28th February 2005, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Constructing win32 Service applications by Jon Roder
Services are an
excellent solution for 24x7 applications, or systems
that must run unattended. By using them we can take advantage of a host
of windows features for automatic startup, order of startup control,
error handling and logging to name a few. This month we will take a
look at the win32 implementation of service application, and the
framework that delphi provides to help us create such application
easily. We will cover some tips and traps that are good to know, and
(time permitting) try out a simple real world example.
November
Monday,
29th November 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Compiler Writing for Dummies by Darren Snodgrass
An introduction to
the concepts involved in writing a compiler. The presentation will
demonstrate how to write a Pascal compiler in Pascal (no, it isn't as
stupid as it sounds). The presenter has had a vast amount of experience
in compiler writing. Well, actually, he has just done one. And most of
that
was plagiarised. And he can't remember most of what he did anyway. But
apart from that, it will be an
interesting, if not somewhat superficial, presentation.
October
Tuesday,
26th October 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Introducing Borland ECO II (in Delphi 2005) by Anthony Richardson
This presentation
will be a first look at the updated Enterprise Core Objects (ECO)
framework first introduced in
Borland C#Builder 1. ECO has undergone extensive changes for Delphi
2005 and now provides a robust, scaleable rapid model driven
development tool. Learn what ECO is and how it may be just what you
need for building scalable
and maintainable applications fast.
August
Tuesday,
17th August 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Presentation: Untangling Threads by Jon Roder
Working with
multi-threaded applications can be difficult even for a
seasoned campaigner. This month we will look at using threads in
delphi, from abstract concepts of threads and processes, to the Delphi
TThread class and the underlying win32 implementation it is built on.
In addition, we will look at thread management, deadlocking, and
inter-thread communication / synchronization mechanisms, including
win32
message handling. Finally we will be covering some tips and tricks with
thread use, and what you can and can't do with the VCL classes and
threads.
July
Monday,
12th July 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Emlyn on Relational Databases by Emlyn O'regan
In the IT world of
the year 2004, relational databases are a fairly
uncontroversial technology. Yet using these databases is still seen by
many, especially small systems developers, to be overkill, wasteful of
resources, or just plain inefficient in terms of performance.
In this presentation Emlyn will talk about relational databases and how
they can work in the world of small systems (and Delphi!).
Part 1:
In the first part of the presentation, Emlyn will talk about the theory
of
relational databases, and about SQL in particular. SQL is often
misunderstood by software developers, resulting in an impression of
relational databases as slow and unwieldy. By covering a little
relational theory, and going into some depth on the basics of SQL
(select, insert, update and delete statements), I'll show how these
databases can be used effectively, minimizing coding time and defects,
and delivering excellent performance
Part 2:
In the second part of the presentation, I'll talk about database
specifics for various applications and architectures. The big end of
town is well served by relational databases, but less well known is
the wide availability of db solutions for small development. One
interesting example will be SQL Server's MSDE, the free desktop
edition of SQL Server.
June
Tuesday,
8th June 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Understanding OO Development by Anthony Richardson
One of the common
problems with getting started using Object Orientated development is
that few books truly teach you how to develop OO applications. Although
many books teach you the semantics of OO languages (inheritance,
polymorphism, etc..) they fail to teach you how to use the OO language
effectively as part of the complete development process.
Anthony will introduce
OO in a way the foster an understanding of OO at a core level and teach
techniques to using OO so that your next OO project will be a success.
The presentation will begin by examining the case of OO and what are
the core factors that drove the development of the OO languages. A
comparison will then be made to the development processes generally
employed by traditional development and contrast that to the methods
employed build OO architectures.
This presentation is the
first of several that will cover using OO in a holistic approach to the
development of business applications with Delphi.
May
Monday,
3rd May 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
.Net Developer Conference Review
Jon, Emlyn and George
will recap the events of the 2004 ADUG .Net Developer Workshop. This 2
day event held in Sydney and Melbourne is Australia's only chance to
mix with the cream of the International Delphi presenters this year.
April
Moved
to early May because of .Net Developer Conference
March
Tuesday,
30th March 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation:
Introduction to Delphi 8 by Dave Nottage
Dave Nottage is
Australia's only member of Team B. Team B is managed by Borland and
positions are available by invitation only. Team B memebers provide
support for Borland products on an informal basis in the Borland
NewsGroups. In his role as a team B memeber David has been exposed to
the good and bad of Delphi 8. In this presentation David with take us
though an introduction to using Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .Net
framework.
February
Monday,
23rd February 2004, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Singelton Pattern by Anthony Richardson
Introduction to Design
Patterns, what they are, there purpose and where to use them. Review of
the Singleton pattern and discuss to different implementations of the
Singelton pattern in Delphi.
Presentation
Source: Singleton.zip
(30KB)
Presentation
2: Managing Images and Image Lists by Daniel Carr
Managing the many images
used by an application can be difficult, especially when the same image
is used in many locations. We have all experienced the pain of changing
the order of images in an imagelist and having to reallocate the image
numbers
throughout our menus, toolbars and treeviews.
Daniel will present a
method used at his employers to provide a way fo registering images and
there association to treeview icons. This system ensures both the
imagelist and treeview are completely independant of the image index.
This methods also allows for the images to be dynamically loaded from
disk, without the need to assign an images to the image list during
development.
Presentation
Source: GraphicFactory.zip
(518KB)
December
Monday,
1st December 2003, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Paperclips Everywhere by Darren Ferguson
Mention
the words
MS-Office and paperclip together in the same sentence
and most people will assume the foetal position and gently rock back
and
forward while muttering, "I'm not writing a letter...I'm not writing a
letter".
Underpinning
this
unfortunate implementation of what is essentially a
great idea is a very solid and useful technology called Microsoft
Agent. For
the Delphi programmer Agent can easily be incorporated into their
applications or websites in order to provide a useful user interaction
mechanism.
In
this presentation, Darren will explain what Agent is, show how it can
be
incorporated into a Delphi application, and demonstrate how to use the
various mechanisms it provides in order to control it.
Presentation
2: Integrating Windows Help by Darren Snodgrass
Software
users expect
well written help files, fully integrated with applications. Done
properly, a help file can greatly reduce support calls, and increase
user acceptance. With the correct tools, it is also possible to
generate software manuals as well, with little
extra effort.
This
presentation covers some techniques
involved with generating Windows help files, integrating them with a
Delphi application and presents the "Help and Manual" software for
generating (surprisingly) help files and manuals.
Presentation
Source: IntegratingHelp.zip
(591KB)
November
Moved
to early December due to .Net Workshop
October
Tuesday,
28th October 2003, 6:00 pm
Presentation:
Taming the Treeview - Presentation of a methodology for managing
applications that have an Intensive Treeview focus by Duncan Margetts
Often code that manages
a complex Treeview is badly structured, and unwieldy, its hard to add
new functionality to the Tree and to manage the evolution of existing
functionality. It's even harder to extract parts of the Treeview so
they can be used in different Applications and its often hard for more
than one Developer to maintain the Treeview at once.
This presentation shows
a method that results in small, well structured classes that manage
discrete parts of the overall Treeview functionality. It aids projects
that have multiple Developers and prevents code clashes in the
monolithic Treeview management units that are usually adopted. The
method allows small or large sections of the Treeview to be easily
extracted for reuse in other Applications requiring the functionality.
Presentation
Source: Treeview.zip
(1.8MB)
Presentation Source: Taming.zip
(12KB) (Updated to use VCL only)
September
Monday,
29th September 2003, 6:00 pm
Presentation: DUnit
to the rescue! by Emlyn O'regan.
Many programmers will by
now be familiar with the benefits of
an automated testing framework in the development of new applications,
as championed by the various agile methodologies.
But for those of us who work on large existing applications not
developed via agile methods, automated testing can
be just as useful.
Emlyn spoke about DUnit (the free open
source unit testing framework for Delphi), and on how it can be used to
regain control of large unruly applications.
Presentation
Source: Coming Soon
August
Tuesday,
26 August, 6:00 pm
Presentation 1:
Creating a Pluggable Architecture by Jon Roder.
Jon Roder gave a very
well prepared presentation on Plugin Frameworks. He presented the case
for and against using plugins as well as the pro and cons of various
plugin architectures. Jon then proceeded to build a simple plugin
example from the ground up using Delphi packages. As a side benefit to
the Plugin discussion, Jon also gave a good introduction to the basics
of Delphi packages and the things to watch out for. Thanks to Jon for
his presentation.
Presentation
Source: Plugin_Architectures.zip
(445KB)
Presentation
2: Major Prize Draw
This was the second
meeting and the big door prize of Delphi 7 Enterprise was drawn. The
winner was Lesley Roberts who is returning to the Delphi fold after
several years of using other products. Having a personal copy of Delphi
will be a big boost to Lesley as she reacquaints herself with Delphi ,
she is a worthy winner indeed. Borland kindly donated the copy of
Delphi 7 Enterprise to ADUG to promote the new Adelaide chapter.
Lesley
Roberts accepts the Delphi 7 Enterprise prize from Adelaide
Subcommittee member Anthony Richardson
July
Monday,
28 July, 6:00 pm
Presentation:
Localization by George Kozaderov.
George has several
years experience in this area and has used both commercial and
non-commercial solutions. George provided a good introduction into the
issues involved in both
the code you write and the translation process. George demonstrated
using
the Borland Translation Manager in Enterprise editions of Delphi and a
free
open source solution that can be used with other editions of Delphi. (A
GNU
project).
Presentation
Source: LocalisationPresentationAndExample.zip
(174KB)
Presentation
2: Creating the Local Chapter.
Anthony Richardson
introduced the Australian Delphi User Group and discussed the formation
of the Adelaide Chapter. After this door prizes were drawn (donated by
the repective companies).
- Prize:
1 x ESBPCS for VCL v3 (ESB Consultancy)
http://www.esbconsult.com.au/
Winner: James Afford
- Prize: 1 x
Addict 3 Spell Check & Thesaurus + Plus Pack (Addictive
Software) http://www.addictivesoftware.com/
Winner: Emlyn O'regan
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