Melbourne Meetings

2011

December-

Refactoring - John McDonald

John demonstrated the use of the refactoring support facilities in Delphi, particularly rename and extract method, and compared them with similar support offered by third party tools ModelMaker, Code Explorer and Castalia.

November-

Playtime with Firemonkey - Rober Connell and Richard King

This meeting was billed as an opportunity to "allow anyone who has done anything with Firemonkey to share their experience..".In the event it was a two part presentation by Roger and Richard respectively. Roger focussed on the issue of converting vcl forms to Firemonkey, while Richard gave a fascainating rundown on his exploration of 3D, which culminated in a windfarm with turning blades. You can read more about this in Richard's blog post on the ADUG blog site here.

October-

Coding Challenge

We were inspired by an event organized by the Python User Group called 'Code Wars'. The idea was to have the meeting break up into small teams, in most cases two, each with a lap top, and for all teams to tackle a sequence of basic problems. On majority completion, compare results, discuss, and move on to the next problem. Problems were kindly generated by Glenn Crouch, and presented for the first time at the meeting. Interesting and fun.

September-

AGM

Reports were received, a rule change in recognition of the demise of cheques and the rise of electronic banking was passed, and a new committee was approved (Since the number of nominations for committee and ordinary committee member positions equalled the number of positions, all were 'elected''. For details see the minutes, wherever they might be.

Cycling Metrics Software - Phil Sheppard

In addition to being the MD of Creqtive Analytices Phil is a cycling enthusiast, read amateur racer, and he takes a scientific approach to monitoring and managing his training. This involves a power meter, various sensors and a computer on his bike, and uploading from the bike computer to his desktop for analysis. Phil demonstrated software he's created to help him with the task of recording and assessing progress and performance.

August-

Bulding Design Software- Mike Connell, Pryda

Pryda manufactures timber trusses and the various components thereof.. Mike demonstrated the software they give away to their clients. This was the most impressive software demonstration I've ever seen. It designs the roof and floor trusses for multi floor buildings, showing a complete 3D view and everything down fromthere, including hardware requirements and material cutting requirements. It was fast, elegant, robust and apparently complete. Mike is an engineer who has presided over the evolution of this software over 30 years, starting with some basic calculations. Much of the work is still done by Fortran routines, with current GUI requirements done using Visual Studio. Database is Access, with Firebird due to replace it.

July-

Under the hood, Part 2 - Tony Bryer

Tony adds to his presentation of last January with more detail on his newest application, Eurobeam, discussing some of the third party tools used, eg from TMS, eDoc PDF generation and MadExcept.

Pascal Analyser: Tony demonstrated the use of this tool from Peganza

.

June-

RTTI Past and Present - Lachlan Gemmell

Lachlan gave a clear and methodical presentation of RTTI, comparing the syntactically obtuse older version with the new and improved model introduced with D2010.

May-

Smart Comboboxes etc- Don Macrae, Roger Connell

Don demonstrated and code reviewed a module which took a dataset with names as an argument and used a listbox and an edit on a frame to allow selection by typing (auto completion) or clicking.

Roger's code was more involved but the details escape me. I must talk to him about that. Watch this space!

April-

Reading data from Delphi code using C# - Brian Watson

Brian took us through the process of implementing a Collection in a COM server. This allows us to expose the data contained in something such as an object list to the outside world. He then demonstrated how to access the this data from C#, and touched on the contortions involved in implementing an event in a Delphi COM server

March-

Delphi Demos - JSON Viewer - Peter Postmus

Peter gave us a very clear description of JSON - 'the fat-free alternative to XML', and to the way it is supported in Delphi, since D2010 and XE, and demonstrated the JSON viewer, included in the Codegear demos folder in the DataSnap directory. Peter's presentation may be downloaded

from here.

February-

Delphi Demos: Inter Process Communication - Don Macrae

Don's previous presentation on this topic, in November, reviewed the demo 'IPCDemo', as distributed by Borland. IPCDemo implemented an approach they called 'shared memory', based on Windows File Mapping objects. This time, Don demonstrated how the same demo could be implemented using what he suggests is the more straightforward approach, using Windows Pipes. Demo project page is here.

Using the Google Translate API from Delphi - Richard King

Richard demonstrated the use of this API from Delphi, making JSON requests and processing responses.

January-

Under the Hood- Tony Bryer

Greentram Software, Tony's business, derives its revenue from an application which allows engineers to establish the correct size of steel beam for a span and load. Tony told us the story of this business, from 1979 when, as a London Council building inspector, he took out a loan to buy a Commodore PET, through to today, based in Melbourne, with the program running on Delphi XE and still selling.

2010

December-

Delphi in an Emergency - Gary Ayton

Gary is an emergency medicine doctor at a group of Melbourne hospitals - Sunshine, Footscray and williamstown - and self taught Delphi programmer. He has written, commissioned and supports a full featured patient management system. The system replaces a commercial vendor supplied system, and is preferred by users because it better addresses current needs. Features include RFID logon, LAN paging and patient photographs to avoid misidentification. May be ready for commercialization. Related informatiion is on Gary's blog - which could be inspiring for professional programmers.

Sidenote: Gary has created a knowledge base for doctors..

November-

Windows Cipboard Functions- Brian Watson

Brian took us through how he added clipboard functionality nvolving vector graphics to an application, and walked us through the code in a demonstration project..

Delphi Demos - Don Macrae

In the process of reviewing IPCDemo, a project included with D7 but no (yet) up on SourceForge, Don presented his findings as summarized in a word document, and led a discussion on the format of a review. This project, the word document and the latest on this exercise are here..

October-

Windows Clusters - Grahame Grieve

A Windows cluster is a group of several windows server computers, with one only being active at a time, but being presented to the client network with one virtual identity. The point of it is failover - if the active one fails the cluster facilitiates the transfer of load to another computer in the cluster, iwith clients continuing to see service from the same virtual box. Grahame has implemented this feature using Windows Server 2008. His presentation and sample code are here. Arcane, but right on the money if you are in the market for high availability, especially in an unattended facility.

Delphi Demos - Richard King on behalf of the local committee.

Richard launched our new project. Embarcadero has put all of the Demo projects from all versions of Delphi up on Source Forge. Our project will involve interested members selecting a demo to explore, with a view to learning the topic and optionally improving the code.

September-

The meeting kicked off with the AGM, conducted as usual with dispatch. There being exactly the right number of nomination for both office bearers and ordinary committee members, and all nominations having been received in good time, all nominees were declared elected. Mathias was welcomed as the new president.

The Use of Delphi by a German Bank - Mathias Burbach

Mathias commenced working for this bank as a student, and continued to work full time subsequently. After moving to Australia the Mathias continued to travel to Germany regularly to undertake further work. This bank is a boutique bank servicing high net worth individuals with investment advice and portfolio management. It has been in existence for over 300 years (!). It uses Delphi exclusively to support its customers and its distributed network of staff consultants. A dream client!

August-

VirtualBox and Amazon EC2 - Peter Postmus

Peter has been using Oracle (nee Sun!) VirtualBox at Creative Analytics. He gave us an outline of the product and its features, followed by a demo in which he created a virtual machine. Interesting to note that unlike VMWare the full power of this product is available as a binary at no charge, and a lesser version of the source is in fact open source

In part 2, peter talked us through how a Creative Analytics client issue (involving a date bug with Windows 7) was resolved by the use of cloud computing, in the form of Amazon's EC2. A nice little case study.

Presentation bullets are here.

July-

Apollo 11 - Richard King

Grahame Grieve was unfortunately unable to present on the planned topic this evening, but fortunately for us Richard had a long established interest in the moon landing, including of course in the computer control aspects. But he did have a plastic model of the rocket! It was fascinating to focus on the hardware and software elements, and contemplate the responsibility of programmers developing fixes in very real time for problems being experienced by in-flight astronauts!

June-

Code Healer - Jim Duff

Jim demonstrated this product, which reports on issues with your source code - many of which are actually also reported by the IDE, but nevertheless there were some potentially useful extras.

Subversion Document Management System - Brian Watson

At the request of a client Brian has extended an electronic parts development tracking system to use subversion as repository for successive revisions of all documents and bills of assembly. He uses a module which employs Windows pipes to control the subversion client via its command line.

May-

Real World DUnit Testing - Jarrod Hollingworth, Luke Carter-Key and Paul Spain

A substantial presentation by Jarrod and some of the Nemmco team on the actual and extensive use of DUnit at a significant corporate site. Jarrod introduced DUnit and described its use in some detail. He also addressed the issue of GUI testing with DUnit, introducing his own coming contribution of a recording facility to DUnit 2!

Luke explained how AQTime was used to evaluate test coverage, and Paul presented some interesting history and context

Apr-

GUI Testing Demo - Phil Sheppard and Richard King (Creative Analytics)

Following Richards earlier demonstration of Test Complete, Phil and Richard shared more of the test environment in use at Creative Analytics, which includes not only Test Complete but also a system of their own which predates but is now used in conjunction with Test Complete called Test Assistant. It compared results produced by their main target application with a comprehensive set of test data contained in Excel spreadsheets.

Put Recording in Your Application - John McDonald

John showed us how his real world application implements recording and undo/redo. The aplication is a warehouse floor system which guides the user in filling packs with parts. The architecture involved using the command pattern to implement user requests and the memento pattern to remember them. This facilitates undo/redo, and also allows recording to XML. With recording switched on the xml logs become an accurate source of exactly what the user was doing when the problem event occurred!

John also demonstrated an earlier generation of the same functionality, using a demo system he'd written especially for the presentation. This one used a class behind the gui through which all user requests were funnelled. This class maintains a list of user actions used to support both undo/redo and logging.

March-

How we do GUI Testing at Creative Analytics - Phil Sheppard and Richard King

Test Complete is an automated testing tool from AutomatedQA which allows tests of Windows apps to be created and run. It is being used successfully at Creative Analytics for 'black box' testing. Some notes of the presentation are here.

February-

Developing Applications with the CSI Framework - Misha Charrett

All ADUG members are aware of Misha's framework, so it was good to have Misha make the trip to Melbourne to put us more comprehensively in the picture. Even if the majority of us won't be developing the sort of multi-tiered, multi threaded, distributed apps that the framework supports, Misha has made the code including a wide range of utilities available for plunder. The framework and the associated doco is clearly a major work, and we thank Misha for sharing it.

The framework and its related doco is on the ADUG site from its own page.

January-

ADUG, Web And OO - Roger Connell

Roger's presentation was dual purpose: it shared the work Roger and Andrea have been doing in redeveloping the ADUG systems, and it contributed to our ongoing 'OO v RAD' discussion.

The new system involves a Web interface for members and a client server application for office bearers. The system is working, and in fact prior to the meeting we were asked to use it by registering intention to attend this very meeting. Worked well, though John MacDonald helpfully identified a bug involving two MacDonalds!

Roger also asked for volunteers to assist with ongoing development and support. This request is ongoing also.

There's a reference to the ADUG system on Roger's site, and his power point slides are here.

2009

December-

Basic Database Architecture - Jim Duff

The latest instalment. Following Don Macrae's presentation in October, Jim presented the case for RAD. His presentation is in a chm file which you can download from here.

Rapid AJAX Development - with the Ext JS library - Glenn Lawrence

Ext JS is a Javascript library which simplifies AJAX interaction, provides a powerful abstraction of the DOM, sophisticated layout managers and lots of UI widgets. Glenn demonstrated it's use in the form of a Web front end to the Cumulus asset management system. His very clear explanation is here.

November-

Controlling a Milk Pasteurizer - David Rosenbaum

David's requirement was to control a milk pasteurizer from a pc. This involved controlling some valves and logging and charting system state.The starting point was a project from the magazine Elektor Nov 2007 called USB Data Aquisition Card. The card has 8 digital inputs, 8 digital outputs, 8 analog inputs and 2 analog outputs. It is based on Microchip PIC18F4550 which has been pre programmed to allow commands to read from or write to the chip from a pc via the usb port. Problems with the C++ code that came with the project, including the use of Spanish terminology, motivated David to rewrite it in Delphi.

The presentation included a demonstration, which was particularly appreciated since David was presenting on short notice.

October -

Basic Database Architecture - Don Macrae

Don attempted to categorize the pure OO approach to coding an application in comparison to the Delphi/RAD approach using data aware components. His notes, including a tabular comparison are here. It is hoped that the table will provide a reference for Jim Duff when he does the corresponding analysis for Delphi/RAD.

Audio Handling in Windows - Alex Moss

Based on his experience and additional investigation for this presentation Alex gave a comprehensive overview of handling audio signals using Delphi. Topics covered included the PC sound system, pcm encoding and the Wav file format, VCL and third party audio components, the Delphi Multimedia unit (MMSystem), some audio applications and a demonstration app in Delphi.

Alex's notes and code are in this zip file. Notes are htm pages. Open Title.htm and move forward from there.

September -

AGM

The reports were presented and approved, and the unopposed 'election' was acknowledged. No other business. Roger has uploaded the minutes (amazing!).

Basic Database Architecture - John McDonald

A different slant on our architecture issue. John had developed a demo persistence framework in prism, meaning he was writing in Pascal but on the .Net platform. Of particular note was his use of reflection and attributes. Also made use of object aware controls within Visual Studio. Kudos to John for putting in the effort to develop an opf just for us! Instructive and interesting, and will be the basis of further and ongoing reference as we continue our architectural conversation.

John's code may be downloaded from here. Note that to compile it you'll need prism, but you can look at the code with 'your favourite text editor', as they say.

August -

Basic Database Architecture - Don Macrae

This was the first phase of an exercise to compare various approaches to architecting an application involving pc desktop guis connecting to a relational database. An open invitation was issued to code a sample application according to a chosen architecture. The sample app was a simple 'To do' list. Requirements and an introduction to the exercise are here.

In this meeting two offerings were presented:

• Don Macrae presented a object-oriented, layered architecture - Zipped code is here.
• Jim Duff presented a RAD offering - using data aware controls. His zipped up code is here.

To be continued...

July -

Grep in Delphi -Richard King - Creative Analytics

Richard gave a short tutorial on how to use the "Grep" facility provided with Delphi. Richard has provided his brief notes - http://www.adug.org.au/meetings/melb/GrepNotes.txt

Evolution of an Automated Build System -Brian Watson - Desktop EDA

Desktop EDA develops a number of small CAD "Add-in" applications that interface with multiple versions of multiple CAD products. As a result of making too many errors in creating application builds when making product changes, Desktop EDA decided to automate its product build process. After abandoning a couple of custom developed solutions, Final Builder was implemented.

The presentation took us on Brian's journey through the custom solutions and why they were rejected and showed how Final Builder is being used for EDA applications.

June -

The Latest News from Embarcadero -Malcolm Groves

Malcolm has been involved in Delphi and ADUG forever and he is always prepared to give it to us straight. In his joint marketing and technical roles at Embarcadero he really is a man on the inside. The main message members took from the meeting is that Delphi is a main stream product within Embarcabero and now has access to much more resources than in recent years. The future indeed looks a lot brighter.

Malcolm was able to tell us about the cross-platform abilities of native Delphi features present in the new Beta and demonstrate the "Fish" database with touch/gesturing.

He was also able to give us an insight into the future in broad terms. 64 bit is coming but still a way off and Indy will be considered differently in future releases but it is essentially a third party product and this restricts what can be done.

May-

Micro ISV - From Idea to Commercial Product -Jarrod Hollingworth - Backslash

Have you ever developed a small tool because you couldn't find an existing application that suited your needs? Do you have an idea for an application that you think would be successful? Turning a tool or idea into a commercial product can be rewarding and profitable. You can do it alone, with little cost, if you're prepared to learn a few new skills and master a few new tools.

Jarrod's presentation covered the entire life-cycle of a commercial product from idea to sales and support, using Jarrod's latest product idea, created from scratch, as a case study.

If you are thinking of or in the process of bringing a product to market then here are a few of Jarrod's tips:

1. Have a clear plan. List all of the main tasks that need to be done (use the presentation materials as a guide).
2. Set a realistic deadline. Estimate the time required, factor in the number of hours you have available per week to focus on the product and plan a completion date. Be conservative.
3. Release early. Cut features for version 1 to deliver only those that are core to the product. Then see what interest, feedback and sales you get.
4. Don't expect sales in the short term. It can take 6+ months to start seeing steady sales. Market it without spending too much up front with Google Adwords, BitsDuJour deal of the day site, find some bloggers related to your app and ask if they'd like to post about your product (offering them a free license to try it out fully), and announce in relevant forums (provided such announcements are acceptable).

April

Extreme Succession Planning ­ Teaching Children to Program -Peter Hinrichsen - Techinsite

Peter believes he has the tremendous privilege of being involved in the selection of Computer Science graduates for hire. One of his favorite interview questions is ‘Tell me about something you built when you where a kid that you where especially proud of’. Some candidates look at him as if he is mad. Others lean forward in their chair and start telling him about how they remote-controlled their sisters doll’s house using an old computer from their Dad’s work. These are the people he likes to work with because they have a passion for building and inventing that has its beginning in their childhood.

This recruitment idea has been borrowed from Joel Spolsky’s paper ‘Finding Great Developers’ where he writes:

‘The good news about our field is that the really great programmers often started programming when they were 10 years old. And while everyone else their age was running around playing “soccer” (this is a game that many kids who can’t program computers play that involves kicking a spherical object called a “ball” with their feet (I know, it sounds weird)), they were in their dad’s home office trying to get the Linux kernel to compile.’

With Joel’s idea in the front of his mind (great programmers started programming when they where 10) he approached his children’s primary school with the idea of setting up an afterschool club where tech-savvy children could learn to program computers.

They started with seed funding from the school’s Parents’ association, two Lego robotics kits and four children. Two years later they have 15 children in the program.

Peter shared his experience setting up a robotics club and teaching children to program. He enthusiastically covered three general topics:

1. The benefits of teaching children to program;
2. How to setup an afterschool club for tech savvy children at your school;
3. The Lego Mindstorms NXT hardware and software they are using, as well as other resources.

Peter hopes more Engineers (And ADUG members?) will take up the challenge. More information is available from http://WWW.ClubEngineer.Org

March

Generics in Delphi 2009 -Richard King

Richard has moved to Delphi 2009 and had already given us some significant "Heads Up". In this session he explained how Generics work and the opportunities they provide. Richard's example source is at http://vikingcomputers.com.au/adug/Drawing.zip and http://vikingcomputers.com.au/adug/IniFiles.zip

February

Indy and Unicode: Open source FAIL? - Grahame Grieve, Kestral Computing

The introduction of Unicode into Delphi 2009 was a major challenge for third party developers. Indy is such a product. It is also an Open Source Development yet it is delivered shrink wrapped with Delphi. Grahame was a major contributor to the Soap extensions to Indy and remains connected to (part of) the Indy Pit Crew. Graham gave us an insiders view on the issues presented to Indy by D2009 and how we can best contribute to resolving problems we discover.

Software Rules and Myths - Phil Sheppard

Good coding practice abounds with "rules" but when did these rules originate and on what justification? Do they apply to the modern development environment? In November 2008 and January 2009 we went quickly though many of the "Rules" submitted by various members. In February we finally completed the original list by reviewing Phil Sheppard's contribution.

1. Contain Rather Than Inherit
2. Declare an Item Class and a List Class
3. A Manager Class Contains all Top Level Lists.
4. Separate DB Control from Business Classes

January - .

Software Rules and Myths - The Assembly

A continuation of the November 2008 discussion. A little less combative with contributions from John MacDonald and Alex Moss

2008

December

Embarcadero Technologies - Peter Joint

For many of us Borland has been the name synonymous with Turbo Pascal, Delphi and great programming tools, but the world has changed. While the products and personnel we are used to dealing with are still there in CodeGear the corporate ownership now resides with Embarcadero Technologies.

"First contact" has been made and the Embarcadero guys are friendly, informative, and technical. They gave us some idea of where they started, where they have been and why they see the CodeGear products and Delphi in particular making a contribution to where they hope to go. They did not try to sell us their non CodeGear product range but there was considerable interest from many of our members who clearly understood the potential opportunities in using them

Here are contact details, and we've been assured that feedback is welcome. peter.joint@embarcadero.com

Please make the Embarcadero guys feel welcome in our community.

November

Software Rules an Historic Background - Jim Duff - UCars

Jim put general software rules in an historic context. Jim's ancient but enlightening research can be obtained here. It includes a plethora of references.

Software Rules and Myths - The Assembly

Good coding practice abounds with "rules" - One object per file, Variable naming conventions, Close coupling is universally bad, etc. But when did these rules originate and on what justification, and do they apply to the modern development environment? Members are asked for their contributions. The plan was to have a wide ranging discussion around these facets. Phil, John, Don and Roger put together some points for discussion

1. Each class should be in its own unit.
2. Only the main form should be auto created.
3. The public interface should not contain data members.
4. Avoid the use of initialization and finalization sections.
5. No Globals.
6. Avoid Back Pointers, that is the situation when a class has a reference to its container.
7. If an object needs a resource to function, pass it in on construction.
8. No more than two local (nested) methods in a routine.
9. Close coupling between objects is universally bad.
10. Try to make classes that are black boxes.
11. Use Assertions.
12. Don’t fix problems you don't understand.
13. Contain Rather Than Inherit.
14. Declare an Item Class and a List Class.
15. A Manager Class Contains all Top Level Lists.
16. Separate DB Control from Business Classes.

For more details on these topics Click here. By the close of business we had only considered Don's submission. We plan to revisit the issue early in the New Year.

October-

Making Indexof Faster. - Roger Connell - Innova Solutions

Roger had an application which took 20 or 30 seconds to close in some situations. The cause was a Tlist object that was accessed using IndexOf in the database close process. Roger looked at the Tlist code for the first time. It was a surprisingly simple matter to add a better search/sort implementation to make Tlists perform even better when loaded with a large number of objects.

Click here to get a zip of the presentation and the full demo code

Using Delphi 2009. - Richard King - Creative Analytics

Richard had been upgrading a major project to 2009. He discussed his experiences as an early adapter.

September Annual General Meeting

Application for Modeling Circuit Boards in a 3D CAD Environment - Brian Watson - Desktop EDA

Desktop EDA develops "add-ins" for electronics CAD applications. The presentation described the development of an application that runs inside a circuit board design product called Altium (also developed in Delphi). This "add-in" application launches another CAD application and builds a 3D model of a circuit board opened in Altium. It also has interactive bi-directional functionality.

Also topics such as using Delphi's COM tools and using object lists to keep track of parts and shapes were discussed. Brian sought opinions on his future development directions and how current obstacles might be overcome.

August -

Software Archeology - Malcolm Groves - Code Gear

It was great to catch up with Malcolm again in Melbourne to do his "Software Archeology" presentation deferred from the Symposium. He was also able to give us a preview of Tiburon (Delphi 2009), and more insights about the Embarcadero Technologies acquisition.

In this session Malcolm took us through a slightly different way of using the features already available within Delphi (UML, Metrics, etc.) to "crack" the structure, workings and potential problems within a large code base which needs maintaining and/or extending but which was developed by people who have moved on either physically or mentally.

July -

Do String Grid Components have a Place in a "Good" Application - Open Discussion

We had a spirited discussion of the merits and demerits of the TStringGrid and its many descendants. Brian, Andrea and Graham demonstrated their use of string grids and we looked at a couple of others based on screen shots and developer's explanations.

While I think it is fair to say that the overwhelming majority expressed their view that string grids are a useful way of presenting data, Don was able to make some telling suggestions aimed towards improving some of the applications whose owners were prepared to stand up and be counted. I hope all who attended enjoyed a constructive discussion and a bit of fun while looking at what is being done in this area and debating views on the users perspective. Pity the users were not there to state their case.

Regardless of any string grid views I think all were impressed by aspects of the applications presented.

June -

Dev Express Grids- Phil Shepard

Phil reviewed Dev Express grids from a .Net and Visual Studio perspective demonstrating the capabilies of the component and how he manages the large number of properties it has.

SQL Generation Using Method Chaining- Richard King

Richard demonstrated generating SQL in an application offering many user selectable queries and optional conditions which can be applied to the selected queries. A technique known as "method chaining" was used to write the code which is very readable (even if it is not Queen's English), is easy to write, extend and maintain.

Richards Presenetation:: Notes of the presentation as RTF

May-

A Deployment Case Study- Don Macrae and Richard King

An application with a user base of some thousands, the appearance of different versions, and a requirement for silent compulsory updating. Recently the updating was modified so that the users did not need to be have administrator privileges. The techniques considered were (1) Windows Installer technology, and (2) the use of a previously installed service.

This presentation outlined the investigation and the solution, and also covered other deployment aspects.

Tools used or explored: Installaware, Installshield, WIX, Orca, InnoSetup, FinalBuilder.

April

C# Presentation- John McDonald

John gave an overview of some of the interesting features of C#, and how it compares with Delphi. Points discussed:

• static classes, sets, enums (very briefly)
• generic classes and methods
• enumerators and iterators
• anonymous methods and closures.

Even those who do not plan to write in C# found the presentation interesting because a lot of these features will be introduced to Delphi. John's code samples can be downloaded at AdugCSharpDemo.zip

March

Networking Question and Answer- Roger Connell

A General open forum discussing Network questions

February

Blackfish SQL- Tim Jarvis

Tim has provided a number of ADUG presentations and again offered an interesting technical and insider insight into CodeGear in general and the Blackfish SQL offering in particular. As usual the presentation included worked examples on how to best use Blackfish SQL.

Tim actually left CodeGear early in February to become the Software Architect at Quest Software. This was his last CodeGear interaction with Melbourne ADUG and we wish him luck in his new role. We hope to still hear from Tim because Delphi development has a has significant part at Quest.

January - .

Networking 101 Part Two - Roger Connell - Innova Solutions

The presentation was an attempt to give a very quick overview of the key aspects involved in setting up and managing a small business network using Windows computers. Roger provides PowerPoint notes which hopefully record the key information required. Items discussed are

• TCP/IP
• Private Address Space
• Small Office Network
• TCP/IP Tools
• Symbolic Name Translation
• Windows Resource Sharing
• Router/Firewall Settings
• Network Analysers

Time ran out in December so the second half of the discussion continued in January

Powerpoint Notes:: Notes as Powerpoint Presentation

2007

December

Networking 101 Part One - Roger Connell - Innova Solutions

The presentation was an attempt to give a very quick overview of the key aspects involved in setting up and managing a small business network using Windows computers. Roger provides PowerPoint notes which hopefully record the key information required.

Time ran out in December so the second half of the discussion continued in January

Powerpoint Notes:: Notes as Powerpoint Presentation

November

A TProcessObject Takes OO to a New Level - Bryan Dayton

For some time Bryan has been on a personal crusade to discover how to write pure OO applications - this is complete applications based exclusively on objects (using classes such TCustomer, TProduct, TInvoice, etc).

Persistence framework went a long way towards this goal, but still left gaps.

Bryan proposed using TProcessObject which ensure every aspect of the application program is based on classes with properties and methods. There are no globally visible processes outside the OO hierarchy - in other words no Utils units.

An Introduction to Networking - Roger Connell - Innova Solutions

Roger took a few minutes to try and scope out a proposed discussion on Networking for December when we will be sharing our group knowledge on this very broad but essential topic.

October .

An Insight into Delphi at Code Gear- Nick Hodges - Code Gear

The Code Gear Delphi Product Manager Nick Hodges dropped into our Melbourne meeting. It gave everyone the opportunity to hear all about Code Gear's plans for Delphi and to provide some direct feedback on any concerns or issues.

September Annual General Meeting

Creating a Delphi Plug-in Framework- Tim Jarvis - Code Gear

Tim discussed ways of creating a plug-in framework in Delphi.Win32 and Delphi.NET, highlighting differences and similarities. A common need in modern applications is to be able to add functionality without re-deploying the entire application, in other words plugging in new functionality. Delphi itself allows developers to “plug-in” to the IDE. In this session we explored a commonly used pattern to achieve this aim using Delphi.Win32. We also looked at the slightly different mechanism for doing the same thing in Delphi.NET, the non-deterministic nature of the .Net framework means that we need to use a “pull” mechanism rather than a “push” one. Tim touched on topics such as Factory Patterns, Interfaces, Class Methods, Attributes and Reflection.

August -

The New Firebird Versions - Richard King

Richard had been trialing Firebird 2.0 and 2.1 beta . He told us what was new and what worked.

Data Scrubbing - Roger Connell

Most of the data that needs to be loaded into a new database often already exists but is contained in ad hoc spreadsheets and often in less than ideal formats. Roger demonstrated and explained his current approach to this problem and looked at some of the formats encountered.

July -

PHP and "Delphi for PHP"- Alex Moss

Alex skimed over CodeGear's introduction to "Delphi for PHP" slides from that presentation and then told us what he has discovered about Delphi for PHP behind the scenes. Tim Jarvis from CodeGear also came along and was able to provide some insight into the development of this product.

June -

Code Generation- John McDonald

Why write code if you can get your computer to do it for you?

John gave us a look at a Delphi program that can generate source code for DUnit tests and discussed advantages and disadvantages of this technique. We also looked at a couple of tools that can be used for code generation and discuss other areas where code generation might be useful.

Code Generation won't write all of your programs, but it can help write some bits of repetitive code and it can do it more consistently and reliably than coding by hand.

May-

Here is the Problem. Lets look for a solution- Jim Eadie

Jim had some involvement in an old pardox application developed for Windows 3.1. The time has finally come to look at bringing it up to date. Jim has provided the original specification here. Jim demonstated the application to the meetiing and discussed how it worked. Jim had already come to the conclusion that new database searche functionality made such complex mechanisms redundant and he will use a standard database in the new application. It was still interesting to be reminded of the hoops we used to have to jump though.

April

BDS 2006 Pros and Cons-Richard King, Roger Connell and others

Many of our members have bought BDS 2006 but are still using Delphi 7 for their main line development. There is a definite learning curve to BDS from Delphi 7 and the question is do the benefits justify the pain. Richard and Roger had started to do some level of development in BDS and shared their experience. Following the Delphi 2007 roll out seems to have encouraged interest in the new format and much experience was shared. Every one seemed to have a useful tip. More tips available at http://dn.codegear.com/article/33805

March

A Beginner's Look at VMWare Workstation-Jim Duff

An industry pundit recently declared virtualisation to be the big thing this decade.

Many Delphi developers use VMWare from VMWare Inc for a variety of reasons, and many have heard of it from List Postings or had occasional peeks during previous ADUG meeting presentations.

Jim will gave a demonstration of a Virtual Machine, plus cloning and using multiple Virtual Machines and elicited additional information from the other members in an informal discussion. The formal part of Jim's presentation can be obtained here

Keeping Your Application Current-Don Macrae

Don conducted a "peer review" of the code used to update his application with the latest data and executables from an Internet Webservice. Don explained how his code improved the user experience by doing some download functions while the user is busy with other things.

The Webservice component was generated from the target site's Web Service Definition Language using Delphi's WSDL Import Wizard. If an update of the actual running executable was required, the Webservice would be used to obtain a new install file. The application then launches the install file and closes. The Inno Setup install file does a blind install before re-launching the original application with its new executable.

We're thinking of making the '20 Minute Code Review' a regular or perhaps occasional feature of Melbourne meetings - so bear that in mind.

February

Using C#, ASP.NET 2.0 and MySQL to create a data-driven website-Steve Forbes

ASP.NET 2.0 provides a rich environment for creating web-based applications that Delphi developers will readily relate to. Steve provided a step by step tutorial for creating a simple web-site, including how to use business objects to separate business logic from the presentation layer, and discussed some of the techniques and pitfalls newby ASP.NET developers need to be aware of.

Steve has provided the documentation and tutorial code at http://www.ozmosys.net.au/download/adug/adug_aspdotnet.zip

January

More on PDF -Jim Eadie

Jim started with PDF very early on when tools were limited but he persevered and using WPPDF provided a series of wrappers to achieve his reports. WPPDF comes as a DLL and provides the developer with a TCanvas object which is the PDF page.

AJAX -Alex Moss

We'd all heard of Ajax on the Web but what is it and how does it work? Alex researched it and explained that it is the use of the HTTP Request Object now provided with browsers to enable Java Script code functions to communicate with the server and transfer data. This means that you no longer need to download a whole new page to update your pages with live data.

Click here to get the presentation or get the full demo code here

2006

December

FogBugz -Don Macrae

FogBugz is a bug report management tool from Joel Spolsky. Don has been using it and gave us a rundown on bug reporting, explaining how FogBugz meets his requirements.

Solving a Problem -

The group looked at the predefined problem and those who had attempted the problem explained their approach. The outstanding solution came from John McDonald, our resident mathematician who likes to get his head around these things. The problem and John's approach can be viewed at http://www.adug.org.au/meetings/melb/FixtureProblem.htm

November

Third Party Grid Components - Phil Sheppard, Jim Duff, Jim Eadie, Roger Connell

Four members shared their knowledge on some of the third party grid components available for developers using Delphi. The products reviewed were DevExpress Grid - (http://www.devexpress.com/), SMDBGrid - (http://www.scalabium.com/smdbgrid.htm), Woll2Woll Grid - (http://www.woll2woll.com/) and TMS's Advanced String Grid - (http://www.tmssoftware.com/).

October .

Creating PDFs - Graham Pitson and Richard King

Richard and Graham both output their Delphi reports in PDF. They gave us some hints and told us the relative merits of the tools they use. Graham started on PDFs first using "PDF Tool Kit" from http://www.ActivePDF.com while Richard started later and uses "Quick PDF". Graham was aware of the merits of both products but persisted with the earlier "Active PDF" product as it supports serialization.

With Quick PDF it seems the supplier only collects the money and you need to rely on the very active Fan Club at http://www.QuickPdf.org for support.

The meeting then degenerated in to an interesting discussion on PDF features and Don's FogBugz presentation was deferred to a later date.

September -

Annual General Meeting

The new office bearers are:- President - Glenn Crouch; Vice President - Graham Pitson; Treasurer - Mathias Burbach; Secretary - Andrea Coffey.

Turbo is Back- Glenn Crouch

Turbo Delphi was just released in September but Glenn had had it for a while and gave us some insights into the Turbo Suite.

August -

The New Ribbon Menu- Phil Sheppard, Richard King and Jim Duff

Phil, Richard and Jim have been individually examining the new “Ribbon Menu” which we will be exposed to with the next release of Office. Using the TMS components they have all progressed to the point where they were able to show us their efforts. The consensus seems to be that Ribbon Menus will require much more thought in the planning stage. Richard has provided the sample ribbon application at www.vikingcomputers.com.au/ribbon.htm

Navigating the Harbour- Colin Kemp, Kemputer

Some time ago Colin posted to our list questions about tracking boats traveling around Sydney. The list did not provide the solution but did help in finding it. Colin explained the method he used, discussed some of the issues and showed a demonstration of the solution.

The actual project deals with 209 distinct locations around Sydney Harbour and every location needs a path to every other location (outward and return). The final application can retrieve and draw any path in under one second on a 2GHz PC. For the demonstration we were traveling around the New Hebrides . The zip file containing the slides and Delphi demo code is available at www.adug.org.au/meetings/melb/downloads/BoathPath.zip

July -

Secure Remote Support- Jim Duff and Roger Connell

Have you ever had to travel 30 minutes to find that all you needed to do was change a minor setting. Jim and Roger make use of two “freeware”packages to interact with their Customer's business application over the Internet from a remote location.

Jim discussed his experience in deploying and using the packages and demonstrated the use of the solution. Jim's notes are available at http://www.ucars.com.au/delphi

Roger looked at some of the issues in establishing and securing the communication channel.

Roger's notes are available at http://www.innovasolutions.com.au/delphistuf/ADUGJuly2006.htm

June -

Timers-Alex Moss

A tutorial on the types and use of timers in Delphi. The zip file containing the slides and Delphi demo code is available at www.adug.org.au/meetings/melb/downloads/June2006AlexTimers.zip

Remote Debug-Paul Klink - Paritech

Paul is one of the few who have used the remote debugging functionality available in Delphi. He told us what it is, how to do it and why we might need to do it.

May

Copernic -Paul Spain

A tutorial on Copernic desktop search engine (Grep on steroids).

How to Deal with Date Time - Don Macrae and Richard King

Richard wrote a date entry component and Don improved on it. After Don and Richard explained the aims and issues the group all joined the debate.

March - April

Introduction to open source components for Delphi - Richard King

Richard King continued his discussion on third party components by looking at Instant Objects and introduced our Wiki on Components as suggested at the previous meeting.

Advanced Break Points in the Delphi IDE - Roger Connell

Roger recently discovered advanced break points in the Delphi IDE. Many others seemed to have also missed them so we did a quick overview.

February

Introduction to open source components for Delphi - Richard King

Richard explained that he has been reviewing open source components available for Delphi. He presented some of his findings then discushion centered on how to best harness the collective knowledge of ADUG members. Other sessions will offer you the opportunity to talk about your favorite open source component.

Evolving Delphi Applications - Tony Rietwyk

Years ago Tony wrote a Delphi 2 application which displays Midi music files. To become more familiar in designing with interfaces, Tony:

Tony discussed:

The zip file containing the viewer exe and delphi units is available at "www.adug.org.au/meetings/melb/downloads/Feb20060220.zip'

January

Detecting Memory Leaks via DUnit Extensions - Peter McNab

Peter demonstrated proposed changes to DUnit which automatically and swiftly identifies unit tests which leak memory or fail to call Checkxxx(). In the past leak testing was a very manual process involving running Memproof or Codewatch type tools. Occasional application leak testing may never encounter the conditions which give rise to troublesome leaks in deployed code. Tests that don't call check give a false sense of security, particularly ones where the call(s) to Checkxxx() are controlled by if statements that fail to fire.

The DUnit modification code is available via http://members.optusnet.com.au/mcnabp

Multithreadding Delphi Applications -Roger Connell - INNOVA Solutions

Delphi makes multi threaded applications relatively easy. Roger discussed when you should consider adding multithreading to your application and went through some simple thread models. Powerpionts and code samples are available at http://www.innovasolutions.com.au/delphistuf/ADUGJanuary2006.htm

2005

December What is Useability - Steve Roberts, NAB.

Steve Roberts manages the Usability Lab at the National Australia Bank. He talked about some of the issues he has observed in the 20+ years of studying users and demonstrated the assistive technologies of JAWS and MAGic

November Taming The Beast - Refactoring RAD Code - Paul Spain.

Rapid development is usually at the expense of design, and many RAD projects have difficulty moving to version 2.0 or incorporating new requirements or features - an example of design debt.

October Code Name Dexter - Tim Jarvis.

Delphi 2006, ECO III, Delphi Compact Framework compiler and other cool features...

September Annual General Meeting followed by DUnit on DataModules - Mathias Burbach

We saw how we can separate our business logic from the user interface and how to apply unit testing on the business logic contained in TDataModule.

August Subversion - one of many Version Control System - Peter McNab

Subversion in depth followed by short comparisons of Perforce (Richard King); Team Coherence (Graham Pitson); CVS (Don Macrae) and Star Team (?).

July Working with Excel from Delphi - John McDonald.

John covered the basics of connecting to Excel using the ExcelApplication component, writing data to a spreadsheet, and formatting the spreadsheet. Speeding up the data transfer was then discussed. These techniques can be extrapolated to other interactions with Excel.

June Compiler Writing for Dummies - Darren Snodgrass

This presentation provided an introduction to the steps involved with writing a simple Pascal compiler and interpreter, including language definition, parsing, syntactic analysis, semantic analysis, error recovery, assembly and the operation of a stack based machine.

May A Sample Code Review - Tim Jarvis

Tim walked through a unit of code kindly provided by Don Macrae or was it more the case of Tim kindly walked through a unit of code provided by Don Macrae? Tim's emphasis was on checking conformance to a coding standard.

April

Recursion and Linked Lists - Roger Connell.

Early Pascal texts dealt extensively with managing dynamically allocated data via linked lists and with recursion in procedures. With Delphi the dynamic data tends to be allocated as objects and these objects are typically managed in containers such as TObjectList. In this presentation Roger looked at what can happen if you manage these objects as a linked list and how recursion can really make it rock. Slides and code here

Organizing Program Constant Data - Don Macrae

You can set it in components at design time, which results in a game of hunt the thimble if you need to change it, or you can embed it in your code, with similar effect. Most programs embody constant values, and where it resides makes a difference to maintainability and readability. Record consts are the answer. Don shared several examples, and invited judgements.

Full Text Searching from within your Delphi Application - Graham Pitson

Lots of applications have free text data stored in files or databases. Internet search engines are pretty good at helping us find information on the web. But how can we do that in our own application and what sort of data can we find?

Graham looked at some of the more common options available, how they work and how you might make use of them in your own applications.

March Optimizing your code: Paul Spain. Paul presented an overview of the issues and then went through a thought provoking list of coding tips and techniques to improve efficiency

Windows scaling: Jarrod Hollingworth's tute attacked the issue of controlling how windows presents our forms when the screen resolution is different from the design resolution. Jarrod's presentation is here.

February Graham Grieve: Grahame presented his replacement for the VCL's Printers.pas, with structural improvements and more of the WinAPI features exposed. Grahame's actual production source code and demo project is here.

Phil Sheppard: : Phil recently employed Joel Spolsky's guerilla guide to interviewing in selecting a new employee. .

January Phil Sheppard: Phil. has redeveloped 3 Delphi apps in C#. He presented an overview of his C# app, architecture and code. Slides here.
Class Factories: Don Macrae's tute talked about class references and demonstrated a basic factory. Demo here.

2004

December Technology Considerations for better Web Sites from Glenn Lawerence.

November Something Different. Inspired by Joel's 'Guerilla Guide to Interviewing', the meeting split into groups and attacked some bite sized problems. Problems, pics and solutions here.

OctoberGenerating Objects from Existing Databases - Bryan Dayton

Bryan has approached the persistance layer fron a different angle. His work involves existing databases and the challange was to use OO techniques within this existing data structure.

Use of extensions to Inno Setup - Paul Spain Inno Setup is the installer of choice of many of our members. Paul looked at some of the more complex capabilities of the product and shared his knowledge

SeptemberRoll your own Persistence Layer III - Roger Connell

Delphi as a product provides easy integration with various relational databases for storing your data but there are other alternatives.

In the early years when the now infamous BDE had to be distribute with all such database applications Roger chose not to use a standard database for one application which required a simple installation. Instead the application database was persisted as objects in a single file. This led to development of an "Object" database implementation.

Roger presented a case study of how the availability of such software assisted in the development of another OO project which required persistence. Code and Database DCUs here.

August: Roll your own persistence layer. Don Macrae and Natalie Vincent each reported on their implementations of a persistence layer

July Richard King: Does XML replace CSV?
Geoff Harris: An inside look at the Nexus database (ex FlashFiler)

June Steve Moller: an overview of PasDoc's capabilities and his experience using this on a large project for the CSIRO.
Nadia Natoka: a very entertaining presentation on her experience in providing and improving user help

May Phil Sheppard and others: Another look at GUI design

April Jim Duff: A quick introduction to Rave
Natalie Vincent and Jim Duff: database application architectures

March Melbourne committee: Melbourne GUI fest - 6 short presentations on various aspects of GUI design and implementation

Feb Jim Duff: The VE part of RAVE.  Jim will go into more depth at a future meeting.
Peter Gummer: C#: It looks like Java, but feels like Delphi. Peter's notes are here.

Jan Richard King: A quick look at rich text using TRichView
Natalie Vincent: Environment Changes migrating from Win 98 -> NT/2000 -> XP.

2003

December Graeme Grieve: Porting Indy to .NET.

November Bryan Dayton: Tricks With TEdit
Commitee members: Programming competition results followed by general discussion

The Competition Requirements and Results can be found here Sub String Searching - Competion Rules' And Sub String Searching - Results'

October Don MacRae: A presentation on one way to do Properties dialogs followed by discussion and synthesis of all points of view

September Annual AGM followed by Peter Hinrichsen and Ian Krigsman: TechInsite Object Persistence Framework. Get more information and download the framework from the tiOPF site.

August Paul Spain: Lockbox
Phil Sheppard: TChart

July Don Macrae: One approach to Maintenance Dialogs. Food for thought and a future discussion.
Jarrod Hollingsworth C# Builder. Jarrod did an excellent walk through of the new Borland C# product covering topics from the new IDE (which we expect to see in Delphi 8) to aspects of the language itself. Jarrod explained what parts of the IDE were generic (ie Microsoft's) and what parts were Borland's.

June Roger Connell: Kernel, User and Elapsed times under NT/XP. This is leading to a new ADUG programming competition. Watch this space...
Richard King: Genetic Programming, a generation beyond Genetic Algorithms. This presentation briefly introduced GA and then moved on to Genetic Programming (GP). Richard demoed some home grown Delphi code that uses GP to find mathematical functions given a number of data points.

May Vince Parrett: The Guts on FinalBuilder. Well known guru and Canberra ADUG member Vince Parrett gave an impressive demo of his very capable Final Builder product. 
Paul Spain: An overview of the TurboPower tools. Paul gave a brief run down of the 16 products (one with only 13 components and another with over 120 components, right Don?) that have recently been open sourced on SourceForge.

April Mark Brooks: JavaScript, the Language. Mark described the JavaScript language focussing on how to implement inheritance.
Natalie Vincent: Messaging in Delphi. Natalie gave a talk on the Windows message loop. This was a follow up to an earlier talk on the way Delphi handles windows messages.

March Richard King: Action Manager in Action! Richard gave a talk on the D6/7 Action Manager components, how they extend Action Lists (introduced in D5), and how they can make building menu bars and toolbars easier, if you avoid the buggy bits.
George Tasker: Exceptions in Threads. George described what happens when an exception is raised in a thread. Download George's code.

February: Paul Spain: Transactioned Ini Files. Paul explored a lightweight mechanism for persisting data that supports transactions.
Glenn Lawrence: Back to basics - Components and Controls. Glenn represented his Delphi Magazine article on the basics of components and VCL controls.

January: Andy Bulka: OOP Principles. Andy led a discussion on OO programming principles.
Natalie Vincent: A Message in Bottle? Natalie discussed the basics of windows messages, including how to dispatch a message to a window, message loops and window procedures - and how Delphi hides this complexity from us.

2002

December  Grahame Grieve: Faxing with ASyncPro. Grahame shared the fruits of his labours in getting the fax component of this useful package from TurboPower working.
Paul Spain: A DUnit Expert. Paul presented an OpenTools API plug-in for Delphi 5-7 to assist with DUnit testing.

November Roger Connell: How does IP work with Delphi? Roger explained IP packets and Port 80, and how they interface with Delphi and also described issues with Blocking and Non Blocking Ports.
Mathias Burbach: How does Interbase rate as a SQL Server? Mathias compared the features of Interbase such as views, stored procedures, triggers, security etc, with alternatives such as Oracle.

October Phil Sheppard: Implementing Linear Programming. Phil's tutorial provided an introduction to linear programming, a simple example using a third party API and a demonstration of a recent application.
Steve Hayes: Canoo WebTest. Steve gave a simple demonstration of how to use Canoo to test a web application. Canoo provides an XML-based wrapper for HttpUnit that lets programmers use the power of HttpUnit without requiring Java expertise.

September Annual General Meeting followed by
Paul Spain: Using Delphi IDE Macros. Paul provided a practical introduction to the under-used Delphi IDE keyboard macro facility.
Graham Pitson: The ADUG Events System. Graham described how he successfully implemented the Delphi/Kylix system used with good effect for the Autumn Symposium and the Agile methods workshop.

August Robert Williams: Active Modelling: from Mess to Success. Robert, from Almond Computing in the UK, told us about a simple technique for defining requirements.
Andrea Coffey: A few programming tips and tricks. That says it all.

July Don Macrae: Printing routine documents to the canvas.
Jim Duff: Product of the month: Help & Manual
Natalie Vincent: I The NonModal Modal Dialog!
Natalie Vincent: II File Lock Regions: Overlooked no longer

June Glenn Stephens: Beyond Events: Using The Command Pattern with Delphi. Glenn described how to implement multiple level undo in applications with particular reference to the Command Design Pattern.

May Roger Connell: The Pros and Cons of Object Databases. Roger discussed why he chose not to use a relational database for an application and how this has led to an "Object" database implementation.

April Graeme Chandler: A Backroom View of Ectoset.
Natalie Vincent: A Glimpse of RTTI

March Jim Duff: A User's View of Inno Setup
Natalie Vincent: Named Pipes

February: Ian Krigsman: Coding at the Speed of Thought!
Paul Fraser: Developing Web Apps in Delphi with IntraWeb

January: Paul Spain: Yet another Singleton?
Natalie Vincent: Tray Icons simply
Robbert Weigmink: Intro to UML, Conclusion.

2001

December: Meet Andrew Munro. Andrew (the new head of Borland Australia), gave us an update on Borland Oz.
Automated Unit Testing. Peter Hinrichsen gave  a brief introductory presentation on the value of DUnit. Tim Knipe gave a rundown on his use of DUnit and other tools and techniques to test his Shell Control Pack version 2. DUnit is open source. It is downloadable from SourceForge.net.

November: Steve Hayes: Extreme Programming Explained. Steve described "Extreme Programming", "Programming in Pairs" and explained Kent Beck's book.
Robbert Wiegmink: Encountering UML. Robbert continued his UML series.

October: Peter Hinrichsen: How a Visitor Changed my Life. Peter led us through another GOF pattern. Click here for Peter's doco.
Robbert Wiegmink: Encountering Use Cases. Robbert described another aspect of UML - Use Cases. These are especially useful if you are describing the external/requirements aspects of a system. 

September: The Annual General Meeting was followed by
Paul Klink: Techniques for managing software complexity
Paul described some techniques for managing complexity based on those found in  Engineering Real Time Systems by Rolv Braek and Oystein Haugen.
Robbert Wiegmink: Encountering UML. Robbert continued his UML series.

August: Andy Bulka: Python and Delphi. Continued from last month.
Grahame Grieve: How to get the most out of Exceptions. Continued from last month.
Robbert Wiegmink: The Class Diagram

July: Andy Bulka: Python and Delphi. Andy described the Python language and how it can be embedded in Delphi applications using the Python for Delphi components.
Grahame Grieve and Matt Vincent: How Exceptions Work. Matt described the working of exceptions at a code and CPU level.
Grahame illustrated how to get the most out of them by example.

June: Peter Hinrichsen: How the Adaptor Pattern Changed My Life.
Peter continued where he left off from last month.
Don Macrae: How the Iterator Pattern Changed My Life. And possibly the Template pattern was also discussed.

May: Peter Hinrichsen: How the Adaptor Pattern Changed My Life. Adaptor is a GOF pattern. GOF as in Gang of Four, meaning 'Design Patterns: Elements of ReUsable Object Oriented Software' by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides ( the GOF ). 
Tony Rietwyk: Developing a Programming Style. Tony presented some ideas based on his experience with various languages, including Delphi of course. Issues included module and subroutine size, variable naming and ( gasp ) code layout.

April: This month we were given a thought provoking look at C++ Builder by ADUG member Jarrod Hollingworth - editor of the recent published "C++ Builder 5 Developers Guide". The latter part of the evening was a well thought out expose from Paul Spain of a generic technique to multicast component events, such that several event handlers can be associated with a given event.
- Jarrod's PPT slides and notes are here.
- Paul's PPT slides and source code are here.

March: This month we were treated to a very stimulating expose of TField by Graham Pitson, followed by the dramatic conclusion to Mark Brooks' "Introduction to Threads" presentation.
- Mark's sample source code can be found here.
- Watch this space for further info on Graham's talk.

February: Following the success of last month's "mini symposium" format we applied the same formula again this month with the following first class presentations: 
- "Frames" by Don Macrae
- "DHTML Exposed" by Sarah Maguire
- "Introduction to Threads" by Mark Brooks

January: This meeting was a mini symposium featuring excellent presentations by various ADUG members:
- "Understanding HTTP" by Matthew Vincent
- "PChars and Pascal strings" by Paul Spain
- "Decorator Pattern - how not to use" by Graham Grieve

2000

December: In the 10 minute tute Andy Bulka demonstrated the "Data Diagram View" in the Delphi 5 IDE and suggested alternative uses. The main presentation was by Peter Hinrichsen of Techinsite who gave us the low down on his open source object oriented persistence mechanism. Thanks guys.

November: This meeting started with a sneak preview of new features in Kylix and Delphi 6 by Borland's John Kaster. Well, alright it was a video of John from the recent BorCon Asia Pacific conference.

Following John we had well known and much loved ADUG member Glenn Crouch of ESB Consultancy who gave a very informative and well received presentation entitled "Automating the Installation of Design Time Packages". Glenn has been working on this process to automate the installation of his own ESBPCS component suite. The information was of interest even for those who don't plan to publish their components as the techniques presented could also be used to automate the building of applications.

Glenn's Powerpoint presentation can be downloaded from here, and Glenn has promised to make the relevant sections of source code available here soon. Many thanks Glenn.

Glenn came all the way from Kalgoorlie WA to make this presentation. Well alright, he was on his way back from BorCon anyway.

October: ADUG president Glenn Lawrence gave a test run of his upcoming Borcon 2000 presentation "Dead Easy Web Development with CGI Expert". Glenn is the founder of AIMTec, a local company who among other things offers Delphi-aware Web hosting solutions.

September: Pierre Semaan of PEG Technologies came down from Sydney to give us a valuable sneak preview of his Borcon 2000 presentation on SOAP and XML. Thanks Pierre.

August Com Automation Clients with Delphi 5:
Presentation from Brian Watson of Desktop EDA. The presentation was announced on this site as follows:
Desktop EDA has had a product in the field for a year which was an OLE Client developed using the
OLE Automation tools in Delphi 3. A 2000 version of the server application rendered the Desktop EDA application unreliable due to not well understood demand on resources. Rewriting the application using the Delphi 5 COM features has resulted in a usable product with more features, faster execution and better control.

Brian is an ADUG member, and this was his first use of COM. This means the material will be accessible to any of us who are new or relative beginners with COM. Plus of course experienced COM users should come to contribute to the discussion.

The presentation was followed by a useful discussion on COM issues, from basic to more advanced.

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.