Editorial - May 9 2008

• Updated Training Calendar: the next available dates are:

  Delphi Tutorial	6 to 8 may
  Interbase Client Server	13 to 15 may
  ASP.NET Delphi	20 to 22 may
  ASP.NET 2.0 Delphi	22 to 24 april
  ADO.NET Delphi	16 to 18 april
  Rad Studio Databases	27 to 29 may
  Delphi 2006 .Net	7 to 11 april

  If you have more urgent needs, or wish some custom training or support (in the Pascal / Delphi / Database domain), please contact as at fcolibri@felix-colibri.com 

• Embarcadero ER Studio : a quick tour of ER/Studio, an Entity RelationShip designer from Embarcadero, the company which just purchased Delphi (well, CodeGear). Presents how to create a new model, reverse engineer a database, create sub-models, generate reports

• Custom Delphi Training : custom tailored trainings to master or upgrade towards Client Server, Multi Tier, dbExpress, Ado or IbExpress access components, Delphi object oriented programming, Object Oriented Analysis and Design, Internet development

• Bayesian Spam Filter : presentation and implementation of a spam elimination tool which uses Bayesian Filtering techniques which adapt filtering to your e-mail profiles. A hope in the fight against unsollicited e-mails

• Delphi Generics Tutorial : using Generics (parameterized types) in Delphi : the type parameter and the type argument, application of generics to CLASSes, RECORDs, ARRAYs, procedural types, PROCEDURE OF OBJECT, methods, INTERFACEs. Constraints on INTERFACEs or CONSTRUCTORs. 12 complete examples.

• Rave, .PDF and Intraweb : how to produce PDF reports using Rave, and have an Intraweb site generate and display .PDF pages, with multi-user access

• Rad Studio 2007 Databases Training : Using the new Rad Studio databases: the Dbx4 layer- the BlackFisk Sql engine, the DbExpress access components, Ado.Net Provider components - Asp.Net - Reporting and .XML handling

• Rad Studio Dephi Technical Resources : a list of Rad Studio 2007 programmer's resources - videos, in-depth articles with sources, manuals, demonstration programs, trainings

• Asp.Net 2.0 Security: Users, Roles and Profiles : Asp.Net 2.0 offers a vaslty improved support for handling security: new Login Controls, and services for managing Users, grouping Users in Roles, and storing User preferences in Profiles

• Delphi Asp.Net 2.0 Databases : displaying and writing InterBase and Blackfish Sql data using Dbx4, Ado.Net Db and AdoDbxClient. Handling of ListBox and GridView with DataSource components

• Asp.Net 2.0 Master Pages the new Asp.Net 2.0 allows us to define the page structure in a hierarchical way, with Master Pages and Content Pages, which use page inheritance, very similar to Form inheritance

• Intraweb linked our Architecture article in their Intraweb English Article List

• Shockwave Flash Player : build your own ShockWave Flash movie Player, with pause, custom back and forward steps, snapshots, resizing. Designed for analyzing .SWF demos.

• AJAX Tutorial : writing an AJAX web application. How AJAX works, using a JavaScript DOM parser, the Indy Web Server, requesting .XML data packets - Writing an integrated development project

• BlackfishSql : using the new BlackfishSql standalone database engine of RAD Studio 2007 (Win32 and .Net) : create the database, create / fill / read Tables, use Pascal User Defined Functions and Stored Procedures

• Delphi DbExpress 4 programming : the new dbExpress 4 framework for RAD Studio 2007 : the configuration files, how to connect, read and write data, using tracing and pooling delegates and metadata handling

• CapableObjects: lightning fast reaction after uploading our ECO III Tutorial, we contacted Jesper HOGSTROM to tell him about it. Well, it took them less than 2 days to get it referenced in their ECO Tutorials page.

• the Intraweb Architecture : the architecture of the Intraweb web site building tool. Explains how Delphi "rad html generator" work, and presents the CLASS organization (UML Class diagrams)

• the Alsacian Notation : using identifier prefixes like k_constant, t_type, g_global, l_local, p_parameter. Presentation, rationale and benefits.

• ECO Tutorial : Writing a simple ECO application: the UML model, the in memory objects and the GUI presentation. We also will show how to evaluate OCL expressions using the EcoHandles, and persist the data on disc

• Delphi Web Designer : a tiny Delphi "RAD Web Designer", which explains how the Delphi IDE can be used to generate .HTML pages using the Palette / Object Inspector / Form metaphor to layout the page content

• DLL and Process Viewer : analyze and display the list of running processes, with their associated DLLs and Memory mapped files (a so called "Process Walker")

• Delphi Virtual Constructor : VIRTUAL CONSTRUCTORS together with CLASS references and dynamic Packages allow the separation between a main project and modules compiled and linked in later. The starting point for Application Frameworks and Plugins

• Using InterBase System Tables : description of the main Tables, with their relationship and presents examples of how to extract information from the schema

• EXE DLL PE Explorer : presents and analyzes the structure and content of .EXE and .DLL files. The starting point for extracting resources, spying .DLL function calls or injecting additional functionalities

• Interbase Stored Procedure Grammar : The BNF Grammar of the Interbase Stored Procedure. This grammar can be used to build stored procedure utilities, like pretty printers, renaming tools, Sql Engine conversion or ports

• Component to Code : generate the component creation and initialization code by analyzing the .DFM. Handy to run new library demos without installing components on the Palette

• Delphi Asp.Net Portal Programming : presentation, architecture and programming of the Delphi Asp Net Portal. This is a Delphi version of the Microsoft ASP.NET Starter Kit Web Portal showcase. With detailed schemas and step by step presentation, Sql Scripts and binaries of the Database

• reading newsgroup articles:
  
  • Threaded Indy News Reader : a NewsReader which presents the articles sorted by thread and in a logical hierarchical way. This is the basic Indy newsreader demo plus for each thread, a tree organization of messages
    
  • News Message Tree : how to build a tree of the NNTP News Messages. The downloaded newsgroup messages are displayed in tListBox by message thread (topic), and for each thread the messages are presented in a tTreeView. This UNIT is used in the threaded newsreader
    
    
• Craig STUNTZ, one of the Delphi / Interbase Heavyweights (teamb), references our Turbo Delphi Interbase tutorial in his blog dated Dec 11. Many thanks !

• RSS Reader : this projects lets you download and view the content of an .RSS feed (the entry point into somebody's blog) in a tMemo or a tTreeView. Comes complete with an .HTML downloader and an .XML parser. And, as ususal, the references and links to other Delphi tools and papers

• We have a Blog ! : still somewhat thin, this blog allows to find papers by date or category. We are also proud to have been included in the 50 blogs monitored by DelphiFeeds.

• Turbo Delphi Interbase tutorial: develop database applications with Turbo Delphi and Interbase. Complete ADO Net architecture, and full projects to create the database, the Tables, fill the rows, display and update the values with DataGrids. Uses the BDP

• ADO .Net Tutorial a complete Ado Net architectural presentation, and projects for creating the Database, creating Tables, adding, deleting and updating rows, displaying the data in controls and DataGrids, using in memory DataSets, handling Views, updating the Tables with a DataGrid

• BDP Ado.Net Blobs with Turbo Delphi : reading and writing Blob fields with the BDP. Display in a TextBox and synchronising with a DataGrid

• ASP.NET development:
  
  • Asp.Net Viewstate Viewer: an ASP.NET utility displaying the content of the viewtate field which carries the request state between Internet Explorer and the IIS / CASSINI Servers
    
  • Asp.Net Log File : a logging CLASS allowing to monitor the Asp.Net events, mainly used for undesrtanding, debugging and journaling Asp.Net Web applications
    
  • CASSINI SPY : an ASP.NET utility displaying the content of the packets flowing between Internet Explorer and CASSINI
    
    
• here are a couple of Pascal / Delphi grammars in IEBNF format:
  
  • the pl0 grammar : a tiny pascal-like language
    
  • the pascal S grammar : Pascal without the pointers, the files, the sets
    
  • the Pascal grammar : the standard Pascal grammar
    
  • the Delphi 5 Grammar : the grammar used for parsing the Delphi 5 VCL
    
    
• Oracle Links : a collection of Oracle Links, including pages with papers, presentations, code, scripts, tools, about programing techniques (transactions, sequence, monitoring etc).
  
• Interbase Links : a collection of Interbase / Firebird pages with papers, presentations, code, scripts, tools, about programming techniques (transactions, generators etc)

• Delphi Web Spider : a Web Spider allowing to download all pages from a site, with custom or GUI filtering and selection.
  
• Web Downloader : an HTTP tool enabling to save on a local folder an HTML page with its associated images (.GIF, .JPEG, .PNG or other) for archieving or later off-line reading

• Find Memo : a tMemo with "find first", "find next", "sort", "save" capabilities

• Delphi 3D Designer : build a 3d volume list, display it in perspective and move the camera, the screen or the volumes with the mouse.

• Whois : a Whois Client who requests information about owners of IP adresses. Works in batch mode.
  
• CGI Database Browser : CGI extension which allow display and modification a of a Table using a Web Browser in a grid like fashion
  
• Simple CGI Web Server : a simple CGI Web Server which handles HTML <FORM> requests, for debugging CGI Web Server extensions
  
• Simple Web Server : a simple HTTP web Server and the corresponding HTTP web Browser, using our Client Server Socket library
  
• The Delphi Socket architecture : the organization of the ScktComp CLASSes, with UML diagrams, and a simple Client Server file transfer example using tClientSocket and tServerSocket
  
• Socket Programming : the simplest Client Server example of TCP / IP communication using Windows Sockets with Delphi

• Stdin_StdOut : send and receive strings from a GUI application to a CONSOLE application calling Readln and Writeln. Necessary for building CGI web servers.
  
• windows_environment : read and write Windows Environment strings. Used in CGI script programs

• 1.360 Favicons / 27 Google links: since the start of the site in November 2004, over 1.000 visitors chose to add our site to their IE Browser's favorite links (as computed from the favicon.ico count in our IIServer logs). Would be nice if some of the 1.360 lurkers also added our URL to their "Delphi Links" page, to increase the dismaying 27 Google links ...

• 1001 Delphi Links our list of Delphi links, sorted by category (database, XML, TCP/IP, scientific, multi-media, socket, reporting, accounting, jobs etc.), manually checked and mainly focusing on Delphi source code. The list is downloadable, with all the URLs
  
  
• Database Reverse Engineering extracts the Database schema from an application's .DFMs
  
• SQL Parser : a simple Parser for a subset of Interbase SQL instructions (SELECT, INSERT and UPDATE)
  
• SQL to HTML : conversion of an ASCII SQL request in HTML format

• .Dfm binary to Txt converter : convert all the .DFM in binary format to their ASCII format
  
• A .DFM Parser : this utility parses the Delphi .DFM file, building a tree representation, which is the first step for transforming the content of a tForm

• Friendly Links : we added a page of Delphi links

• The ColiGet Full Text Searcher : a nice utility allowing to find all the files in a directory satisfyig a request like:
      ( uml OR "design pattern" ) AND course
  The same thing as GoogleSearch with "+" and "-", but with a Pascal syntax

• Abstract Factory and Bridge Design Patterns : Delphi version of the Abstract Factory and Bridge patterns, as used in our Lexi Document Editor. Presentation of the patterns, with UML diagrams and full downloadable source code.

• The DCCIL .BAT Generator : this tool generates a .BAT which can be used to compile your project with the DCCIL command line compiler. All relevant parameters are extracted from the .BDSOPT configuration file

• The Delphi for .Net .BDSPROJ file : in this first part, we present the content of the .BDSPROJ configuration file for Delphi 7, Delphi 8 and Delphi 2005. The file is analyzed with a small Delphi .XML parser

• The 23 Gof design patterns : the delphi code of the 23 samples from the book "Design Patterns" by Erich GAMMA, Richard HELM, Ralph JOHNSON et John VLISSIDES. Each pattern is in a separate .ZIP with complete source code.

• The Lexi Editor : Delphi version of the Lexi Document Editor. A complete implementation of the mythical Design Pattern case study, with presentation, diagrams and source of Composite, Decorator, Iterator, Strategy, Visitor and Command, with full source code.

• Here are the first papers for a start:
  
  • TCP IP Sniffer: a Delphi tool allowing you to analyze the content of all packets travelling on your network
    
  • Sniffing Interbase Traffic: using the previous tool, we compare the BDE and IbExpress traffic. The project builds the base and the test table, then the project simply uses the sniffing views to get both statistics and detailed packet content. To our surprise, the BDE wins heads down, because of a 30K overhead imported by Interbase Express.
    
    
• At Long Last ! I have my own site !. The project was in the works since three years now, but I was always too busy with some customer projects or training sessions to sit down and build the pages. Your feed back is eagerly awaited, so feel free to send an e-mail at fcolibri@felix-colibri.com with any comment, criticism or suggestion.