Blaise 15UK PDF

BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE
ALL ABOUT DELPHI AND DELPHI PRISM(.Net) , LAZARUS & PASCAL

AND RELATED LANGUAGES
Pascal
15/97
Download edition
STARTER
VERSION
Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed by Howard Page Clark

Delphi XE Starter try: a littel Mailserver by Jim Duff
ClientDataset: what to do if you dont have it?
get kbmMemTable CodeGear Edition its free! by Detlef Overbeek
Introduction to Databases Part 2:
Common Database Objects by Cary Jenssen
Advantage Database Server and Delphi XE Starter Edition by Howard Page Clark
Moving /adding your components into the Delphi Starter Edition by Rick Smit
February 2010
Publisher: Foundation for Supporting the Pascal Programming Language
in collaboration with the Dutch Pascal User Group (Pascal Gebruikers Groep)
Stichting Ondersteuning Programmeertaal Pascal
BLAISE
PASCAL MAGAZINE 15
ALL ABOUT DELPHI AND DELPHI PRISM(.Net) ,LAZARUS & PASCAL AND RELATED LANGUAGES
CONTENTS
Volume 15, ISSN 1876-0589

Editor in chief
Detlef D. Overbeek, Netherlands
Tel.: +31 (0)30 68.76.981 / Mobile: +31 (0)6 21.23.62.68
News and Press Releases
email only to editor@blaisepascal.eu
Articles
Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed
by Howard Page Clark
page 7
Authors
B Peter Bijlsma,
C Marco Cant,
D David Dirkse, Frans Doove, James D. Duff
G Primo Gabrijeli,
H Fikret Hasovic
N Jeremy North,
O Tim Opsteeg,
P Herman Peeren, Howard Page-Clark
R Michael Rozlog,
S Henk Schreij, Rik Smit, Bob Swart,
Delphi XE Starter try: a littel Mailserver

by Jim Duff
page 13

get kbmMemTable CodeGear Edition its free!
by Detlef Overbeek
page 21

Common Database Objects
by Cary Jenssen
page 28
Advantage Database Server and Delphi XE

Starter Edition by Howard Page Clark
page 31
Moving /adding your components into
Delphi Starter Edition
by Rick Smit
Editors
Peter Bijlsma, Rob van den Bogert, W. (Wim) van Ingen Schenau,
Miguel van der Laar, M.J. (Marco) Roessen .
Correctors
Howard Page-Clark, James D. Duff
Translations
M. L. E. J.M. (Miguel) van de Laar,
Kenneth Cox (Official Translator)
page 35
Copyright See the notice at the bottom of this page.

Trademarks All trademarks used are acknowledged as the
property of their respective owners.
Caveat Whilst we endeavour to ensure that what is published
in the magazine is correct, we cannot accept responsibility for
any errors or omissions. If you notice something which may be
incorrect, please contact the Editor and we will publish a correction
where relevant.
Subscriptions
1: Printed version: subscription 60.-(including code, programs and printed magazine, 4 issues
per year including postage).
2: Non printed subscription 35.-(including code, programs and download magazine)
Subscriptions can be taken out online at
www.blaisepascal.eu
or by written order, or by sending an email to
office@blaisepascal.eu
Subscriptions can start at any date. All issues published in the
calendar year of the subscription will be sent as well.
Columns
Foreword page 4
Advertisers
Advantage Database Server
Cary Jensens newest book about
Advantage Database Server
Components for Developers
Database Workbench Pro
by Upscene Productions
DA Soft - AnyDac
TMS Software
page
page 5
page 40
page 6
page 27
page 19 / 20
International Pascal Conference

page 16
18 June May 2011

LAZARUS USB Stick
Combination with the book
page 27
Subscriptions run per calender year.

Subscriptions will not be prolonged without notice. Receipt of
payment will be sent by email. Invoices will be sent with the March
issue. Subscription can be paid by sending the payment to:
ABN AMRO Bank Account no. 44 19 60 863
or by credit card: Paypal or TakeTwo
Foundation for Supporting the Pascal Programming Language
(Stichting Ondersteuning Programeertaal Pascal)
IBAN: NL82 ABNA 0441960863
BIC ABNANL2A VAT no.: 81 42 54 147
(Stichting Programmeertaal Pascal)
Subscription department
Edelstenenbaan 21 3402 XA IJsselstein, The Netherlands
Tel.: + 31 (0) 30 68.76.981 / Mobile: + 31 (0) 6 21.23.62.68
office@blaisepascal.eu
Copyright notice
All material published in Blaise Pascal is copyright SOPP Stichting Ondersteuning Programeertaal Pascal unless otherwise noted and may not be
copied, distributed or republished without written permission. Authors agree that code associated with their articles will be made available to
subscribers after publication by placing it on the website of the PGG for download, and that articles and code will be placed on distributable data
storage media. Use of program listings by subscribers for research and study purposes is allowed, but not for commercial purposes. Commercial use of
program listings and code is prohibited without the written permission of the author.
Page 2
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15
Foreword
A programming beginner?
Who wasn't at one time? We all have our memories about that phase.
Those were the days...
Actually it was rather like an earthquake when I had the first glimpse of Delphi...
It felt like being in love.
The steadily developing tool became better and better, in spite of the problems that each release
threw up. Even today it continues to improve.
And finally here is the first new Starter Edition in years.
Forget all the complaints made towards Embarcadero about their waiting too long and taking too
much time. We now have a beginner's version again.
This is a great tool even for professionals.
You can do almost anything with this Starter version.
Of course it is cut down from the Professional Edition, and you can discuss endlessly what should
or should not have been included in it.
But we all understand that Embarcadero needs to be profitable in order to continue development
of its tools, and actually I think this is a very fair-priced coding tool.
If you really want a Pascal IDE for nothing, you can use Lazarus.
So we can do our task again and try to convince beginners,
teachers and start-ups that Delphi (Pascal) is the best learning,
teaching and development language in programming.
Let's get on with demonstrating that...
Blaise Pascal
Page 4
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 6
Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed

starter
expert
By Howard Page Clark
DELPHI XE and above (Win32)
A new version of Delphi is always an exciting prospect for

Pascal developers, even those who don't customarily work on
the Windows platform, because
Borland/Inprise/CodeGear/Embarcadero have been
leaders in the Pascal compiler and IDE market for so long.
It was a surprise to me to learn that with the latest XE
version of Delphi (and C++ Builder) Embarcadero had
introduced a budget Starter version alongside the
Professional, Enterprise and Architect versions of Delphi
XE, since for the last five years it looked as though they
were completely opposed to producing anything similar to the
Turbo Explorer version which was given away in 2006, but
is no longer available.
Since the withdrawal of the Turbo offerings,
Embarcadero's minimum Delphi product has been the
Professional RAD Studio or Professional Delphi XE.
Priced in the UK at 356 + VAT (upgrade),
the Professional Edition is clearly not aimed at amateurs,
hobbyists or students, nor at beginners (unless these
people are independently wealthy).
From their own promotion, Embarcadero's target market
for the XE Starter edition appears to be commercial
software developers, rather than amateurs. The Delphi
Starter Edition is both designed and priced to allow
individuals and startups to bootstrap their vision until
related revenues reach $1,000 at which point a specially
priced Professional Edition license can be purchased.
So what do you get for your money? An almost complete,

versatile and stable IDE with access both to legacy code
and the latest language enhancements such as generics and
anonymous methods. A slew of components (supplied as
both release and debug .dcus) offering all the basics of the
VCL as well as giving access to Vista dialogs, ribbon
controls, component support for Windows touchscreen
and gesture APIs, and database support largely limited to
the (deprecated) BDE and Interbase. You get a very
responsive IDE, which loads more quickly than any recent
Delphis (on my dual core 4GB RAM system it loads in 15
seconds, compared to RAD Studio 2010's 40 seconds).
You get a world class 32-bit optimising compiler/linker
which is extremely fast.
After installation the IDE is very customisable, with
windows that dock easily, and a choice of desktop layouts
(see Figure 1). Interestingly, an option to restore the classic
Component Palette that graced Delphi's first versions is
available. It shows in the illustration, below the main
menu. This works with or without the Tool Palette
window which can also be seen in the lower-right window
in the illustration.
I find this option to add the 'old' component palette back
to the IDE helpful, perhaps because I'm used to the
Lazarus IDE interface. However, it does seem to have
been added hastily although accessible via a context
menu if you right-click in the main menu area, it hasn't
made it into the Customize dialog's Toolbars page (see
Figure 2). Don't Embarcadero's developers use their own
ActionManager or ActionLists?
So they are pitching this cut-down, introductory Delphi at

'start-up' businesses with low revenues. Once revenue
generated from use of Delphi XE Starter exceeds $1,000,
they require an upgrade to the Professional Edition. Note,
this is 'revenue' not 'profit'.
In other words, any commercial use of Delphi XE Starter
at all is a pathway into purchase of the Professional or
higher package. What software start-up will survive
beyond its first year if it does not have revenues of more
than $1,000?
I don't run a software business, not even one with as low a
turnover as Embarcadero envisages, so this review of XE
Starter is written from the point of view of the hobbyist
programmer, and also someone who does use Delphi
programs in small charities (non-profit corporations in
American parlance) which rely on volunteers for staffing,
and have few financial resources.
That is, UK charities which would not be in a position to
purchase the XE Professional Edition, but who might
consider the 127.20 (inc. VAT) cost of Delphi XE Starter
a good investment. Many students may be in a similar
situation. Prices are 149 + VAT in continental Europe,
$149 in the US for 'upgrading', and apparently you can
'upgrade' after using Notepad as your source code editor!
Figure 2: The Customize dialog which lists 10 toolbars

(but not the Component entry)
The Delphi IDE is delightfully customisable, and a mouse
click or two are all you need to switch to a more
convenient layout, or revert to a former one.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 7
Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed (Continuation 1)
Figure 1: The Delphi XE Starter IDE showing all toolbars - left part
Page 8
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Figure 1: The Delphi XE Starter IDE showing all toolbars - right part
Page 9
Figure 3 shows the full toolbar layout of Figure 1 adjusted

to give more room for working in the code editor by
removing all the toolbars and enlarging the editor window
(and you can of course make the editor full screen if you wish).
The arrangement of editor page tabs at the top, and Code,
Design and History tabs at the bottom of the editor
window (hanging into the status bar) makes for quick and
easy moves between views.
The IDE has not changed greatly from Delphi 2010, but an
enhancement included in the Starter version is the integration
into the IDE of Subversion features (from CollabNet) so you can
use them directly, and have no excuse for neglecting version
control of your projects! Subversion functionality is accessed
from the File menu, which has a new Open From Version
Control option which shows a Checkout dialog where you can
checkout a project, once you have set up a repository
(see Figure 4), and from the Project context menu (see Figure 5).
Figure 3: The IDE configured to give more elbow room for editing code
Out-of-the-box, before adding any third party components XE
Starter includes 22 pages of components. If you discount the
deprecated BDE and Win 3.1 pages, and the 6 pages of open
source Indy 10 components that is still 14 pages of high quality
VCL components, and those pages are identical to those pages
in the more expensive XE Edition palettes, except for the Data
Access page which lacks TClientDataSet and the TXML
components. And, unlike the crippled Turbo Delphi, you can
install further components into Delphi XE Starter (unless they
require external compilation like the DevExpress components).
During installation you have the options to download the

documentation, Interbase and ER/Studio, and an ISO of
Partner product trials. The documentation is essential, of
course, and so is Interbase if you are going to do any
serious database work requiring use of SQL.
Page 10
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Once you have burned the ISO to a DVD you will find it
contains over 40 offerings, including some freeware or
open source Delphi components and wizards, including
CnPack and the JEDI library and components. Installation
of the JEDI components requires use of a binary installer
(not included on the ISO) available from their website. You
can also download an excellent Windows installation
engine, InstallAware Express, CodeGear Edition, which
makes the business of producing Windows .msi files for
distributing your software bearable (see Figure 6). There is
also a trial licence offered for the download of ER/Studio,
a database modelling and design tool.
Figure 4: Checking out a software project using the integrated CollabNet Subversion server
Not part of the installation process, but available free
from the Embarcadero site for registered users is a useful
.pdf download of Bob Swart's new book, Delphi XE
Starter Essentials. In spite of the mention of XE Starter in
the title, however, there is only one chapter devoted to the
Starter Edition. Misleading title apart, it is a good book,
and the relevant chapter covers the Starter IDE in some
detail. The other chapters give an overview of language
features added since Delphi 2009, including Unicode.
Figure 6: The progress as InstallAware installs 246 MB of software

What don't you get with the Starter Edition, compared to
the Professional Edition? Well, quite a bit, actually.
Figure 5: The Subversion menu accessed from the project

context menu, new to XE's IDE
But then, this is a Starter Edition.

I list below the omissions I'm aware of, beginning with the
VCL.
Omissions from the VCL:
No source code for the VCL.
For commercial use, this may be a show-stopper.
For hobbyists, this is annoying, but not unexpected,
since you haven't paid for it.
Internet access limited to use of Indy components.

No Internet page, no InternetExpress, WebSnap,
WebServices, WebBroker, Web Documents or VCL
for the Web.
So no easy interface with SOAP, JSON and so forth.
There are no widgets for REST transactions, and thus
no easy interface to Facebook, Google Maps, Amazon
marketplaces and so on.
No XML components including TXMLDocument.
Database functionality limited to Interbase

(or the BDE). No TClientDataSet, no dBExpress
components, no dbGo (ADO) components,
no database reporting via Rave or other components.
No DataSnap server.
No TeeChart components for graphing data.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 11
Figure 7: Trying to run the Delphi compiler at the command- line is frustrating
IDE shortcomings in the Starter Edition:
Lack of an external compiler. If you try to run Delphi

XE Starter's compiler outside the Delphi IDE, you get
the disappointing message shown in Figure 7.
This means that makefiles and scripted builds are
not going to work in the Starter Edition, and it does
lead to problems for some third party component
development houses who rely on external compilation
for installing their component suites.
However the assembler tasm32.exe has not been
crippled, as far as I can see (though, if you're a Windows
assembly programmer, you're hardly likely to be buying the
Starter Edition of any development suite).
Some IDE code generation functionality has been
removed. If you're accustomed to typing a class
skeleton and then pressing [Ctrl][Shift][C] to get the
implementation code written out for you, the Starter
Edition does not oblige. However, it does have
extensive auto code completion functionality via
tooltips that pop up with suggestions for completing
code as you write it. For instance, typing ch shows a
tooltip offering the type Char, the conversion function
Chr() or the change directory procedure ChDir().
No CodeSite debugging or logging (included with XE
Professional).
No AQTime profiling (included with XE Professional).
The help invoked by pressing [F1] makes no distinction
between XE Starter and other Editions of XE, so it
can suggest options that are not available or
appropriate for the reduced IDE of the Starter.
The code examples installed are identical with those for
the higher versions (they are now in a folder called
Samples rather than Examples. I found them after
quite a search at C:\Users\Public\Documents\RAD
Studio\8.0\Samples). The CPP, DataSnapXE,
DelphiPrism and Modelling subfolders are useless for
Delphi XE Starter, and should not be installed by an
intelligent installer.
Some code examples should have been checked and
weren't. 'If they compile they're OK.' But visual
glitches in the about boxes shown in Figures 8 and 9
would have been so simple to correct.
Conclusion?
So although there are free 'competitors' such as the Visual

Express IDEs and Lazarus/Free Pascal I think the XE
Starter Edition is an excellent addition to the Pascal
marketplace, and it will be interesting for Embarcadero
Page 12
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Figure 8:
The Swat.dproj
About box
Figure 9: The resxplor.droj About box

to see how many of the Starter sales turn into Professional,
or Architect sales in due course. It has cost them little extra
to produce it in terms of programmer time and resources
(sqlmon.exe, for instance, included with the Interbase
download is Borland 2001), and it should generate both
revenue and interest among a broad group of people who
cannot afford the other XE offerings, and yet would like to
use a modern Pascal-based IDE.
Thank goodness Embarcadero has listened to those who
have been urging them to do something of this sort ever
since 2006.
Howard Page-Clark lives near Poole, Dorset in
the UK. He is a hobby programmer who first
made use of Delphi to develop database
programs when working as a book keeper for a
disability charity. After a period as a teacher of
science to teenagers, he now works as a
volunteer with charities and church groups. He
is married to Jodi, and they have four adopted
children, now all grown-up.
Delphi XE Starter tried out with a demo program:

by Jim Duff
a little Mailserver
starter
expert
By the time this article is published, most existing Delphi

users will have caught up with the enhancements provided for
in Delphi XE, and become aware of the announcement, by
Embarcadero, in late January 2011 of the Starter Edition.
The aim of this edition is to get newcomers into using the
highly productive Delphi development toolkit. From a
marketing perspective, this is a huge challenge for
Embarcadero, and most existing users will no doubt welcome
this move to raise the level of Delphi in the development
world.
From the Blaise Pascal Magazine perspective, the Delphi
Starter Edition now provides a good reason for all subscribers
to not only read the articles and discuss them with colleagues,
but to pass them on to friends who may have a need to get into
software development. Such needs could be for personal or
small business record keeping, or as a starting point for larger
business requirements.
There have been some discussions in several Delphi-related
user web sites regarding the lack of third party components
that can be attached to this Starter Edition.
Such components play a large part in the world of Delphi,
especially for people who would rather take advantage of other
people's skills in creating required components, rather than reinventing the wheel themselves. My understanding is that
there are timing issues involved, as Embarcadero needed to get
this edition out to the market place quickly and that, in time,
these components may well become available. As we write
this, third party component suppliers, such as Nexus
Database Systems, are providing Starter Editions of their
products for easy installation into the Delphi Starter Edition
see www.nexusdb.com.
The Starter Edition can be purchased for USD199, and
provides a 365 day licence period. Users can upgrade to
Professional or other versions at any time, and other
conditions apply in regard to the amount of income derived
from Starter Edition developed products see the
Embarcadero website below for further details.
So the simplification of connections to databases, the

effective generation of the related user interfaces, as well
as having the Object Pascal based programming language
under the bonnet, are all wrapped up in a single word
called productivity.
Over the years, ownership of the Delphi product has
changed hands several times, and finally it has become the
complementary product of Embarcadero Technologies,
being a software organization specializing in database
productivity tools for the major database vendors:
Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, SQL Anywhere,
InterBase, Firebird, and more.
It is also interesting to note that Oracle have an XE
version of their product that provides a testing
environment just as Delphi XE Starter Edition does. Their
XE Version stands for Express Edition, whereas my
understanding of Delphi XE is that it stands for version
15 Latin X, plus the fifth letter of the alphabet.
In keeping with the times, Delphi 2010 introduced
features for Windows 7 support, touch and gesture
functionality, plus other tool-based enhancements; the XE
version further extends the ability for building Cloudbased applications.
All of these details and more can be found by starting to
look at the following link:
http://www.embarcadero.com/products/delphi/starter.
Examples
For the purpose of this article, I will introduce two

projects: a simple, but useful, single form project that can
send emails, and a second project that uses a database.
The second project also uses the form from the first
project to show how multiple forms within a project are
associated with one another. What is a Project? It is a set
Background
of one or more units or forms which, when compiled and
As a backdrop to what follows in this article, the name
built, form an executable program with a .exe filename
Delphi, as most current users know, was applied to this
suffix, ready to be deployed for use by yourself or your
product based on the historical Greek saying: "If you want customers.
to talk to [the] Oracle, go to Delphi". This modern day
connection no pun intended was based on one of the Sample Project One
major elements of Delphi, which was providing a simple
Most development products simply do the 'Hello World'
and effective means of talking to databases via the various as their starting example. Delphi demonstrators, however,
database management systems (DBMS), such as Oracle.
usually create a single form and place about five or six
components on it. When it is then compiled and run in
Delphi was released by Borland in 1995, and was based on no time flat, they navigate through a grid of details from a
its earlier product Turbo Pascal which introduced the IDE live database.
(Integrated Development Environment). The beauty of
Delphi was that it retained the speed of compilation and
There are several web sites that can assist Delphi
execution brought forward from its ancestor. It also
developers, whether you are a beginner and want to get
extended the IDE to become a visual based RAD (Rapid some basic programming help, or a more experienced
Application Development) environment.
programmer wanting to know about an area that is new to
you. One such site is delphi.about.com by Zarko Gajic.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 13
Delphi XE Starter tried out with a demo program: a littele Mailserver (continuation 1)
For this exercise, I downloaded a project from

http://delphi.about.com/od/indy/a/emailsend-indy.htm.This project contains a single form
that enables you to send emails, something that is relevant

in today's world.
The project uses the Indy components, which come with
the Starter Edition. You can simply download this project,
then compile and run it as a stand-alone program as
follows:
Start Delphi XE, and on the Welcome Page, click on
'Open Project';
Navigate to the folder where you did the download,
via the Open Project dialog;
Select 'MailSenderProject.dpr'.
After the above two steps, you now have the form,
with its visual components, sitting in the Integrated
Development Environment (IDE), and ready to go.
At the foot of the IDE page there are three tabs that
allow you to shift from the visual Design view shown
here to a Code tab that shows the underlying code
(you can use the F12 key to flip between these two
tabs), plus a third tab that shows the History of your
code changes.
Figure 1: Project One: MailSenderProject

Main Form
In addition to the normal labels and Edit box components
that make up the visual aspects of this form, there are
three components that make life easy for the Delphi
developer: the two Indy components - a TIdMessage
component named MailMessage and a TIdSMTP
component named SMTP - plus the general TOpenDialog
component named AttachmentDialog that is used to fire
up a standard Windows Open dialog for locating an
attachment. These visual component/object types show
up in the Object Inspector when any of them are clicked,
but are not seen when the program is running.
Page 14
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Figure 2: Project One: MailSenderProject

Object Inspector View of TIdSMTP Component
Also notice that the component type names start with the
letter T, being T for Type, the original Turbo Pascal
classification; in this day and age, they are actually
Objects, but the T prefix has persisted. You, as the
programmer, then give each instance of a component a
name that is relevant: eg, you may have several TTable
components on a form, each one named according to the
data held in the database, such as tblCustomers,
tblEmployees etc.
Click on the Project menu item and select Build
MailSenderProject, or simply press the Shift+F9 keys to
build the project, which creates the .exe file ready for
deployment. Then press the F9 key
to run the program. How easy is that?
Figure 3: Delphi XE Menu and Icon Bar (part only)

Some Settings made by Delphi
If you look in the folder that contains this downloaded

project, you will see the project filename had the file suffix
of .dpr (Delphi Project) that had been created in an earlier
version of Delphi an excellent example of backward
compatibility. Now, the newly created project under
Delphi XE has the suffix .dproj, and that is the one that
will be opened in future; this new name/suffix is also now
shown in the list of Recently Opened Projects on the
Delphi Welcome Page.
Creation of this sample project comprised the

You will also note that there is a MailSenderProject.ini file, following steps:
contained in the project folder, that contains details of the
Host (SMTP) Server and the From information, so you
Create the required database and its tables (just one
don't have to enter them each time you run the program.
table in this example);
Have a look at the contents of that file, and then view the
Open a new Project in Delphi;
code inside the program (press F12), to see how they
Create a Data Module unit;
match up: see procedures GetSettings, and SaveSettings,
Create the main working form;
the former one shown as follows, in the very easy to read
Add the above Sample Project One Email form to the
Pascal language:
project and make two very simple changes to make it
procedure TMailerForm.SaveSettings;
work as part of this latter Project Two.
var
Some Settings made by the Program
ini : TIniFile;
begin
Ini := TIniFile.Create(ChangeFileExt
(Application.ExeName,'.ini'));
try
ini.WriteString('SMTP','Host',ledHost.Text);
ini.WriteString('MAIL','From',ledFrom.Text);
ini.WriteString('MAIL','To',ledTo.Text);
ini.WriteString('MAIL','CC',ledCC.Text);
finally
ini.Free;
end;
end; (* SaveSettings *)
Sample Project Two - XEStarter
A major aspect of database development is an

understanding of how databases are designed for
maximum efficiency and productivity. Databases are a set
of related tables, hence the name Relational Database,
built under the design rules outlined by the pioneer of the
relational model for databases, Edgar F Codd. Plus,
DBMSs all provide a 'standard' language for creating and
accessing databases via the tool known as Structured
Query Language (SQL).
As the database has been created along with the

downloaded project, you now only need to connect to the
database, rather than create it. Initally using the tools
provided by Interbase, follow these instructions to
connect to the sample database provided. This will give
you an idea of the properties and functionality provided in
managing a database.
Run the Interbase Console application IBConsole.
Use the following default values: User = 'SYSDBA',
whenever prompted,
until you are ready to set your own values.
Password = 'masterkey'
Once inside IBConsole, click on Database | Add, and

navigate to MYNAMES.IB
This will then provide a connection to this sample's

database. From here, you can view all properties of the
database
and the Mynames table, by a right-mouse click on
As you saw in Project One above, it is convenient to send
the
relevant
icons.
emails from a program that remembers your basic settings.
But what about remembering the email addresses and
other information about all of your customers, friends or Once downloaded and opened in Delphi, you will see that
Project Two contains three units: the main unit of the
relatives? This is where databases come into their own.
We will now look at having a database that will remember program, a Data Module, plus the slightly modified unit
that was part of Project One above.
this information for us, and give us the ability to select
which customers, friends or relatives we wish to email
The difference between the Data Module and the two
today.
other forms is that the former is a non-visual component
that is visible in the IDE, but is not visible when the
The primary requirement for any database project is to
program is executed. Its main purpose is to act as a logical
have the database of your choice installed in this case
unit that contains connections to the database, plus other
Interbase.
database related components such as tables, queries (where
you use the language called SQL) and data sources (used
The Delphi XE Starter Edition provides for the
for connections from elements such as grids to the
installation of Interbase 2009 on the installation setup
screen. Once you click that selection, you are taken to the relevant tables or queries etc.).
Embarcadero web site where you download the 2009
Here are the relevant samples of the forms and code as
version, and are given a registration key. During the
installation, take all the default options except one: on the listed above.
page that shows Select Components, also tick the box
that says Client Only (and leave all others ticked), and
then continue. The next time you start up Delphi XE, you
will see Interbase as an item in the Tool Palette on the
lower right hand side of the IDE.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 15
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL

PASCAL CONFERENCE
18* JUNE 2011 IN HOLLAND
* The date has been prosponed from 14 of May towards 18 of June 2011
INTERNATIONAL
PASCAL
CONFERENCE
IN HOLLAND
20
Page 16
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Firstly, the DataModule unit.

This shows four components which are:
db1 a TDatabase component that identifies the
database and its location;
ibTrans1 a TIBTransaction component, being a
working element for the transaction used by the db1
TDatabase component;
dstblMyNames - a TDataSource component used as a
connector for other components pointing to TTables
or TQueries; in this case it is pointing to the MyNames
table;
tblMyNames a TIBTable component that defines
properties of the table. One such property is an
IndexName which we have specified as indxLastName,
that sorts the data into the required sequence to make
life easier for locating the record(s) you are after.
This form unit comprises three components only:

The large element in the lower part of the form, being a
TDBGrid, that displays the selected data fields in the
database. These are shown in alphabetical order of
LastName, FirstName, as set up by an index in the
database;
A TDBNavigator, a standard component in Delphi that
can access any type of database table or query. This
enables you to navigate through the various records, and
allows you to add, edit, delete records, if applicable to the
application.
Note that both the TDBNavigator and TDBGrid
components have a property called DataSource, both of
which contain the value (point to) dstblMyNames which
in turn points to the MyNames Table.
(For the purposes of this basic demonstration, we have
used a TTable as the source element for the Grid and
Navigator, something that is not usually done in larger
applications where multiple users are accessing the same
database. A grid is usually sourced from a TQuery but
that's another story for when you graduate to client/server
or multi-tier systems).
The third component is a Tbutton, that you activate to call
the Email unit copied over from the first example project
above. There are other button types that enable you to
place icons inside them that's your choice...
Figure 4: Project 2: XEStarter - DataModule Unit

The second form is the main form for this application,
and looks like this:
There are three steps required in order to include the

Email form from the Project One example above into
Project Two. Firstly, by clicking on the '+' button in the
Delphi icon bar (seen in Figure 3 above, just below the
Component menu item) and selecting the Email form, that
unit is then included in the project.
The first of two program modifications to be done is the
inclusion of a 'Uses' clause, activated by clicking on File |
Use Unit..., or by pressing Alt+F11, and selecting the
DataModule unit. This enables the Email Unit, when
called, to access the database table and use the record that
is currently being pointed to in the grid of the main form.
The second change to this program unit is a slightly
modified one-liner within the procedure
TmailerForm.GetSettings as shown above in Project One.
Here is the code change note the initial line of code is
commented out by the two '/' characters:
//ledTo.Text := ini.ReadString('MAIL','To','');
ledTo.Text
:=
dmStarter.tblMyNamesEmail.AsString;
Figure 5: Project 2: XEStarter - StarterUnit (Main Form)
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 17
So, when the program is run, the 'To' edit box is initialised
with the Email field taken from the selected record in the
database table pointed to by the tblMyNames component
within the DataModule unit named dmStarter.
A recent article in eWeek.com mentioned the fact that the

number of transactions processed by COBOL programs
is currently 200 times the number of Google searches
each day. So, how many people think COBOL is dead and
buried?
An example of the end product, when run, is shown as:

When people talk about different programming
languages, I get a feeling of deja vu going back to
the mid sixties, when our 'competitors' said real
programmers don't use COBOL, as they were
using the somewhat lower level and non-business
like Fortran. They were gob-smacked, and rightly
so, when our systems were developed and
successfully deployed much more quickly and
effectively than theirs.
Sometimes I see Delphi as the modern day
COBOL, because its primary objective is business
productivity. Also, both have about the same
number of current developers 1.5 to 2 million
worldwide. Unfortunately, many people think
both are dead how wrong they are.
Figure 6 Project 2: XEStarter - Live Screen
When the Send Email button is clicked, the email address
of Anthony Dell will be placed in the 'To' edit box, while
the remaining settings, such as the 'Host' and 'From'
names will be initialised from the .ini file as before.
Full documentation for all of the steps involved in this
project is beyond the scope of this article, so the project
can be downloaded from
www.jdduff.net/XEStarterProj.zip. Once
downloaded and opened, the various forms, components
and source code can be viewed as described above.
I wish Embarcadero all the best in their marketing efforts

to introduce many new members into the Delphi world.
Whilst the Starter Edition is one method for doing this,
others, such as heavy advertising and introduction into the
business and education arenas also need to be brought to
the fore.
James D (Jim) Duff
Long time Programmer and Developer.
Machine Code, COBOL, Pascal, Delphi...
jim@jdduff.net
Summary
For some years prior to Delphi being owned by

Embarcadero, the level of marketing and support was
viewed as not being up to standard by many users, many
of whom moved on to other products or languages, whilst
outsiders thought that Delphi had died. Embarcadero
have certainly resurrected the product with the three most
recent 2009, 2010 and XE versions, and have raised the
confidence of Delphi developers world-wide.
There are a limited number of web links in this article,
however one can Google any of the keywords used, or any
other aspects of using Delphi depending on what
elements you are after. Speaking of Google, a newly
placed verb in our dictionaries, how many times a day do
you Google for something, and how many times a day do
you do a financial transaction, either online, or walking
down to an ATM (Automatic Teller Machine)?
Page 18
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
About the author:

Jim is a member of ADUG (Australian Delphi User
Group), and lives in Melbourne, Australia. He lives
in a city apartment with his wife, Cathy, and has
three grown children who live nearby. He has
always appreciated the productivity of higher level
languages, having learned to program in machine
language on an Elliott 803, and then moving
straight into COBOL. The logical move to Turbo
Pascal and Delphi later followed. He has worked in
the software development area of Banking, Finance,
Government and IT companies in Australia, New
Zealand and the UK. He currently has a small
business - where he is also training his son Anthony
in Delphi - supplying software to the local motor
trade.
Take off in style with Delphi XE Starte r

Edition and TMS Software components
productivity software building blocks
TMS Component Pack

Single developer license
Site license
195EU
695EU
Create modern-looking & feature-rich Windows

applications faster with over 300 components in one
money and time saving bundle. Includes: powerful
grid, flexible planner, Windows7, Office
2010/2007/2003 ribbon/toolbars, automatic
application update, advanced edits, syntax
highlighting memo, controls with HTML formatted
text support, touch enabled smooth controls and
much much more...
TMS Advanced Charts

Site license
75EU
275EU
Sophisticated DB-aware or non DB-aware multipane or multi-serie vertical & horizontal oriented
charts. Supports Line, Bar, Area, Band, Stacked
Bars, Stacked Area, Pie, Donut, OHLC, Spider,
CandleStick, Histogram, Bubble, Cylinder, Pyramid,
Error, Digital line charts.
TMS Scripter Studio Pro

Site license
175EU
575EU
Add flexibility & configurability to your

applications with native Pascal or Basic scripting
and full IDE with form designing, object inspector,
component palette and more. You can create,
design, run and debug script projects which can
contain multiple scripts and forms just like a Delphi
project.
Visit our website: www.tmssoftware.com | info@tmssoftware.com

Fully functional & free trial downloads for Delphi XE Starter Edition
Take off in style with Delphi XE Starte r

Edition and TMS Software components
productivity software building blocks
TMS Smooth Controls Pack

Site license
95EU
395EU
Set of feature-rich sophisticated looking and smoothly animated

controls including calendar, listbox, imagelist, panel, buttons,
pagecontrol, LEDs, spinner, jogwheel, gauge, tabpager, trackbar,
progressbar, timeline, megamenu, and database aware listbox,
imagelistbox, combobox, datepicker & timeline.
TMS Flexcel Studio

Site license
75EU
225EU
Powerful, extensive & flexible component suite for native

Excel report & file generation. TMS Flexcel allows to
generate database & Excel file template driven reports,
create Excel files on the fly without needing to have Excel
installed.
TMS Advanced Toolbars & Menus

Site license
125EU
395EU
Windows 7 scenic ribbon or Office 2010 & 2007 style ribbon

control + Office 2003 docking toolbars & menus with support for
themes, actionlists, toolbar customization & persistence and much
more
TMS Diagram Studio

Site license
95EU
395EU
Add diagram and flowchart capabilities to your

application. Diagram Studio provides MS Visio-like
interface for building diagrams, flowcharts, UML
graphs, at runtime, including predefined blocks
and open architecture for adding your own blocks.
Visit our website: www.tmssoftware.com | info@tmssoftware.com

Fully functional & free trial downloads for Delphi XE Starter Edition

Get kbmMemTable CodeGear Edition its free!
starter
expert
By your editor
Here is a short account how to install an equivalent to the Client

Dataset - the free kbmMWmemtable items from KBMW.
(The starter edition is not equipped with the well known Client
Dataset. So because it would be nice to have a similar option
I started looking for something similar and quickly found one
solution. The kbmMWmemtable is for free and it seemed to be
installable. I have succesfully installed it and found it all in good
working order. You need of course to download it and register and
all of this stuff, but it is well worth it. So to get it you need to go
to http://www.myc4d.com and start registering.
After that you can make your choices in the left column, and
download it.
Installing for a beginner is a bit awkward: you should

select the kbmMWmemtable only - during the installation
- because then you can get it done. The other options
won't work because the starter version has no ADO
components etc. and then it would need those
components to be installed and therefore its useless to try
them.
Figure1: The various screens for registering
Figure2: Make the right choice...

The installation so far is very simple. It runs and then will give you a message
that its finished. But after that it becomes a little tricky: 2 Files need to be
copied from C:\Program Files\kbmMWCG to the BPL directory,
usually in XE starter at c:\Program Files\Embarcadero\RAD
Studio\8.0\bin\
The files are: kbmMemDesDXECG.bpl and kbmMemRunDXECG.bpl

COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 21
ClientDataset: what to do if you dont have it? (Continuation 1)
Figure 3: The tools and options menu

Go to Delphi options and choose "Delphi Options and " Library
Figure 4: Choose Library
Figure 5: Choose library path...

Page 22
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Add the path the installer used to install kbmMWCG

(default C:\Program Files\kbmMWCG) to both: the Library search path and the Browsing search path.
Figure 6: Add to the brwosing path

After these steps, you are ready to start using kbmMWCG edition.
Then you need to change some settings inside Delphi:
Figure 7: Go to Components and choose Install Packages
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 23
Figure 9: Showing the added component group
Figure 8: Click the add button

Now you will have to add the new
component - and only then will
you find the components on your
palette.
Figure 10: The added components
You need to add some components; add a data source,
a grid and connect them.
I dropped all the components because of testing.
It is all straightforward Delphi programming:
RAD at the best: drag " drop " connect.
As you can see I opened a little window by right
clicking on the kbmMemTable and found a wonderful
set of possibilities.
The original client dataset does not have that many
features!
Figure 11:
Create a new application
Now for testing we do not

require much: create a new
Visual Forms Application
as in Figure 11.
Figure 12: The memtable and other components added to the form
Page 24
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Figure 13: The borrowd stucture

Here is a new type of fish created: I borrowed the structure from the fishfact databse. The Memtable
also can work with DB/BDE and some other files very easily so you don't need ADO.
Figure 14: In design time
Figure 15: The final test: a new sort of fish is introduced...

Conclusion:
What looked like a loss is turned into a gain: the added component group is even more equipped
then we had hoped for. I think it might be worthwhile to do add this kbmMW group to an even
higher version: Professional etc...
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 25
LAZARUS,
including
LAZARUS
USB STICK
the complete guide
Graphical User Interface

programs for
Windows 32 and 64
Windows CE,
Mac OS,
Unix and
Linux
Including
M. van Canneyt,
M. Grtner, S. Heinig,
F. Monteiro de Cavalho,
I. Ouedraogo.
COMPONENTS
LAZARUS: COMPLETE GUIDE
New: Combination (for our readers)

Lazarus USB Stick Portable (Windows)
icluding
Lazarus Complete Guide - as pocket
English
action price : 55,00
(bound - does not break)
plus 13,50 postage costs
Total amount including Postage and USB stick 68 ,50

Common Database Objects
starter
By Cary Jenssen
expert
This is the second article in a series designed to introduce you to

basic database concepts. In the first article in this series (Blaise
Pascal, Magazine 11) I provided an introduction to some basic
database architectures, and briefly discussed the components that
you use in Delphi to work with databases.
In part 2 of this series I will take a closer look at the types of
objects that are usually found in a database, and I will discuss the
role that they play in database development. As in the previous
article, I am going to discuss these topics at a low level, making
few assumptions about what you might already know about
databases.
In this article I am going to focus specifically on relational
databases. Relational databases are structured databases where
data is spread across a number of different, but related, files.
There are other types of databases, such as object oriented
databases. However, the major databases that you are likely to use
with Delphi, such as ORACLE, MS SQL Server, MySQL,
and Sybase ASE, are all relational databases. Even the local file
server database that shipped with the original Delphi, the Borland
Database Engine (BDE) used Paradox and dBase files, which
are also relational in nature.
For example, a customer table might have one column for

the customer's account number, another column for the
customer's name, and yet another column for the
customer's credit limit. While tables with hundreds of
columns are not unheard of, in most good database
designs a table contains anywhere from a handful to a few
dozen columns.
The number of rows contained in a table depends on how
many "things" you need to keep track of. A table might
have just a few rows, but in large databases it is not
uncommon to have millions of rows.
The column names, the column types (character, integer,
decimal, date, and so on), and size (for example, maximum
number of characters in a character field) or precision
(number of decimal places to store for a decimal field),
defines what is called the table's structure.
When the table's structure contains at least one large field,

such as memo fields, image fields, BLOb (Binary Large
Object) fields, this data is often stored in a separate
structure. For example, a Paradox table with at least one
memo field consists of two files, one for the non-memo
data and one for the memo data. If that table also
contains image fields, the image field data is stored in the
same file along with the memo data.
A typical database often consists of many tables. In a
Here is another way to look at it. Delphi's data-related
relational database, these tables are usually designed in
components are designed with relational databases in
order to minimize, or even eliminate altogether, repetition.
mind.
For example, each record in a customer table holds
information specific to one customer. For example, their
Common Objects of a Database
account number. If the database is designed to hold
There are a number of different objects that you find in
most relational databases. In some databases, these objects information about product sales, the database contains a
separate table for individual invoices.
are represented by individual files. For example, in a
Paradox database, a table is stored in one or two separate
files (depending on whether or not there is large binary or One of the pieces of information that most likely will
memo data associated with the table). By comparison, in a appear in an invoice table is the account number of the
MS SQL database, all of the data structures are stored in a customer to whom the sale applies. However, the invoice
table should not hold the customer's name, since that
single file with the MDF extension.
How these structures are physically stored is a detail that is information can be looked up in the customer table using
the customer's account number, which in this case, must
only relevant when it comes to copying a database. As a
be unique for each customer.
result, I am going to specifically focus on the role played
by these objects. In particular, I am going to discuss tables, Using a similar logic, the invoice table will not contain
information about individual items sold under that invoice.
indexes, stored procedures, views, and user defined
Instead, that information will be held in another table,
functions.
possibly called lineitems, where each item appearing in the
lineitems table contains a code for the product sold, the
Tables
Tables hold the data of a database. From a structural
number of that product sold, and the invoice associated
perspective, tables consist of rows and columns, where the with the sale.
table includes one row for each of "thing" and one
column for each piece of information about that "thing." The "relational" part of a relational database is the use of
For example, a table of customers will have one row for
unique identifiers in two or more tables to associate the
each customer, and one column for each piece of
records. For example, the customer's account number
information that you might want to stored about each
associates an invoice with a customer, while the invoice
customer. A given table will have zero or more rows (a
number in the lineitems table associates a particular
table with zero rows is called an empty table), and one or
product being sold with an invoice. There's a bit more to it
more columns, which are also commonly called fields.
than this, but I think you get the idea.
Page 28
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Introduction to Databases Part 2: Common Database Objects (Continuation 1)

Indexes
Views
Indexes are ordered data structures that add a number of

important features to a relational database. To be honest, it
would be possible to create a database without creating
indexes. But in practice, nearly every relational database
has at least one, and in most cases, many indexes for each
table.
In short, an index is a data structure that holds subsets of
the data in your tables, in most cases, about one or more
columns. When a table has more than one index, each
index is based on either a different column or different
collection of your table's columns. The data in each index
is sorted, permitting it to be searched very quickly.
Indexes serve four distinct purposes, and these best
explain why they contains data that also appears in the
tables themselves. First of all, an index can be used to
prevent duplicate data from appearing in a table. This type
of index is referred to as a unique index.
For example, in order to ensure that no two customer's are
assigned the same account number (which would break the
association between a customer and their invoices), the
account number column should have a unique index. If
you ever try to insert a new record that uses an account
number that duplicates one that already exists in the table,
or try to change the account number of an existing record
to one in use by another record, the unique index ensures
that the change will be rejected outright (an exception will
be raised).
A view is a SQL query that is stored in the database, and

which can be treated like a virtual table. Almost all remote
database servers support the creation of views, but only a
few local file servers do. For example, Paradox does not
support views. However, the Advantage Local Server (a
free, local file server version of the Advantage Database
Server) does support views when a data dictionary is
employed.
Views can be as simple as a query that selects only those
employees from a given department. For example, there
may be one view that retrieves current employees who
work for the marketing department, and another view that
retrieves current employees from the accounting
department.
On the other hand, views can be very complicated,
including subqueries and joins between many tables, and
may even include subqueries or joins to other views. In
short, a view can be almost any query (but in most cases
cannot include parameters, which are placeholders for
values defined outside the query, nor can they contain
SQL scripts, SQL statements consisting of two or more
separate queries).
Stored Procedures
Stored procedures, like views, are objects that are stored in

the database, and which can be accessed using SQL.
However, stored procedures can contain loops and/or
conditional statements, providing you with a greater
degree of control. In short, stored procedures are shared
The second purpose of an index is to quickly locate one
or more records based on data in the index. These indexes subroutines that you can call.
may or may not be unique indexes, depending on the fields Depending on the database, stored procedures may make
used to define the index. Since indexes are already sorted, use of SQL scripts or a proprietary language supported by
that database. In nearly every case, however, stored
attempting to located records based on the one or more
procedures can accept one or more parameters.
fields of an index means that the data can be searched
Furthermore, they can optionally return either a single
very quickly in order to locate the associated records.
value (a scalar value) or an entire table of data (or no data
The third purpose of an index is to sort the data from a
at all).
table. Actually, the records of the table are not actually
sorted, but an index can be used to display those records
What your stored procedure returns is driven entirely by
in the sort order defined by the index.
your needs. For example, you could replace the two
employee -related views mentioned in the preceding
section by creating a stored procedure with a name like
The fourth purpose of an index is closely related to the
GetEmployeesByDepartment, to which you pass the
second and third purposes. An index can be used to
identifier (Department number, for example). This stored
quickly join the data from two or more related tables.
Once again, the data from the two or more tables are not procedure could then return a result set that includes the
current employee records for the requested department.
actually combined, but the index makes it very each to
create virtual tables based on the associations between the
fields (and indexes) of those tables. This type of operation Here is what a simple stored procedure definition that
produces this effect might look like. This particular stored
is commonly performed by a SQL query that links data
procedure is written in Advantage SQL.
from multiple tables, such as those that make use of the
JOIN keyword.
PROCEDURE GetEmployeesByDepartment
Indexes are actually more flexible than I've implied. Most CREATE
(DeptNo CHAR ( 4 ))
BEGIN
databases permit you to create indexes based on
DECLARE @DeptNo;
expressions, such as an equation formed by two or more
@DeptNo = (SELECT DeptNo FROM __INPUT);
SELECT * FROM Departments
fields and maybe even a function or two. As a result,
WHERE DepartmentNo = @DeptNo;
indexes permit you to sort, search, and join tables based
END;
on data derived from the table's fields.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 29

Common Database Objects (Continuation 2)
This stored procedure could be executed by using the following
query, assuming that 1001 is a valid department number:
EXECUTE PROCDURE
GetEmployeeByDepartment('1001');
Also like views, stored procedures are supported by most

remote database servers, but only a few local file server
databases.
User-Defined Functions
User defined functions are similar to stored procedures in

that they are subroutines that you can write in either SQL
or some proprietary language (depending on the database).
However, unlike stored procedure, which can return no
data, or even an entire table of data, user-defined function
always return a single scalar value.
User defined functions are designed to be used in queries
where an expression is expected. For example, imagine that
you have written a user defined function named
RandomLimit() that returns a random number between 1
and some number that you pass as a parameter. Consider
the following query, which will randomly assign a value
from 1 to 10 to the customers listed in the customer table,
and order them by this value:
SELECT RandomLimit(10) as Segment, AccountNumber, Name
FROM Customer
ORDER BY Segment;
Here again, not all databases support user-defined function,

though the majority of remote database servers do.
On the other hand, most local file servers do not.
Summary
In this second in a series of articles on database

development I have turned my attention to five specific
objects that are found in most mainstream databases. In the
next article in this series I will cover Delphi's TDataSets,
with specific focus on the roles played by TFields and
TParams.
About the Author
Cary Jensen
is Chief Technology Officer of Jensen Data Systems, a
consulting, training, development, and documentation
and help system company. Since 1988 he has built and
deployed database applications in a wide range of
industries. In addition, Cary is the best selling author of
more than 20 books on software development, and
winner of the 2002 and 2003 Delphi Informant Reader's
Choice Award for Best Training. A frequent speaker at
conferences, workshops, and seminars throughout much
of the world, he is widely regarded for his self-effacing
humor and practical approaches to complex issues. Cary
has a Ph.D. from Rice University in Human Factors
Psychology, specializing in human-computer interaction.
Page 30
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Special Upgrade Offer for all Delphi, C++Builder and

Borland Developer Studio versions until 31 March
2011 - buy your upgrade now
We have heard that not all registered users were
aware that the upgrade eligibility for users of 2006
and earlier versions of Delphi, C++Builder and RAD
Studio/Borland Developer Studio had expired.
If you are one of those customers, we want to make it
up to you. We have re-opened the upgrade window
for a limited time and extended upgrade pricing to
you until 31 March 2011.
Five Key Reasons to Upgrade to XE today
Latest technologies and platform support Get

Unicode, Windows 7 support and UI look and feel, the
latest database drivers, cloud computing, touch and
gesture input, and much more!
Work faster and more easily with even more

new tools Special editions of CodeSite, AQtime,
IP*Works components, FinalBuilder (in the Enterprise
edition), plus visual PHP IDE in RAD Studio
Get earlier versionsfree XE version includes

earlier versions of the tool you buy including Delphi 7,
C++Builder 6 and Delphi and C++Builder 2007-2010
Stay eligible for future upgrades to 64-bit and

cross- platform Upgrade to XE and be eligible for
upgrade pricing to future versions. With exciting plans
around 64-bit, mobile, and cross-platform
development you will not want to miss out
Join the crowd that loves XE Do not just take

our word for it, see for yourself what developers are
saying about XE
Extra Savings on Enterprise Upgrades NOW!
As part of this offer, you qualify for special time
limited pricing on Enterprise upgrades. Get DataSnap
XE with expanded dbExpress database server
connectivity, FinalBuilder Embarcadero Edition and all
the other great Enterprise functionality at the lowest
price yet!
Here are some of the amazing upgrade prices that
you qualify for:
New User
Delphi XE
Professional
C++Builder XE
Professional
RAD Studio XE
Professional
Delphi XE
Enterprise
C++Builder XE
Enterprise
RAD Studio XE
Enterprise
Upgrade Price
899
499
899
499
1399
799
1999
999
(regularly 1299)
1999
999
(regularly 1299)
2799
1499
(regularly 1799)
Starting out with Advantage Database Server

and Delphi XE Starter Edition
starter
expert
by Howard Page Clark
The newly released Delphi XE Starter Edition has much to

commend it, but perhaps its major disappointment is the lack of
versatile database connectivity apart from Interbase Express
(if you discount the deprecated BDE).
So it is a great help, especially to new and student Pascal
programmers who will buy XE Starter if they buy anything
to know that Sybase are offering their Advantage Local Server
database system for free (if you only want to create local desktop
applications) and that it installs effortlessly into Delphi XE
Starter.
The full client/server Advantage package is priced from just over
200 upwards depending on the licence terms and number of
users. You can't argue with a free local database implementation
and this enables you to develop very sophisticated data-intensive
applications which have no restrictive licences or trial-ware
limitations. Although Advantage tables descend from TDataSet
and Advantage queries descend from TQuery, the Advantage
implementation outshines the deprecated BDE in every respect,
while still being easy to learn for those familiar with BDE table,
alias and query concepts.
The Advantage server works with several data formats:

legacy DBFs (dBase III and above), FoxPro and Visual
FoxPro, CA-Clipper, and its own ADT format (which is
superior in terms of security and performance, and
should be your choice unless you are constrained to work
with say a FoxPro database).
It can import and export data in many other formats too,
including Access MDB, Paradox , Pervasive SQL (Btrieve)
tables, CSV, and via OLE DB/ADO various other
proprietary formats if you have the appropriate OLE DB
provider. Installing into Delphi XE Starter adds a new
Advantage page to the component palette (see Figure 2).
Figure 2: The Advantage component page
Figure 1: Installing Advantage Data Architect

There are no dbExpress or ADO database components
supplied with Delphi XE Starter Edition, which meant
I needed to assess options for building a quick database
application.
I had not used either Interbase or Advantage before, and
looking at the learning curve for each it seemed that
Advantage was going to be easier for me, since it basically
extended what I already knew about BDE databases.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 31
Starting out with Advantage Database Server (continuation 1)
Any database needs an accompanying utility for creating

and restructuring tables, adding indexes, constraints and
triggers, importing data and so forth. Advantage installs a
Database-Desktop-type utility called Advantage Data
Architect, which you might think would be referred to as
ADA, but is actually known as ARC. This comprehensive
tool (written in Delphi the source is provided) is itself an
example of the power and flexibility of the Advantage
Server and ADT file format. Advantage works either with
free tables (if you need to access legacy databases) or
tables that are bound to a data dictionary. Data dictionary
tables are the preferred development route, since you can
then take advantage (pun intended) of proper database
security such as defining constraints for data validation
and preventing access to tables except via the dictionary
(i. e. you can keep table access restricted only to what you
allow through your application). Advantage has full
transaction processing capability, with commit and
rollback features.
Parsing biblical text is unhidden during parsing and the

cursor changes to an hourglass. A fully updated grid gave
rise to this end message:
Figure 4 Using adsTable.EnableControls

With refresh turned off, parsing performance
was noticeably better:
A very simple concordance application
For simplicity in the example developed here no data

dictionary is involved, nor is there proper provision for
catching exceptions or errors, or fully normalising the
data, or polishing the interface or optimising any of the
routines. The aim is to show how simple code can develop
a useful database application quickly (i. e. before the
deadline for this article!) using a combination of Delphi
XE Starter Edition and Advantage components and
Server. This example uses local data, but it is trivial with
Advantage to scale up to client/server remote operation
by altering connection parameters to point to a network
share recognised by the Advantage server.
I wanted to test the Advantage database engine with
realistic amounts of data without resorting to meaningless
randomly generated nonsense or exposing actual private
data from the charities where I work, so I decided to use
text data from the public domain, and create a simple
concordance for part of the Hebrew scriptures, taken
from the American Standard Version (or ASV). This was
easy to obtain and needed little in the way of cleaning up
to be useable. This raw data was imported into an
Advantage table named asv.adt with the following
structure:
Figure 5 Using adsTable.DisbleControls

I had opted for a text-data application because I wanted to
explore Advantage's support for full text search, and its
dedicated FTS indexes. However, I discovered this is most
useful for memo fields and is of value for locating a given
text, but no good for generating an analysis of the text
which is what this application does. However I did
exercise the Advantage Locate() function in this example
with a simple implementation of an incremental search via
the OnChange event of a TEdit field named edtSearch:
procedure TfrmMain.edtSearchChange(Sender: TObject);
begin
Screen.Cursor := crHourGlass;
with dmAdvantage do
if adsTblWords.Locate('Word', edtSearch.Text,
[loCaseInsensitive, loPartialKey])
then edtSearch.Color := clGreen
else edtSearch.Color := clRed;
Screen.Cursor
:= crDefault;
Sleep(1000);
edtSearch.Color := clWindow;
end;
The performance of this routine was disappointing,

probably because of the long character fields and indexes
Book
char
50
which need to be built for freshly parsed data. If the data
ChapterNo
integer
(4 byte)
were normalised and each word assigned a numeric ID it
VerseNo
integer
(4 byte)
would doubtless be much faster.
Verse
char
1000
I wondered if writing my own iterator to visit each record
Figure 3: Structures
in turn and perform some action would be better than
The text in each verse is parsed by clicking the Parse Text using a built-in Locate function. By use of procedural
to Words button, which scans asv.adt and inserts each
variables (declared to be of object) it is possible to invoke
word found into a separate table: words.adt. The
any form method on the visited record. The interface of
minimum word size to be considered for inclusion is set in the uTableIterator unit is shown here (the implementation
a TSpinEdit control which defaults to 4 (thus ignoring if,
is equally simple-minded).
the, and, very and so on). Refresh of the data grid during
parsing is enabled or disabled via a checkbox. To give
visual feedback if the grid refresh is disabled a label saying
Field name
Page 32
Type
Size
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS

type
TadTableIterator = class(TObject)
private
FTable: TAdsTable;
public
constructor Create(aTable: TAdsTable);
procedure Execute; virtual; abstract;
end;
TadTableIteratorProc =
procedure(aTable: TAdsTable) of object;
TadTableIteratorFunc =
function(aTable: TAdsTable): boolean of object;
TadTableIterWorker = class(TadTableIterator)
private
FprocWork: TadTableIteratorProc;
FfuncWork: TadTableIteratorFunc;
public
procedure Execute; override;
constructor Create(aTable: TAdsTable;
pWork: TadTableIteratorProc;
pCondition: TadTableIteratorFunc);
end;
The ADT format has 19 field data types available

including Unicode (as UTF16 matching Delphi's
implementation of Unicode strings), Date, Time,
Autoincrement, CurDouble (an 8 byte currency floatingpoint type), Money (an 8 byte integer type), Memo and
Image. In spite of large files (17 MB for asv.adt, and 18.5
MB for words.adt) I experienced no corruption of data or
indices such as I have experienced in the past with large
Paradox files. It offers true unique indexes for primary key
support. If you wish you can access the server directly
(without needing the Advantage TDataset descendants)
through the Advantage Client Engine API (just as you
could make BDE-specific calls using the API for the
BDE).
TadTableIterator
TadTableIterator is the ancestor class with an abstract

Execute method from which the TadTableIterWorker class
descends. By use of both a pWork procedure and a
pCondition function it is possible to engineer Execute to
operate only on records that satisfy some boolean
condition.
For instance, to determine the length of the longest word
in the table we want a condition that always returns True
(so that every record is considered). Whereas for an
iteration of the table that is locating perhaps only one
record we want a condition that will reject almost every
record. I was impressed by how fast the iteration of a
203,634 record Advantage database proved to be (just a
second or two). The full code for this example application
is available for download from the Blaise website. I quickly
discovered using this routine that the longest book name
had 14 characters.
So providing for 50 characters in the table design was
clearly too generous. However, I was only able before the
deadline to prepare ASV data from the books Genesis to
Psalms, and it may be in covering the other Hebrew books
(Proverbs to Malachi) that longer book names will be
encountered. This project is far from complete. I plan to
add other public domain versions (King James, in this
400th anniversary year, Jewish Publication Society version
and others), and do quite a bit of normalising of data and
construction of more intelligent indexes, adding SQL
queries for comparisons and so on.
My experience with Advantage certainly leads me to want
to use it as the default database engine for accompanying
Delphi Starter Edition.
Questions I had were usually resolved quite quickly from
the help file that comes with the package. This includes
the text of an entire book (Advantage Database Server
v8.1: A Developer's Guide) about Advantage written by
Cary Jensen and Loy Anderson. The book is well written
and comprehensive including use of Advantage in Visual
C# and Visual Basic and with Java, PHP and .NET.
Together with the many other pages of documentation I
hardly needed to go online at all.
Figure 6: The test application reporting via a table iterator

It was gratifying to see that Advantage include a Lazarus
package in the download, and I tried this out briefly. Since
components are linked statically in Lazarus the IDE has to
be recompiled to add them to the IDE. Initially I found
that the recompiled Lazarus ran briefly and died. I think
this was because it could not find the Advantage server.
Downloading the server enabled the recompiled Lazarus
IDE to work normally. However a full comparison has not
been attempted between Delphi XE Starter and Lazarus.
BDE
The BDE has been frozen since Delphi 7, and considering

its problems running on Vista and Windows 7 it is
surprising that Embarcadero bothered to include it in the
Delphi XE Starter Edition. 'Deprecated' ought to mean it
is no longer part of new releases.
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 33
Figure 7: The import data formats supported by ARC
Advantage is actively developed and includes

all the database functionality a user of the
Starter Edition could want. It is a very good
match, and the Local Server is priced to be
attractive to everybody.
ARC is a stable and versatile tool, easily used
by people familiar with Borland's Database
Desktop or the Lazarus Data Desktop or
FlameRobin. It can access and modify both
FoxPro and Clipper DBF formats and also
supersede their well-known limitations. For
example, the maximum field name length is
10 characters, deleted records are merely
marked for deletion (and can still be accessed
up until a table is packed), unique indexes do
not enforce record uniqueness, and memo
files can include large amounts of wasted
space. The ADT format avoids all these
shortcomings, and adds data dictionary
functionality, encryption and access security
for good measure. If you have Delphi XE
Starter Edition and are looking for a good
database solution, you would be foolish to
ignore the download of the free Advantage
Local Server. You can find it here:
www.sybase.com/products/databasemanagement/advantagedatabaseserver/delphi-components
BOOKS FROM MARCO CANT COMBINED INTO ONE PDF
A single PDF bundling together 3 ebooks:

Delphi 2007 Handbook, Delphi 2009 Handbook, and Delphi 2010 Handbook. The material has not been edited,
it is simply the merging of the three original ebooks. The collection of books covers all of the new features of
Delphi 2010 since Delphi 7, covering the IDE, the Delphi language, Unicode support, Windows development,
new VCL components, database access, DataSnap, and much more. In total the combined book has almost
1,000 pages of Delphi-related content, in a single easy-to-search PDF file.
http://sites.fastspring.com/wintechitalia/product/delphihandbookscollection
Page 34
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Moving /adding your components into the Delphi Starter Edition?

By Rick Smit
starter
expert
In this very simple and short article we explain how to move or

install components, whether older components or new ones. This is
very easy, and can be achieved with just a few mouse clicks.
Embarcadero has done a great Job by that. Anyone can do this.
So there is no need to worry about losing your older components.
But be sure to to make a backup! In a new environment you can
use one of your old programs or make a brand new one to discover
all the new possibilities. In both cases it might be convenient to
have your own components available. So how do you install
components in the new small Delphi XE Starter Version? You
could do it slowly like a snail, or quickly like a rocket launch.to do
the job. Lets start with the rocket method.
Start:
Choose in the main menu the item Components and

then choose: " Install Component. See Figure 1 at
the right top:
Figure 1:main-menu item Component

In the subsequent Install VCL Components dialog, you
must complete the path to your component directory, and
specify whether to add them to a new or an existing
package (Figure 2).
With the ellipsis button you can browse the path to the
component of your choice. (Figure 3) Choose Openen to
get the install window.(Figure 4)
Figure 2:
Use the ellipsis to browse your files
Figure 3:Select the

Component files
Figure 3:Select the Component files

COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Page 35
Moving /adding your components in to the Delphi Starter Edition? (Continuation 1)
Figure 4:
Choose for Install into a new package
In the next window (Figure 5) we have to give our new package a name. This is
the name we will see in the Tool Palette. By the way you can always rename it in
the Tool Palette by rightclicking the category name. Give it a clear description and
choose Delphi package. Click Finish and if the source is correct then all the work
is done for us. (Figure 6) Now we can use our new installed component(s), see
Figures 13 and 14 at the end of this article.
And now the slow way.
The slow way means that we have to do a lot of the work ourself. We have to
know that we have to put our component(s) files into a container called a package
before we can register them into the RAD studio.
Figure 5:
The install into new package window
Page 36
COMPONENTS
DEVELOPERS
Moving /adding your components into the Delphi Starter Edition? (Continuation 2)
Figure 6: The package is installed and the component is registered.

So here are the steps we are going to do:
1 Create a new package, (Figure 7) and view it in the
IDEs Project Manager (Figure 8).
2 Install one or more component(s) into the package
container (Figure 9).
Browse towards the files we need (Figure 10).
3 Rename the package with the name we want.
You can see it as category in the Tool palette (Figure 11).
4 Save the package.
5 Install the package (Figure12).
Step 2
To add something to it we need to rightclick the
mouse pointer over Package1.bpl.
In the next pulldown we choose Add (Figure 9)
and browse the next window (Figure 10) towards the
component files and pick Open.
Step 3
Rightclick the mouse pointer over Package1.bpl and
click Rename to give the package1 the name you want
to see as a category on its tab in the Tool Palette.
Step 4
Use the same window to Save it.
Figure 7: The new Package
Step 1
Choose in the main menu the item File "New "PackageDelphi. (Figure 7) and you will find the brand new
Package1.bpl in the the IDEs Project Manager (figure 8)
Figure 8: The empty package in the IDE Project manager

In figure 8 we see that the contains of
package1 are empty.
Figure 9: Add content

Now we can see the renamed package PascalGG.bpl,
with the TColorButton component inside.
(Figure 11 next page)
Page 37
Moving /adding your components in to Delphi Starter Edition? (Continuation 3)
Figure 10: Browse the component (ColorButton) source file

Step 5
The last step is to finally install the component:
right click PascalGG.bpl, choose Install and your job is
done. To see the result:
Open File " New " VCL Forms Application
and take a look at the Tool palette:
the new category with the component is available.
(See Figures 13 and 14)
Figure 11: Contains has been filled, and the package renamed from package1
Figure 12: Install the PascallGG package

Page 38
Moving /adding your components into the Delphi Starter Edition? (Continuation 4)
So as you can see: the Job is done.

The Color button is available.
Have fun trying it out.
At our website we have several components
that can be used. Of course you need to be
a subscriber or become one first...
Figure 13: The Old Tool Palette
Figure 14: The new Tool Pallette
www.blaisepascal.eu
Page 39
THE WORMHOLE FOR DATABASES

AND SERVICES
ESB, SOA.MoM, EAI TOOLS FOR INTELLIGENT SOLUTIONS

IN COMPONENTS
THE NETHERLANDS: UTRECHT
/ PREMIERE
DE MEERN
SATURDAY
SEPTEMBER
kbmMW IS THE
N-TIERE
PRODUCT FOR18
DELPHI<
C++BUILDER BDS
DEVELOPERS
DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK FOR WIN 32, .NET AND LINUX WITH CLIENTS RESIDING ON WIN32, .NET,
INFORMATION:
www.blaisepascal.eu
LINUX,UNIX MAINFRAMES,MINIS,EMBEDDED DEVICES

Blaise 15UK PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Blaise 15UK PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE

ALL ABOUT DELPHI AND DELPHI PRISM(.Net) , LAZARUS & PASCAL

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed by Howard Page Clark

Volume 15, ISSN 1876-0589

Delphi XE Starter try: a littel Mailserver

ClientDataset: what to do if you dont have it?

Introduction to Databases Part 2:

Advantage Database Server and Delphi XE

Copyright See the notice at the bottom of this page.

International Pascal Conference

18 June May 2011

Subscriptions run per calender year.

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed

By Howard Page Clark

DELPHI XE and above (Win32)

A new version of Delphi is always an exciting prospect for

So what do you get for your money? An almost complete,

So they are pitching this cut-down, introductory Delphi at

Figure 2: The Customize dialog which lists 10 toolbars

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed (Continuation 1)

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed (Continuation 2)

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed (Continuation 3)

Figure 3 shows the full toolbar layout of Figure 1 adjusted

During installation you have the options to download the

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed (Continuation 4)

Figure 6: The progress as InstallAware installs 246 MB of software

Figure 5: The Subversion menu accessed from the project

But then, this is a Starter Edition.

Internet access limited to use of Indy components.

No XML components including TXMLDocument.

Database functionality limited to Interbase

No TeeChart components for graphing data.

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Delphi XE Starter edition reviewed (Continuation 5)

Lack of an external compiler. If you try to run Delphi

So although there are free 'competitors' such as the Visual

Figure 9: The resxplor.droj About box

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

Delphi XE Starter tried out with a demo program:

DELPHI XE and above (Win32)

By the time this article is published, most existing Delphi

So the simplification of connections to databases, the

For the purpose of this article, I will introduce two

For this exercise, I downloaded a project from

that enables you to send emails, something that is relevant

Figure 1: Project One: MailSenderProject

Figure 2: Project One: MailSenderProject

Figure 3: Delphi XE Menu and Icon Bar (part only)

If you look in the folder that contains this downloaded

Creation of this sample project comprised the

Sample Project Two - XEStarter

A major aspect of database development is an

As the database has been created along with the

Once inside IBConsole, click on Database | Add, and

This will then provide a connection to this sample's

Februari 2011 BLAISE PASCAL MAGAZINE 15

THE NEW INTERNATIONAL