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	Dr.Bob's BorCon 2005 Report (in San Francisco, November 6-10, 2005)

Last Updated: Thursday 2005/11/10 9:45 (GMT-8)

Like previous years, I'll write a "live" Conference Report on this website including details of all major events, Borland and 3rd-party announcements and session details. My personal focus will be on Delphi (for .NET) but I also look for any news on C++Builder or even Kylix, as well as other new developments.

Depending on (wireless) internet access, I will update this page as well as my weblog with posts. Unfortunately, it appears that my weblog server (back in The Netherlands) is still down at this time, sorry!

Below is the schedule of event and sessions as far as I can oversee before the conference starts (using local time):

Sunday, November 6

11:30 Leave with KL605 from Amsterdam (Schiphol)

13:50 Arrival of KL605 in San Francisco

I've arrived in San Francisco without too many troubles (apart from explaining to security - twice - why I was bringing my own keyboard). The weather is not too nice - it appears to be in the lower 60s (good thing I still had the good-old Fahrenheit to Celsius application and web service around, so I could prepare myself.
The hotel is cool. Perhaps too cool, since the airco is constantly blowing, while outside it's still in the low 60s (about 15 degrees Celsius). It's a good thing we didn't get the conference t-shirt until after we had submitted the conference evaluation form, since it's too cold to wear (just) the t-shirt anyway...
The food is among the best I've had at a Borland (Developer) Conference. And so is the wireless - in all session rooms and the computer lab (but not in the hotel rooms, unfortunately, so I couldn't upload this report as much as I would have wanted).

Monday, November 7

8:00 9:00 Regular Session Speaker Orientation, Continental Parlor 8

This year, speakers will (try to) capture the audio and video of their sessions using Camtasia.

9:00 13:00 ASP.NET Fundamentals (Lino Tadros)
Continental Ballroom 6

Lino has a room with 30-40 people, and almost nobody had any prior ASP.NET experience - so it's truly about the fundamentals now. Good thing he loves to talk a lot...
And: he's using DeXter to do demonstrate his examples!

13:00 14:00 Tutorial Lunch

14:00 18:00 Applying ECO to ASP.NET (Malcolm Groves)
Continental Ballroom 4

Malcolm did a good session, starting to give an overview of ASP.NET (and its stateless nature) and then moving on to add ECO to it. I learned some new tricks, like the use of the CursorHandle.
He was still using Delphi 2005, but will do a session on ECO III New Features on Tuesday.

Tuesday, November 8

7:30 9:00 Continental Breakfast

9:00 10:30 General Session

Borland has a new CEO: Tod Nielsen (read announcement)

10:30 10:45 Coffee Break

10:30 13:00 Lab/Cyber Café Open

10:45 12:00 What's New in Delphi (Allen Bauer)
Continental Ballroom 5

Not completely a surprise: the room is full (and then some). I guess 95% of all people are in this room now.
Allen: "Just by replacing the memory manager, the IDE startup went from 20 seconds to 12 seconds."

What will be covered? - VCL
New components: TGridPanel, TFlowPanel Margins & Padding Align with marginds Intellimouse/Mouse Wheel Tray Icon component Gradient support in TToolBar and TControlBar Mouse Enter/Exit events (that are reliable ;-) New PopupMode property on TApplication Fixes and more fixes... IDE - Delphi support for C++Builder
Single option to generate all required support files when building a Delphi component package. - New -jl DCC32 compiler switch - Generate all C++Builder files in IDE - .HPP files - .LIB - no individual .OBJs are generated - .BPI Component palette now filters component - C++ only - package built with C++Builder - Delphi Only - package built without above switch - Delphi & C++ - Delphi package built with above switch so: build packages with the -jl switch Demos Visual GuideLines Margins property of TButton controls the "space" lines HTML Preservation Block Completion Automatic var declaration Surrounds template space and tab to start/end a template New Template: File New - Other - Code Template (XML document)
All in all, this was a great session, and it was no wonder the room was packed!

12:00 13:30 Group Lunch

12:30 13:15 Birds of a Feather

13:30 14:45 ASP.NET Web Development with Delphi for the Microsoft .NET Framework
Continental Ballroom 4

In this session, I covered ASP.NET Web development with Delphi for the Microsoft .NET Framework showing how to design ASP.NET Web Forms, session and state management, authorization and authentication (login).

14:45 15:15 Coffee Break

15:15 16:30 What's New in ECO III (Malcolm Groves)
Continental Ballroom 5

16:45 18:00 ASP.NET Web Forms and Databases
Continental Ballroom 6

In this session, I covered ASP.NET Web Forms and multi-tier databases.

18:00 20:00 Exhibitor Reception

The Exhibitor Reception was a great event - lots of good food, and the perfect time to browse through the booths and check out what the partners are offering.

Borland had DeXter installed on all machines, so people could get a good look.
Microsoft (the sponsor of the Exhibitor Reception) was showing off beta 2 of Windows Vista, with some nice visual effects.
SOCK Software released their CodeHealer product (highly recommended).
...

20:00 21:30 Evening Sessions/Meet the Teams

During this event, we could walk up to the team members, introduce yourself, and talk face-to-face. About a dozen tables, each around a certain "area" like Delphi (actually three tables on Delphi), C++, Docs, Database, VisiBroker, Java, BDN, and I guess a few more. It was good to see al these team members again, although I missed the "general introduction" of everyone, like we've had in all previous years, where each team member briefly introduces him or herself. Please let do that again next year!

Wednesday, November 9

6:30 8:00 Continental Breakfast

7:00 7:45 Birds of a Feather

8:00 9:15 Effective Delphi for .NET and C# Unit Testing with NUnit (Charlie Calvert)
Continental Ballroom 4

Charlie Calvert is always a joy to listen too. Especially on the topic of the Art of Unit Testing, I feel like he can talk for hours and hours.

9:30 10:45 Multi-platform Web Services with Delphi
Continental Ballroom 4

In this session, we see multi-platform Web Services with Delphi 2005, using the Borland Win32 SOAP Framework and ASP.NET Web Services.

10:45 11:00 Coffee Break

11:00 12:00 General Session

12:00 18:00 Expo Hall Open

12:00 13:00 Lab/Cyber Café Open

12:00 13:30 Group Lunch

12:30 13:15 Birds of a Feather

13:30 14:45 Securing ASP.NET Web Applications (Lino Tadros)
Continental Ballroom 4

14:45 15:15 Coffee Break

15:15 16:30 Delphi Productivity Features for ASP.NET Developers (Jim Tierney)
Continental Ballroom 5

Jim did a great session, and showed some new features in Delphi 2006 for ASP.NET. Including an explanation of the new dialog that will show up when enabling "Copy Local" for BDP assemblies (or other assemblies that should belong in the GAC instead of the \Bin directory of your ASP.NET project).

16:45 18:00 Preview of ASP.NET 2.0 in Delphi (Jim Tierney)
Continental Ballroom 5

This was another very impressive session by Jim Tierney. I kinda hoped he would be using Highlander (aka Delphi for .NET 2.0), but he was just using DeXter.

19:00 22:00 Evening Function at the Hilton

Pinball, Pool, Darts, Food and Drinks.

Thursday, November 10

6:30 8:00 Continental Breakfast

7.00 7.45 Birds of a Feather

8:00 14:30 Expo Hall Open

8:00 14:30 Lab/Cyber Café Open

8:00 9:15 Building Distributed Database Applications in .NET (Ramesh Theivendran)
Continental Ballroom 6

Ramesh showed the new Reconcile Error dialog for BDP, among others.

9:30 10:45 ASP.NET User Interface and the Delphi ECO Framework (Fredrik Haglund)
Continental Ballroom 4

10:45 11:00 Coffee Break

15:40 Leave with KL606 from San Francisco

Friday, November 11

11:15 Arrival of KL606 in Amsterdam (Schiphol)

For more reports and BorCon blogs (based on the list from last year), see the following:

Allen Bauer - http://blogs.borland.com/abauer/
Dave Nottage - http://blogs.teamb.com/davenottage/2005/11/08/22004
JoeH - http://www.softwarerunners.com/devcon2005/
Marco Cantu - http://blog.marcocantu.com
Paul Gustavson - http://www.simventions.com/gustavson/

Sunday, November 6
11:30		Leave with KL605 from Amsterdam (Schiphol)
	13:50	Arrival of KL605 in San Francisco
I've arrived in San Francisco without too many troubles (apart from explaining to security - twice - why I was bringing my own keyboard). The weather is not too nice - it appears to be in the lower 60s (good thing I still had the good-old Fahrenheit to Celsius application and web service around, so I could prepare myself. The hotel is cool. Perhaps too cool, since the airco is constantly blowing, while outside it's still in the low 60s (about 15 degrees Celsius). It's a good thing we didn't get the conference t-shirt until after we had submitted the conference evaluation form, since it's too cold to wear (just) the t-shirt anyway... The food is among the best I've had at a Borland (Developer) Conference. And so is the wireless - in all session rooms and the computer lab (but not in the hotel rooms, unfortunately, so I couldn't upload this report as much as I would have wanted).

Monday, November 7
8:00	9:00	Regular Session Speaker Orientation, Continental Parlor 8
This year, speakers will (try to) capture the audio and video of their sessions using Camtasia.
9:00	13:00	ASP.NET Fundamentals (Lino Tadros) Continental Ballroom 6
Lino has a room with 30-40 people, and almost nobody had any prior ASP.NET experience - so it's truly about the fundamentals now. Good thing he loves to talk a lot... And: he's using DeXter to do demonstrate his examples!
13:00	14:00	Tutorial Lunch
14:00	18:00	Applying ECO to ASP.NET (Malcolm Groves) Continental Ballroom 4
Malcolm did a good session, starting to give an overview of ASP.NET (and its stateless nature) and then moving on to add ECO to it. I learned some new tricks, like the use of the CursorHandle. He was still using Delphi 2005, but will do a session on ECO III New Features on Tuesday.

Tuesday, November 8
7:30	9:00	Continental Breakfast
9:00	10:30	General Session
Borland has a new CEO: Tod Nielsen (read announcement)
10:30	10:45	Coffee Break
10:30	13:00	Lab/Cyber Café Open
10:45	12:00	What's New in Delphi (Allen Bauer) Continental Ballroom 5
Not completely a surprise: the room is full (and then some). I guess 95% of all people are in this room now. Allen: "Just by replacing the memory manager, the IDE startup went from 20 seconds to 12 seconds." What will be covered? - VCL New components: TGridPanel, TFlowPanel Margins & Padding Align with marginds Intellimouse/Mouse Wheel Tray Icon component Gradient support in TToolBar and TControlBar Mouse Enter/Exit events (that are reliable ;-) New PopupMode property on TApplication Fixes and more fixes... IDE - Delphi support for C++Builder Single option to generate all required support files when building a Delphi component package. - New -jl DCC32 compiler switch - Generate all C++Builder files in IDE - .HPP files - .LIB - no individual .OBJs are generated - .BPI Component palette now filters component - C++ only - package built with C++Builder - Delphi Only - package built without above switch - Delphi & C++ - Delphi package built with above switch so: build packages with the -jl switch Demos Visual GuideLines Margins property of TButton controls the "space" lines HTML Preservation Block Completion Automatic var declaration Surrounds template space and tab to start/end a template New Template: File New - Other - Code Template (XML document) All in all, this was a great session, and it was no wonder the room was packed!
12:00	13:30	Group Lunch
12:30	13:15	Birds of a Feather
13:30	14:45	ASP.NET Web Development with Delphi for the Microsoft .NET Framework Continental Ballroom 4
In this session, I covered ASP.NET Web development with Delphi for the Microsoft .NET Framework showing how to design ASP.NET Web Forms, session and state management, authorization and authentication (login).
14:45	15:15	Coffee Break
15:15	16:30	What's New in ECO III (Malcolm Groves) Continental Ballroom 5

16:45	18:00	ASP.NET Web Forms and Databases Continental Ballroom 6
In this session, I covered ASP.NET Web Forms and multi-tier databases.
18:00	20:00	Exhibitor Reception
The Exhibitor Reception was a great event - lots of good food, and the perfect time to browse through the booths and check out what the partners are offering. Borland had DeXter installed on all machines, so people could get a good look. Microsoft (the sponsor of the Exhibitor Reception) was showing off beta 2 of Windows Vista, with some nice visual effects. SOCK Software released their CodeHealer product (highly recommended). ...
20:00	21:30	Evening Sessions/Meet the Teams
During this event, we could walk up to the team members, introduce yourself, and talk face-to-face. About a dozen tables, each around a certain "area" like Delphi (actually three tables on Delphi), C++, Docs, Database, VisiBroker, Java, BDN, and I guess a few more. It was good to see al these team members again, although I missed the "general introduction" of everyone, like we've had in all previous years, where each team member briefly introduces him or herself. Please let do that again next year!

Wednesday, November 9
6:30	8:00	Continental Breakfast
7:00	7:45	Birds of a Feather
8:00	9:15	Effective Delphi for .NET and C# Unit Testing with NUnit (Charlie Calvert) Continental Ballroom 4
Charlie Calvert is always a joy to listen too. Especially on the topic of the Art of Unit Testing, I feel like he can talk for hours and hours.
9:30	10:45	Multi-platform Web Services with Delphi Continental Ballroom 4
In this session, we see multi-platform Web Services with Delphi 2005, using the Borland Win32 SOAP Framework and ASP.NET Web Services.
10:45	11:00	Coffee Break
11:00	12:00	General Session

12:00	18:00	Expo Hall Open
12:00	13:00	Lab/Cyber Café Open
12:00	13:30	Group Lunch
12:30	13:15	Birds of a Feather
13:30	14:45	Securing ASP.NET Web Applications (Lino Tadros) Continental Ballroom 4

14:45	15:15	Coffee Break
15:15	16:30	Delphi Productivity Features for ASP.NET Developers (Jim Tierney) Continental Ballroom 5
Jim did a great session, and showed some new features in Delphi 2006 for ASP.NET. Including an explanation of the new dialog that will show up when enabling "Copy Local" for BDP assemblies (or other assemblies that should belong in the GAC instead of the \Bin directory of your ASP.NET project).
16:45	18:00	Preview of ASP.NET 2.0 in Delphi (Jim Tierney) Continental Ballroom 5
This was another very impressive session by Jim Tierney. I kinda hoped he would be using Highlander (aka Delphi for .NET 2.0), but he was just using DeXter.
19:00	22:00	Evening Function at the Hilton
Pinball, Pool, Darts, Food and Drinks.

Thursday, November 10
6:30	8:00	Continental Breakfast
7.00	7.45	Birds of a Feather
8:00	14:30	Expo Hall Open
8:00	14:30	Lab/Cyber Café Open
8:00	9:15	Building Distributed Database Applications in .NET (Ramesh Theivendran) Continental Ballroom 6
Ramesh showed the new Reconcile Error dialog for BDP, among others.
9:30	10:45	ASP.NET User Interface and the Delphi ECO Framework (Fredrik Haglund) Continental Ballroom 4

10:45	11:00	Coffee Break
	15:40	Leave with KL606 from San Francisco


Friday, November 11

	11:15	Arrival of KL606 in Amsterdam (Schiphol)