Outline "Delphi 4 Workout" Seminar

The Delphi 4 Workout

The One Day Delphi 4 Workout Seminar by Bob Swart will be performed on January 20th in London and January 22nd in Manchester (UK).

9.00-10.45 Warming Up
In this section we'll discuss some specific new features of Delphi 4, mainly focussing on the IDE, the ObjectPascal language and VCL enhancements for now.

9.00-9.30 - Delphi 4 IDE
This session will give an overview of some of the new Delphi 4 IDE features, such as Code Insights, Code Navigation and new Code Editor features.

9.30-10.10 - Delphi 4 ObjectPascal
This session will give an overview of the Delphi 4 ObjectPascal enhancements, like Default Parameters, Method Overloading, Dynamic Arrays and more.

10.10-10.45 - Delphi 4 VCL
This session will give an overview of the Delphi 4 VCL enhancements. Both some new components and new key properties and events will be shown.

10.45-11.00 Coffee

11.00-12.30 Database Workout
In this section we'll focus on the Borland Database Engine, including tables, queries but also data-aware components, and techniques how to build our own custom data-aware components and put them in packages.

11.00-11.30 - Borland Database Engine
This session will show the database basics, including tables, queries, data-aware components and how to (re-) create your own tables and fields with ObjectPascal source code.

11.30-12.15 - Data-Aware Component Building
This session will teach the basics of component building, as we focus on the creation of a data-aware component skeleton, the datalink, and finally the addition of properties, methods, events and event handlers.

12.15-12.30 - Delphi 4 Packages
This session will explain what Delphi 4 packages are, how they can benefit our projects (size of executable), how to make our own custom packages with components, and how to deploy them correctly.

12.30-13.30 Lunch

13.30-15.00 Workout Insights
This section is about information insights using the Decision Cube Technology, but also about ways to solve problems or find solutions to common questions using the UK-BUG DIL.

13.30-14.15 - Decision Cube
This session will focus on the Decision Cube Technology found in the Client/Server edition of Delphi, which can be used to analyse and drill-down in data to support decision support capabilities.

14.15-15.00 - Developer Information Library (UK-BUG)
A UK-BUG Inprise Borland User Group representative will highlight how to unearth the most comprehensive guide (the DIL) where to find Delphi Code, tools, samples and - most importantly - 9,000+ answers to common problems.

15.00-15.15 Afternoon Tea

15.15-17.30 N-Tier Internet
In this section we'll explore advanced Delphi 4 techniques like Web Broker, ActiveForms, MIDAS and CORBA for building N-tier internet applications.

15.15-15.45 - ActiveForms
This session will illustrate how to write, use and deploy ActiveForms on the web (an ActiveForm is a collection of ActiveX controls put in a "Form"-like container, and is a new Delphi 4 feature), including an example where we publish a table on an ActiveForm on the internet.

15.45-16.30 - TClientDataSet, MIDAS and CORBA
Using TClientDataSet (among others) we can develop 3-tier ActiveForms, deploying MIDAS or CORBA to communicate between the different "tiers". This session will explain the TClientDataSet, MIDAS and CORBA, and show how to use them.

16.30-17.30 - Delphi Web Broker
This session will demonstrate the Delphi 4 capabilities of the WebBroker to create and support CGI/WinCGI and ISAPI/NSAPI web server applications. The final example will use MIDAS to end up with a 4-Tier system (#1: HTML web client, #2: WebBroker ISAPI DLL, #3: MIDAS middle-ware, and #4: Database server), where each of the four tiers can be deployed on a different machine.