PNW Delphi Users Group - Coding in the Northwest

[updated 03/14/2007]  In order to maintain non-breaking VCL with Delphi 2006, one of the new property called GlassFrame.  Check out this article by Allen Bauer of CodeGear to see how they overcame a complicated process that allowed them to add some Vista features without causing the DCU breaks.  The next Delphi, Highlander, will most likely see the VCL restructured properly to deal with these changes.

Web Services

[updated 03/14/2007] For those using Delphi to consume or serve Web Services, you will be happy to see the changes done in Delphi 2007. There have been many bugfixes and can consume virtually every webservice. During a CodeRage session, MapPoint was demonstrated as a consumed webservice for Delphi 2007.

Debugger

[updated 03/14/2007] There has been many improvements in this area, including the Call Stack.  Break points can now be directly made in the call stack and glyphs will indicate if a stack fram has debug information.

Also added is support to avoid the debug information or breakpoints that can cause an unexpected view of the Call Stack when debugging an application. For example, there were a few Microsoft provided DLL's that were distributed in the RTM's of Windows that have debug breakpoints in the distribution. When debugging your code, if you hit this, you may see the Call Stack, making your debugging a hassle. 

Product Editions

Delphi 2007 for Win32 will come in two editions:  Professional and Enterprise.  Those with BDS-2006 Architect Edition can still purchase Delphi 2007 Enterprise.

There has been a new change in licensing, which is a nice benefit.  Previous editions of Delphi required a separate licensed Delphi product to be purchase if using a separate computer to do automated / unattended builds.  The new licensing will now allow the command line compiler to be deployed to the build machine for the express purpose of builds.

Conclusion So Far

I'm very impressed with what CodeGear has done.  Based on MY development needs and target, this product suits me well. Delphi 2007 is a much more productive IDE for the Win32 developer and well worth the price of upgrade.  If you add software assurance, you can pretty much bet you will get Highlander when it comes out.  CodeGear has been going over its software assurance policies and has removed things like $1000 minimums or number of copies.

If you've been using Delphi 7 or earlier, this is a great time to get the upgrade to Delphi 2007. Having the single personality IDE like your older Delphi and still having strong and speedy performance is a major plus. You will gain new extensions to the language itself such as For/In (C#'s With/Each), refactoring tools, code folding, VCL guidelines, floating or fixed IDE, history, block completion, margin/padding in VCL, Intelimouse support and more.

There were some non-published events on many of the Delph 7 or earlier IDE's that were not guaranteed to always work. such as onmouseenter, onmouseleave, onmouseactivate.  Now these events are published and properly use the TrackMouseEvent API's to allow for accurate mouse handling.

Many people on the public newsgroups have expressed that this product will be nothing more than "bug fixes" and that CodeGear is nothing more than Borland and still don't care.I can tell you this. You cannot fairly judge CodeGear yet until you get Delphi 2007 and later Highlander.  It is totally unfair to blame CodeGear when they are "inheriting" the products.  Granted... Borland still is the producer of CodeGear.  But CodeGear is bringing a fresh and aggressive face to our favorite language.  They are working hard and listening to the needs of their clients.  Product manager Nick Hodges has been very active in the newsgroups above and beyond the call of duty, answering questions, gathering input and taking "hits" for the new company, just and (mostly) unjust.  I think CodeGear will do a great job with Delphi for years to come.

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Lance Rasmussen is a developer for CDE Software as well as his own company Jazzie Software.  The opinions are that of the author and should be taken as that.  Information in this article contains information and content from a beta release and the author has been given explicit permission to publish from CodeGear. To contact the author, send an email to This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it