Advantage Delphi Components

I’m currently in Delphi modifying and improving some of the Advantage property editors (the dialogs that help you read and set property values in the Object Inspector).

If you have ideas for improvements, or if there are things that drive you crazy, post a comment to this post and I’ll see what I can do.

Advantage Delphi Components for RAD Studio 2010 Posted

Advantage support for Delphi/RAD Studio 2010 was released today.

Advantage CHM Help File

The next Advantage 9.1 service update will include a CHM help file to replace the WinHelp files we are currently shipping. If you would like to try it out early, you can download a copy from http://devzone.advantagedatabase.com/jeremym/advantage_chm.zip

In the past we only installed the help files for the client kits and products you where using. While this kept the installations smaller, it would often hide the fact that other clients existed and had functionality you might be interested in. This new help file is an “all-in-one” help file that contains ALL Advantage documentation, and is still a relatively small help file (roughly 7MB).

This CHM help file will work in Windows Vista and Windows 7 without the buggy WinHelp plugin that was required in the past. Note if you want to view a CHM file stored on a network drive you will need to download and run this utility from EC Software.

Our new help file is built using Help & Manual from EC Software. So far it has been a great tool. I really like having access to the raw XML files the help is built from. In the event I need to manipulate the content and H&M doesn’t have the functionality I need, I can quickly write a Ruby or Perl script to zip through the help files and make my changes.

If you encounter any problems with the help file or notice any formatting errors please use the feedback email button to send us bug reports.

Advantage Delphi 2010 Support

As many of you have heard, Delphi 2010 (or “RAD Studio 2010”) has shipped. We will be updating the Advantage Delphi Components and releasing 8.1 and 9.1 updates in the next few weeks.

Our first update will include basic changes in the Advantage Delphi Components to support Delphi 2010. This update will let you use our components in Delphi 2010 just as you do in Delphi 2009 and older versions today.  A subsequent release will include updates that expand on some of the new functionality in Delphi (verb hints in the Object Inspector, JSON serialization, etc.).

I’m Not Dead Yet

Couldn’t resist the Monty Python reference…

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted to my blog. I’ve been caught up in Twitter land which appeals to my lazy programmer side (140 characters is much easier to conjure up than a blog post is). I’ve also been spending most of my free time (when I normally write these blog entries) playing with .NET, Visual Studio, Ruby, Ruby in Steel, and ASP.NET MVC. Add to that some C and Delphi stuff at work, and my brain has been mush for the last few months.

I’m skipping Southwest Fox this year, but I’ll be in Washington D.C. at the end of August for our next Advantage Technical Summit. I believe we will be hosting a Visual FoxPro user group meeting while we are in town as well.

As for technical blog content, I hope to post some more soon. I’ve recently had the need to slurp up a specific portion of the ads_err log and post it to a remote exception logger. I hope to publish and post a .NET version of that code when I’m finished. Unless of course some of you have already done that, in which case it would be cool if you could e-mail me the code…  ;)