Tim Anderson’s ITWriting

Today I viewed David Intersimone’s Live Webinar on what’s new in Delphi 2009, code-named Tiburon.

This is a Win32-only release. I think you will want it (if you use Delphi), if only for the new language-level features: generics, anonymous methods, and unicode strings. I grabbed a few screens from the presentation. Generics:

Unicode – here’s the TEncoding class:

and Unicode in action:

There are also some new components, such as a neat collapsible panel called TCategoryPanelGroup, TBalloonHints, and Office-2007 style ribbon controls.

The ribbon controls interested me because I am wary of Microsoft’s Office ribbon patent. CodeGear/Embarcadero seems to be wrapping Microsoft’s controls*, as used by the CMFCRibbon* classes, which as I understand it are not the actual controls used in Office 2007 but share their look and feel. You therefore have to agree to Microsoft’s license for the Fluent UI in order to use the controls.

There are also major changes to the DataSnap middleware but DavidI didn’t go into this much in the presentation.

During the Q&A at the end there were the inevitable questions: what about 64-bit (coming in a later version); what about Mac/Linux (nothing to announce); what about the dreadful online help (errrmmm we’re working on it); what about .NET (coming in a later version). Some of the language changes seem to be making ready for .NET 2.0 compatibility.

No announced release date; but the roadmap shows this as a 2008 release; and if it’s being webinared now that suggests it won’t be too long a wait.

Delphi is still absolutely my favourite Win32 development tool and this should be a strong release. At the same time, it is all rather old-school: win32, native code, fat client. You can do web applications in Delphi, and there is an updated “VCL for the Web” in this release, but why would you?

Nevertheless, if there are any Delphi developers still hanging on to Delphi 7 (the last version with the old IDE), perhaps these important language changes along with what is now a mature new-generation IDE will be sufficient to persuade them to migrate.

*Update: Although DavidI said that Delphi’s ribbon controls wrap Microsoft controls, Nick Hodges says here that this is not the case. He is probably right as I’m not sure what controls Delphi could wrap. If the MFC team could not use the actual Office controls, but had to create its own implementation, then I should think a third party would be in the same position. I wondered if the VCL was actually using the MFC code but I doubt that would be straightforward either. This may be a confusion caused by the licensing requirement.

I’ve committed some updates to the simple Delphi wrapper for SQLite. Most of the work was done by others. The main changes are to support named parameters (thanks Lukas Gebauer); and to support prepared queries for performance optimization (thanks Andrew Retmanski). I also recompiled the DLL with the current code, using Visual C++ 6.0. This actually required a small modification to the code – see http://www.sqlite.org/cvstrac/tktview?tn=3057,29. Maybe using VC 6.0 is getting impractical now.

I don’t know how many users this wrapper has, but I get regular emails about it so there are some. It is for people comfortable with raw SQL who want high performance rather than the convenience of high level database abstractions.

Update: I’ve converted the article to a Wordpress page, which is easier for me to update and for tracking comments.

CodeGear, Borland’s developer tools business, is to be acquired by Embarcadero; though to be more precise, CodeGear is being acquired by the owner of Embarcedero, a private equity company called Thoma Cressey Bravo.

Embarcadero has a range of database and data modeling products, including ER/Studio, EA/Studio, RapidSQL, PowerSQL and DBArtisan.

This is the end of a long road - CodeGear was put up for sale in 2006.

Good news? Insofar as it ends a long period of uncertainty, yes. On the other hand, I sense that many of CodeGear’s customers have valued its renewed focus on software development, as opposed to application lifecycle management, modeling, change management and all those other enterprisey things. Embarcadero just might take it back in that direction. From the press release:

Customers and partners will benefit from Embarcadero’s ability to help fully integrate their application development lifecycle, automate error-prone tasks and dramatically increase their productivity.

Talk of “dramatically increased productivity” is bound to strike fear into the hearts of those who like their dev tools mean and lean.

The problem from a business perspective is that enterprise sales are where the money is, and plain old IDEs and compilers are thoroughly commodotized. Eclipse, NetBeans, Visual Studio Express…

That said, CodeGear still has some interesting products, and increased resources for things like quality control and documentation would do them no harm at all.

Codegear has posted an updated roadmap for Delphi and C++ Builder, its native code development tools for Windows. There is also a .NET Delphi but it is not covered here.

The RAD Studio product includes both Delphi (Object Pascal) and C++ “personalities”. A release code-named Tiburon, set for later this year, will update Delphi to be “completely Unicode-based”, including the runtime library and Visual Component Library (VCL). There is also support for generics and anonymous methods.

What about 64-bit, another obvious shortcoming of the current Delphi product? It’s promised for the release after that, code-named “Commodore”, and set for mid-2009.

All of this is a bit late in the day, but probably soon enough to keep Delphi developers happy. The IDE is stable now and if you want RAD features Delphi is the best choice for native code apps on Windows.

I have a couple of open source projects on the go, one of which is a simple Delphi wrapper for SQLite. Lukas Gebauer has now added experimental support for user defined functions. This lets you in effect extend the SQL understood by SQLite to include your own custom functions, written in Delphi.

To try out the feature, download the wrapper and have a look at the file sqlite3udf.pas.

CodeRage 2007 starts next week. It’s a technical conference covering CodeGear’s products, including Dephi, JBuilder, C++ Builder and 3rdRail, the new Ruby on Rails IDE.

The conference is both free and virtual.

A virtual conference is no substitute for human contact. I’ve learnt this paradox over many years: even if the same content is freely available on the Web, there is substantial benefit in physical attendance. You are more focused, you learn more, you can easily ask questions, and you pick up all those indefinable signals from others who are attending.

Equally, the global fuel crisis and concern about the environmental cost of travel surely means that virtual conferencing is an idea whose time has come. Another benefit is that it includes an array of people for whom a typical tech conference is just not feasible, for financial or other reasons.

I’d like to see more of these.

A user emailed me to point out that my simple SQLite 3 wrapper for Delphi did not work with the latest SQLite 3 DLL. The problem was that SQLite 3 now likes pathnames to be in UTF8 format. I’ve made a tiny change to update it. I’ve also now placed the code in a Subversion repository, which I hope will mean I do a better job of keeping it up to date.

CodeGear has updated its Delphi Roadmap. Newly added is Delphi codename “Commodore”, set for Winter 2008, which is to include native 64-bit development. After that the company is promising to focus on multi-core/multi-threaded development.

What else is coming? Delphi ”Highlander”, due later this year, is a belated update to Delphi .NET, will support .NET 2.0, and has a new .NET database called SQL Datastore (likely some sort of port of JDataStore). No word on WPF or LINQ though - CodeGear is still playing catch-up here.

Delphi “Tiburón”, due next year, will bring another long-requested feature: full Unicode compatibility in the Win32 Delphi language and VCL (Visual Component Library), along with parameterized types. C++Builder “Barracuda” will follow, bringing the same features to C++.

The really interesting stuff comes at the end. CodeGear is “researching” a number of areas includes development for mobile devices, Rich Internet Applications, and cross-compilation to other operating systems. All this is at the “sometime, never” end of the time scale, so don’t get too excited.

All the above will be welcomed by Delphi developers, though I fear most of the potential .NET market has already been ceded to Visual Studio.

It’s not a bad roadmap though. That said, to my mind the most critical issue for CodeGear is quality control. Poor quality is what spoilt the launch of Delphi for PHP earlier this year. I discussed this issue with the new CEO Jim Douglas and EMEA product Director Jason Vokes when I was researching a recent article for The Register, and got the sense that the familiar pressure of having to release product (ready or not) to hit particular financial quarters is still a problem. Still, Delphi 2007 was a smoother launch than Delphi 2006, and that was miles better than Delphi 2005, so leaving aside Delphi for PHP things are improving.

Nobody likes product activation, but it is used increasingly by software vendors in search of more effective anti-piracy measures. Microsoft is the most prominent example, but many smaller vendors do the same. Codegear, for instance, use activation for Delphi. Even if you have a valid registration key, you cannot use the product until it has checked in with Codegear’s license server.

Last month Appforge went bust. The company made a development tool called CrossFire, which lets you code in Visual Basic or C# but cross-compile for numerous platforms including Palm, Nokia’s Series 60 and Series 80, Blackberry and Windows Mobile. A useful tool, but AppForge has an activation system that applies both to the development tool and in many cases to the client runtimes.

The AppForge license server is now offline. Result: developers with CrossFire applications and fully paid-up licenses can no longer deploy their products.

AppForge has been acquired by Oracle, but apparently Oracle has no interest in continuing the CrossFire product. Here’s what Oracle says:

Please note that Oracle’s acquisition of AppForge’s intellectual property did not include the purchase of the company as a whole, or the purchase of other AppForge assets including its customer contracts. Accordingly, Oracle does not plan to sell or provide support for former AppForge products going forward.

Former customers are fighting back. There is talk of a competition to crack AppForge activation: money for the prize is being put on the table.

What about Oracle? Is it really so difficult to resurrect the AppForge license server? Ending all support and development for a product is bad enough; robbing existing users of the right to use it seems extreme.

There may yet be a happy ending. But for now, this really is the nightmare scenario that opponents of the product activation concept feared. No, I don’t think something similar could happen to Windows and Office; but clearly there are real risks when using products from smaller vendors.

A solution is to use some form of escrow where unlocked versions of the software are guaranteed to be made available in the event that the original company can no longer offer activation services. The AppForge saga suggests that customers should insist on this or some alternative protection before committing to activation-protected software.

CodeGear has a new CEO. But why? There’s the usual bland stuff in the press release:

Today we made a change to the leadership team at CodeGear.  Jim Douglas is joining as CEO of CodeGear.  Jim will be responsible for driving CodeGear to the next level, building on the solid foundation and momentum achieved by the CodeGear team under Ben Smith’s leadership.

Departing CEO Ben Smith has a blog entry that is no more revealing.

Judging by comments on the Borland newgroups, developers are fearing the worst. The problem: a change of CEO is a sign of instability, when CodeGear customers need reassurance that their preferred tools are in good hands. I didn’t see any previous suggestion that Smith’s appointment was intended to be short-term.

To make matters worse, there are signs that both Delphi for PHP (see here) and Delphi 2007 (see here) were released too quickly - especially Delphi for PHP. Strategically unwise.

There’s still nothing to touch Delphi for native Windows (if you don’t need 64-bit). And tackling PHP tools is a great idea. But in a difficult market the company cannot afford many slip-ups.