Location: The Prince Albert, 163 Royal College Street, London, NW1 0SG
To book or ask questions please contact us
See Downloads 2018 for the available files associated with the meetings.
Agenda
May is “Debugging Day” where there will be a number of short talks on software and methods used for code debugging.
- Demo: MadExcept – Paul Woodhams
Paul will walk-through how to use the application, providing a demo of the reporting process using a purpose built application designed to crash. - Nugget: DebugView – Adam Brett
Delphi programmers will be familiar with the procedure OutputDebugString(). This causes useful messages to be shown in the Delphi IDE debug-messages window when running a program in debug-mode. DebugView is a Microsoft utility program which can be run on any computer and which surfaces the same messages, without Delphi running, allowing programmers to debug execution of a program on a remote machine. - Nugget: Logging from multiple threads without affecting performance – David Capps
We need to log debug messages from multiple threads, without slowing things down, and without filling up the users’ disk with historical logs – this is how it works. - Nugget: EurekaLog – Dave Martel
- Nugget: system audit -> message dialogue -> basic logging -> cnDebugger – Jason Chapman
- Talk: Content TBC – Marco Cantu (Embarcadero)
More information and session times to follow
Previous Meetings:For the rest of 2018 dates
Date: 16th April 2018
Agenda
- Talk: Parsing text using ANTLR (and Hime and Coco/R) – David Capps
Parser generators let you write a set of rules to parse input text, generate objects representing the data in the input, and provide clear feedback when the input doesn’t match your expected data. We’ll look at three different parser generators and how they can be used to easily add some customising into your applications. - Talk: Software Design Case Study – Andrew Cutforth
I was asked to redevelop some software that produces technical spec documents because it was clunky and unreliable. It currently uses xml to hold the topics structure and rich text to hold the paragraphs. I am moving all of this to a database and making the formatting a production step. This is a partially written system which I will demo and discuss the pros and cons of doing it this way. - Nugget: Security for the Internet of Things Gets More Ridiculous Every Day – Mark Jacobs
- Nugget: Custom Browser Search Engine Shortcuts – Brian Long
Online Delphi help can be accessed quicker if you know how. Let’s see how! The same applies to locating information on Stack Overflow, amazon, or your favourite web site
| Time | Description | Speaker |
| 12:00 | Registration (with tea and coffee) | Note time change |
| 12:00 | News/Questions | Brian Long |
| 13:00 | Break/Lunch | |
| 13:15 | Parsing text using ANTLR (and Hime and Coco/R) | David Capps |
| 14:30 | Custom Browser Search Engine Shortcuts | Brian Long |
| 15:00 | Break/Lunch | |
| 15:15 | Software Design Case Study | Andrew Cutforth |
| 16:15 | Security for the Internet of Things Gets More Ridiculous Every Day | Mark Jacobs |
| 17:00 | Finish |
Date: 14th March 2018
Agenda
- Talk: Stretching ElasticSearch – Peter Sykes
ElasticSearch is a hugely popular, RESTful, open source, non-SQL document database with blazingly fast textual search capabilities. Picking up where Patrick Hort left off last September (but with a brief recap) Pete will illustrate its advantages (and disadvantages) for performing textual searches of generally structured data. Any program code will be in C# but the important stuff is all in how queries are structured and that is all done using JSON. - Talk: Fun and Games with 3D surface plotting: From VCL to Firemonkey – Dave Martel
Who doesn’t like seeing 3D models and surfaces being rotated and zoomed? This session covers a commercial application (though it will be provided for free to clients) for visualizing various properties of their samples. These vary from the real 3D shape of the sample surface (down to very small scale) to electrical and chemical properties. The initial application is written in the VCL and makes use of the free GLScene components for interacting with OpenGL.
We ran in to issues on some graphics cards, and have a hankering to make this available cross-platform, so decided to investigate Firemonkey. This is in an early stage (so there is plenty of scope for digging around in the code). Examples of the difference in philosophy will be shown. Currently the 3D aspects are taking shape nicely, but the 2D image display is giving us more headaches as our component provider for 2D image handling and annotation is not yet onboard with Firemonkey (and may not ever be).
If we get through the code and questions early, I will show some of the nicer demos I have found making use of the various system. - Nugget: Joy of JSON – Peter Sykes
JSON – JavaScript Object Notation is well known as a lightweight, human-readable format used particularly in modern web communications. Patrick Hort did an excellent introduction to JSON last September but, for those who missed that, Pete will do a very swift recap of the format itself before focusing on hints and tips for using it for ad-hoc persistence of objects. The examples will be in C# but the principles will be applicable to any language with a reasonable JSON library.
| Time | Description | Speaker |
| 12:00 | Registration (with tea and coffee) | Note time change |
| 12:00 | News/Questions | Pete Sykes |
| 13:00 | Break/Lunch | |
| 13:15 | Joy of JSON | Pete Sykes |
| 14:00 | Fun and Games with 3D surface plotting: From VCL to Firemonkey | Dave Martel |
| 15:15 | Break | |
| 15:30 | Stretching ElasticSearch | Pete Sykes |
| 17:00 | Finish |
Date: 13th February 2018
Agenda
Code Comparison Day: Different implementations of Calendar-like Components
- Talk: TMyCalendar Component using TMS Diagram Studio – Adam Brett
My line-of-business applications include a “Work Surface” which is a TMS TatDiagram component, on which the program draws a series of objects. The atDiagram is powerful because it is scalable. Offering a lot of the advantages of the new Delphi Firemonkey UI components within a VCL application. This means the programmer or user can re-scale the Work Surface and objects on it will also re-scale smoothly. However, atDiagram comes with a fairly limited set of elements: DiagramBlocks, Text, Shapes … So complex IU requires a programmer to build composite components using these elements.
I have rarely done pure IU design programming, so writing a calendar using the elements in TatDiagram was an interesting challenge. The development was done on a “that’s good enough” basis, trying to code cleanly and effectively, but in a limited time. - Talk: It’s a date! – Peter Edwards
Utilising a calendar object to represent time lined activities & control of associated resources.
In the real world a user interface that deals with tasks in a manner that a user can immediately relate to is always a big bonus and of course an easy sell. We can take a look at how sales orders and distribution logistics can be merged together to provide easy overview daily tasks and provide valuable data aggregation as an unexpected by product. - Talk: Recurring Tasks using TMS – Jason Chapman
- Talk: Calendar using MySQL – Martin Hamilton
As part of the “Campsite Booking System”, I use MySQL to keep track of bookings and present them onto a calendar for user interaction.
Here I outline how it works.
Separate from the Calendar Day - Nugget: REST Update – Peter Edwards
There will also a short review on the new Jason reader Writer in 10.2.2 that completely negates the work around that I presented last time.
| Time | Description | Speaker |
| 12:00 | Registration (with tea and coffee) | Note time change |
| 12:00 | News/Questions | Jason Chapman |
| 13:00 | REST 10.2.2 Show and Tell | Peter Edwards |
| 13:15 | Break for Lunch/Catch Up | |
| 13:30 | Session Introduction & TMS Component | Adam Brett |
| 14:15 | It’s a Date! | Peter Edwards |
| 14:45 | Break | |
| 15:00 | Recurring Tasks using TMS | Jason Chapman |
| 15:45 | MySQL Component | Martin Hamilton |
| 16:15 | Group Discussion | All |
| 17:00 | Finish |
Date: 15th January 2018
Agenda
Topics include:
- Talk: Creative debugging techniques – Brian Long
Breakpoints, watch expressions, stepping through code. It’s same old same old, isn’t it? Well, let’s take a closer look to see if we can find some interesting uses and applications of these and other debugging facilities to help in your debugging sessions. - Talk: Setting up Microsoft Azure Web Services (aka hosted IIS) and Website Volume/Stress Testing – Patrick Hort
We have recently had issues with the scalability of our online booking system, so we have been working on volume/stress testing (using a tool called WCAT) and also at ways to increase capacity by using Azure Web Services. This talk will cover what we’ve learnt so far, and the problems we’ve encountered.
- Nugget: Free SSL Certificates – Mark Jacobs
How to set up a CSR using OpenSSL tools, go onto zerossl’s site and use the CSR to generate a 3 month free SSL certificate, valid everywhere - Nugget: Changing the behaviour of comboboxes globally, using the Application OnMessage event – Mark Jacobs
Demonstration of using the Application OnMessage event to allow me centrally control the behaviour of all comboboxes in my application
- Nugget: Writing text in FMX – Martin Hamilton
In VCL, simply use “TextOut” to send text to a Canvas but, with FireMonkey, it’s more complicated.
|
Time |
Description | Speaker |
| 12:00 | Registration (with tea and coffee) | Note time change |
| 12:00 | News/Questions | Brian Long |
| 12:45 | Break for Lunch/Catch Up | |
| 13:00 | Creative debugging techniques | Brian Long |
| 14:15 | Free SSL Certificates | Mark Jacobs |
| 14:45 | Break | |
| 15:00 | Setting up Microsoft Azure Web Services (aka hosted IIS) and Website Volume/Stress Testing | Patrick Hort |
| 16:15 | Writing text in FMX | Martin Hamilton |
| 16:45 | Changing the behaviour of comboboxes globally, using the Application OnMessage event | Mark Jacobs |
| 17:00 | Finish |
Agendas for previous years can be found here:
