Meetings 2020

Agenda & Information for the Meetings held in 2020. See Next Meeting for next meeting.
For each of the meeting dates there is a link to the meeting summary.

See Downloads 2020 for the available files associated with the meetings

Date: 10th November 2020

Agenda

Marvin – internal system for support, billing, server monitoring and scheduled upgrades – Patrick Hort
We have developed, over the years, what has become a single internal tool that is used to handle all of our day-to-day operations to support the business. It’s built on the same in-house ORM framework that underpins our various systems including our commercial ticketing/retail system Oscar, and by keeping everything in-house, we’re able to do things exactly the way we want to. Plus I always think it’s more fun to roll your own!
Oh **** we need an installer – Rob Lambden
Faced with unexpectedly having to write software on a very tight timescale that would need regular compliance updates, we look into how we tackled the software distribution needs – a signed installer that contains a signed uninstaller, and enabling auto-updates using the TMS WebUpdate component

Webpage route planner with Google API – Mark Jacob
The session will cover the following – specifying endpoints, setting options,
getting the routes, drawing lines on the map representing the routes and displaying the directions

Date: 12th October 2020

Agenda

Using Webassembly via Blazor – David Capps
Webassembly lets you run code from non-Javascript languages directly within the web browser. In this session we’ll look at Blazor, Microsoft’s new web app framework that can use webassembly, and port a simple desktop application to run completely inside the browser.
Exploring some basic AWS services supported by Delphi – Conrad Vermeulen
The session will include an overview of AWS, S3, SQS, RDS(some support by Delphi), Beanstalk and demo using Delphi to create a simple web app that uses SQS and S3…plus a bit more

Date: 16th September 2020

Agenda

Integrating DevExpress Word Processing and Spreadsheets into Delphi – Tim Hayes
Quinjo Casemaker for legal professionals integrates WP and Spreadsheets using components from DevExpress. These extremely powerful components integrate seamlessly with the DevExpress Ribbons. Creating a workable program can be achieved in a minute or two.
Designing a dashboard in Delphi, SQL, HTML, JS – David Mew
Creating a web service in Delphi to serve an analytics dashboard with HTML, JS front end (using ApexCharts.js) and SQL (ODBC) back end.
Nugget: The Delphi Parser- Jason Chapman
Brief look at the tool and my experiences so far.

Date: 14th July 2020

Agenda

More about Git – Will Watts
It’s four years since Will Watts first gave a Developers Group talk on Git. He returns to share tips, warnings and suggestions based on his experience of practical use in the intervening period.
The software and firmware involved in model railway control – Pete Brownlow
Live demonstration of model railway control in action, using various digital
technologies with associated software and firmware including some code overviews.
File Syncronisation Using Sync.Com – Paul Woodhams
A handy free or upgradable service to synchronise files between devices.

Date: 15th June 2020

Agenda

Gnostice Document Studio for Delphi – Girish Patil
In this session I will take you through a tour of the Gnostice Document Studio product for Delphi with a deeper look into specific real-world scenarios related to PDF forms processing. There are many new features related to forms processing that will be shown for the first time. We will also do a quick run of the main feature areas of the product, covering what’s new, through code and demos. I also plan to step in briefly into the internal design of some parts of the product, and our general approach to building the product.Product home page: https://www.gnostice.com/xdoc-delphi
Introduction to Go – A practical demo – Conrad Vermeulen
A quick overview of Golang with a practical example developing a small web app
RAD Studio 10.4 – discussion about the product – led by Jason Chapman
Please join the session and share you experiences of the latest release.

Date: 13th May 2020

Agenda

Test Driven Delphi Development (TDDD) – Jens Fudge
Go through the theory of why and how TDD, use the tools in the box, use also other tools. Everything with examples
Developing a TMS Stack Application – Russell Weetch
A look at developing an app that uses the full TMS stack framework Aurelius – XData – Web Core

Date: 14th April 2020

Agenda

Jason’s dramatic working title: “Meet Dave Millington…the man, the myth”; a brief history of; a day in the life of; role in EMBT; EMBT passion; ask me Q’s
Webcore – Ian Hamilton
A quick intro to what it is, how I think it works and what I have found while using it.
Q&A / TMS Development – Bruno Fierens
Possible coding challenge – Jason Chapman

Date: 16th March 2020

Agenda

An exercise in distributed database software for use by the legal profession – Quinjo CaseMaker™ Tim Hayes
Most people relate lawyers to wasteful amounts of paper. True. A ream of paper (500 pages) wastes 6% of a tree and around 4kg carbon footprint. UK Lawyers are still trained in and employ a multitude paper-based operations. The session will briefly introduce and show some of the product highlights which were design and development challenges which will be addressed, possibly over a number of sessions. In this first session, the construction of a loosely-coupled distributed database will be discussed. Clustered MySQL and Client-side SQLite were employed together with a somewhat unique in memory object and link structure employed to provide for the complex linkages in what is essentially a document-based system
Google Sheets Rest API. With Holiday Photos – Pete Sykes
Pete will demonstrate how to interact with Google Sheets programmatically using Google’s API. He will somehow contrive to show some of his holiday photos as part of the session.
Nugget: Snagit (screen grabs + video grabs): Adam Brett
Nugget: VMWare – Brian Long

Date: 12th February 2020

Agenda

Generating dynamic content in Delphi with the Sempare Boot Velocity Template Engine – Conrad Vermeulen
An easy to use templating engine for Delphi for generating dynamic content for email, web, and general tooling.
Using FastScript – Martin Hamilton
How to include scripts into your application using FastScript.
Windows Installable File System (IFS) – file system on steriods – Rob Lambden

Date: 14th January 2020

Agenda

- How to use the Microsoft Graph API – Andrew Cutforth
  Microsoft Graph API is the new way to work with Microsoft services in the cloud such as Office 365. Andrew is going to show you how to connect to the API and examples of working with OneDrive.
- Visual Studio Code – The Programmer’s Editor for the 2020s – Will Watts
  Microsoft’s VS Code is taking the coding world by storm. Why is this so? How is it made? How does it integrate with <my fave programming language>? Does it support WordStar key bindings? Will Watts may have the answers.
- Delphi Books Round Up – Neil Parrish
  Over the past few years quite a number of Delphi books have been published, probably more than you think. The trouble can be finding them. Hopefully this round up will sort that and also give a chance to share your opinion on any you have read.
- Webcore VS code – Jason Chapman
  A brief show and tell from training day
- MS Graph – Additional use cases – Jason Chapman

For the rest of 2020 dates

Previous Meetings:

Agendas for previous years can be found here: