The Register: Ten years of .NET - Did Microsoft deliver?

The always excellent Tim Anderson, writing for the always excellent The Register, has put together a nice article on the relative success and failure of .NET as a platform and as a Java-killer.

I've made it clear in the past that I'm no fan of .NET and I don't see any clear benefit to our industry by its introduction. This paragraph sums it up nicely:

A long-standing gripe is that Microsoft itself has been slow to adopt .NET. "It will be the framework that Microsoft itself uses going forward" Microsoft's Tony Goodhew told TechEd in 2000. The company, though, has continued to use native code and C++ as the primary development platform for its crown jewels, Windows and Office. COM has never gone away, and .NET developers who want to use new Windows 7 APIs, for example, have to use an interop library to do so.

Seeing as CodeGear/Embarcadero came to the same conclusion when they decided to stop playing catch-up with .NET in Delphi, I can justify my decision never to take our software into the .NET arena.

The road to Delphi 2009 - Part 1 (iv)

So it has been a while since I last updated on my progress with the migration from Delphi 6 to Delphi 2009. There's a reason. I'm still on Delphi 6 and I've got nowhere fast with ODBCExpress!

To be fair to its developer, Pieter Myburgh, it isn't his project anymore and he has been very good in keeping in touch with me and letting me know how the open source status is coming along. Very slowly, it would seem. He created a project on SourceForge and that is the only activity there has been. I think legal red tape is giving him a bit of a headache.

I know I'm not the only one really hoping we can get ODBCExpress moved up to Unicode-enabled Delphi 2009. But I'm starting to come under a bit of pressure now to look at alternatives. It is understandable - we paid a lot of money of the new version (as it was then) of Delphi, under my recommendation, only to find we can't use it.

I've looked at changing to dbGo (ADO) or dbExpress, and have participated in some interesting discussions on Stack Overflow about the merits of both. But ultimately, the thought of having to change to the core database connectivity components of 10 years worth of software (including nearly 50 plug-ins) makes me shudder. Not least because we use a great deal of the intricate little details of ODBC and ODBCExpress, which we'd have to find alternatives for - if, indeed, an alternative is available.

On the upside, we would have had to buy Delphi 2009 or 2010 this year anyway, because of Embarcadero's decision to only allow upgrade prices for users of Delphi 2006 and later from 2010.

And also I have got all the other component sets that we use installed in Delphi 2009, and the main application compiles. So small steps are being made.

The road to Delphi 2009 - Part 1 (iii)

Still calling this Part 1 (Act 3) as I'm not actively pushing anything forward until I've overcome the ODBCExpress hurdle. I've had some positive steps forward with this.

I have been in regular contact with Pieter Myburg, its original author. Even though he is no longer actively developing it, he has very helpfully made some changes to 3 files that allow the packages to compile and install into Delphi 2009.

Even more helpfully, he has agreed to Open Source it and is looking for moderators. I have agreed to help (as has another user this morning) but we need more, as I can't honestly say with full confidence what I know what I'm doing with the code! I don't want to give out his email address on a blog but the newsgroup for ODBCExpress is news.korbitec.com.

So now I can connect my data and view it. I've already noticed that nvarchar fields (SQL Server) display with non-printable characters so that is my first area of investigation.

I have also come across another peculiar one. If I connect within the IDE, everything displays in a DBGrid. If I run the executable, when the database connects, the debugger pops up and shows me the CPU Window on ntdll.DbgBreakPoint. This used to happen to me in Delphi 6 when I pressed F12 in my software, which I understand was a bug left in the IDE. However, this happens when the database connects so I'm guessing it must be something in code.Whether that is ODBCExpress code or native VCL code, I'm unsure.

Slowly moving forward.

The road to Delphi 2009 - Part 1 (reprise)

So I haven't really got any further yet because I'm waiting to hear back from the author of ODBCExpress whether or not he will look to upgrade the packages for Delphi 2009. He's emailed to say he is "looking into it". From the newsgroup I can see I'm not the only one crossing my fingers.

If he doesn't then D2009 will be put on hold while I port 10 years of software to another database connectivity tool, so I can even open it in D2009. If he does, well then we'll be all set for moving onwards.

After I posted about having less screen real-estate, I found that using the push-pins gave me my entire screen. Nice touch. Those palettes now float into view if I need them, otherwise they float away. Very nice.

The road to Delphi 2009 - Part 1

OK, so I started with the easy stuff. Installing third-party components.

Raize Components - Check
TMS Component Pack - Check
ReportBuilder Enterprise/Server - Check

OK, these were easy because they were designed for Delphi 2009.

ODBCExpress - Oh. Well, according to its lead developer Pieter Myburg on the support newsgroup, "we have stopped active development of ODBCExpress, and we won't be porting it to future versions of Delphi ourselves".

The last support was for Delphi 2006 which, as I understand, compiles fine in Delphi 2007 as that was a non-breaking release. But not Delphi 2009, oh no. So if anyone out there has any experience with bringing this component set up to Delphi 2009, I would love to hear from you. Without this, we're stumped. It'd be a case of going back through 10 years of software and rewriting it to use dbExpress or ADOExpress. And I seriously don't think we can afford that time.

By the way, bearing in mind I have come from Delphi 6 and have only seen screenshots of the IDE from Delphi 2005 onwards, I really like the IDE. Although I seem to have less code editing space because of all the other (really very useful) palettes that surround it.

Bit the bullet: Delphi 2009!

So, I finally bit the bullet and purchased a Delphi upgrade, to D2009. The offer was too tempting and I have started to become frustrated with being left too far behind with Delphi 6.

Thanks to one of the distributors in the UK, Grey Matter, we got the D2009 upgrade for 20% off. This was a promotion they were running for those who didn't want to take advantage of June's "Buy Delphi and get RAD Studio free" promotion. Apart from a slight, but only curious interest in Delphi Prism, there wasn't enough to tempt me, in these economic times, to not take the 20% off instead.

And so I will chronicle my journey to take our 10 year old product, written in Delphi 5 then Delphi 6, to Delphi 2009. The challenges I forsee are more to do with API headers written for some of the hardware devices (clocking terminals) that we support with our T&A product, but time will tell.

To start with, it will be a case of getting the main part of the software converted and see how that goes. I have the latest versions of all our third-party products such as Raize Components 5, TMS Component Pack, ReportBuilder Server & Enterprise 11 and TsiLang Translation.

Could have some fun with older components like the Crystal Reports VCL component for Delphi (for Crystal Reports 7). Anyone got any experience with that?

Should be "interesting"...!

Upgrading a major project to Delphi 2009

Lars Dybdahl has posted an excellent summary of his experience converting older Delphi projects to Delphi 2009. Very relevant to me and many Delphi users, I'm sure:

Compas Pascal: Upgrading a major project to Delphi 2009: "g"