The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

Jeroen W. Pluimers on .NET, C#, Delphi, databases, and personal interests

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Archive for the ‘.NET’ Category

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Delphi – record and class helpers: an overview of useful links

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/28

At the EKON13 conference, I will be presenting a talk about record and class helpers.

This morning, my laptop did “beeeeeeep beep beep” followed by a deadly silence.
It will take a while before my spare laptop arrives at the hotel and my Vista and VM’s are working again.
So I needed to redo some of my preparations to make sure that I can do a ‘plan B’ if restoring on the spare laptop fails.

Hence below a list of useful links, not yet in a particular order, but it saves you browsing through search engine results sifting the good from the not so good info.

http://www.davinciunltd.com/code/delphi-class-helpers/

Posted in .NET, .NET CF, Conferences, Delphi, Development, EKON, Event, Software Development | Leave a Comment »

CodeRage 4 session material download locations changed – CodeCentral messed up

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/18

Somehow, CodeCentral managed to not only delete my uploaded CodeRage 4 session materials (the videos are fine!), but also newer uploads with other submissions.

Since I’m in crush mode to get the BASTA! and DelphiLive 2009 Germany sessions done, and all Embarcadero sites having to do with their membership server perform like a dead horse, I have temporary moved the downloads, and corrected my earlier post on the downloads.

I have notified Embarcadero of the problems, so I’m pretty sure they are being addressed on their side as well.
Edit 20090919: Embarcadero indicated that between 20090913 and 20090914 there has been a database restore on CodeCentral. Some entries therefore have been permanently lost.

When I get back from the conferences, and CodeCentral is more responsive, I’ll retry uploading it there, and correct the posts.
In the mean time, be sure not to save shortcuts to the current locations, as they are bound to change.

The are the new download locations can all be found in my xs4all temporary CodeRage 4 2009 download folder.

This is the full list of my CodeRage 4 sessions and places where you can download everything: Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, ASCII, CodeRage, CommandLine, Conferences, CP437/OEM 437/PC-8, Database Development, Debugging, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Event, Firebird, InterBase, ISO-8859, ISO8859, Prism, Software Development, SQL Server, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8, Windows-1252 | 1 Comment »

.NET/C# – ExceptionCatcher and ExceptionHelper gems

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/14

http://it-republik.de/dotnet/basta/The class presented in this article is part of my “.NET Gems – Small Pieces of Code that make your Day” session that will be presented at the BASTA! conference next week in Mainz, Germany.
It is going to be a fun conference, with lots of (internationally) renowned speakers (like Oliver Sturm, Ingo Rammer, Stephen Forte, Neil Ford and Dino Esposito).
Well worth attending!

OK. Let’s show the gems, and assume you are writing a method that is not allowed to let exceptions leave it’s implementation.
This is a common case, for instance you develop COM Servers, Windows Services and to a lesser extent Web Services.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, BASTA!, C#, C# 2.0, Development, Event, Software Development, Visual Studio and tools | Leave a Comment »

CodeRage 4: session replays are online too!

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/13

Embarcadero has made available the replays of the CodeRage 4 sessions.
You can find them in the CodeRage 4 sessions overview.

In order to download them from that overview, NOTE: To access this session replay, you must be logged into EDN. you can login or sign-up (which is free).

To make it easier to find all the relevant downloads, below is an overview of my sessions and their links.

Let me know what you use it for, I’m always interested!

Update 20090918: changed the download locations because CodeCentral messed up.
Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in .NET, ASCII, C#, C# 2.0, CodeRage, CommandLine, Conferences, CP437/OEM 437/PC-8, Database Development, Debugging, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Event, Firebird, InterBase, ISO-8859, ISO8859, Java, Prism, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8, Visual Studio and tools, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 4 Comments »

CodeRage 4: session “Using Unicode and Other Encodings in your Programs” video, chat and Q&A transcripts

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/11

Not only can you watch the video and download the CodeRage 4 session on materials on Using Unicode and Other Encodings in your Programs, but below you can also find the chat transcripts below.

VIP Room Transcript with Q&A

(9/11/2009 9:09:19 AM) The topic is: Session Room 2 – “Using Unicode and Other Encodings in your Programs” by Jeroen Pluimers


Public Room Transcript

(5:52:14 PM) Christine_Ellis has set the topic to: Session Room 2 – “Using Unicode and Other Encodings in your Programs” by Jeroen Pluimers
(9/11/2009 9:12:47 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: I got a bunch of 406 error messages in the jibber chat client, so I was afraid it lost the connection :-)
(9/11/2009 9:15:45 AM) Jim_Ferguson: Jeroen, Have you been getting a bunch of internal errors when you get fancy with generics?
(9/11/2009 9:15:53 AM) Borland: BTW, DavidI, excellent internet radio choice of KPIG. Very good Blues.
(9/11/2009 9:36:43 AM) Mandy_Walker: http://etncaweb04.embarcadero.com/resources/technical_papers/Delphi-and-Unicode_Marco-Cantu.pdf
(9/11/2009 9:39:14 AM) Jim_Ferguson: Strings are getting fatter on the back end.
(9/11/2009 9:40:39 AM) Mandy_Walker: Sorry, for incorrect link from slide. Better http://etnaweb04.embarcadero.com/resources/technical_papers/
(9/11/2009 9:49:20 AM) Jim_Ferguson: TBYtes and pChar arent equivalt. TBytes is a dynamic array. Shouln’t be pByte instead of TBytes?
(9/11/2009 9:53:05 AM) Jim_Ferguson: Sounds like Intel needs to build Unicode into the processor. There is a lot of out board thinking when it comes to characters now.
(9/11/2009 9:57:19 AM) Mandy_Walker: http://it-republik.de/konferenzen/delphi_live/material/DelpiLive09_Cantu_Unicode.pdf
(9/11/2009 9:58:26 AM) Borland: Thanks Joroen, this was packed with great information sources.
(9/11/2009 9:59:09 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: http://en.wordpress.com/tag/coderage/
(9/11/2009 9:59:17 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: https://wiert.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/coderage-4-session-materials-available-for-download/
(9/11/2009 9:59:24 AM) Mandy_Walker: Thx, Jeroen
(9/11/2009 10:00:47 AM) Erwin_Mouthaan: Bedankt Jeroen. Leuke presentatie!
(9/11/2009 10:01:04 AM) jthurman: Jeroen is a marching band guy?
(9/11/2009 10:01:05 AM) M_L: Thanks!
(9/11/2009 10:01:21 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: http://www.wmc.nl
(9/11/2009 10:01:22 AM) Giel: Bedankt Jeroen!
(9/11/2009 10:01:32 AM) Robert_D_Smith: I played snare and bass drum, Jeroen
(9/11/2009 10:01:40 AM) jthurman: Jeroen: I teach high school marching band in the USA. We should talk sometime.
(9/11/2009 10:02:05 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: write me an email: jeroen@pluimers.com
(9/11/2009 10:02:09 AM) jthurman: Will do
(9/11/2009 10:02:45 AM) Robert_Evans: Thanks Jeroen. Great stuff!
(9/11/2009 10:03:11 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: you are welcome; let me know when you have questions or run into things that I might be able to help with
(9/11/2009 10:04:48 AM) Jeroen_Pluimers: talking about migration projects: we have done quite a few for clients; so if you need help with that as well, drop me an email
(9/11/2009 10:05:46 AM) Christine_Ellis has set the topic to: Session Room 2 – “New Features in the RAD Studio IDE” by Mark Duncan & Darren Kosinski

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, C#, CommandLine, Delphi, Development, Encoding, ISO-8859, ISO8859, Prism, Software Development, Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 1 Comment »

Regular expressions and the ASP.NET RegularExpressionValidator control – an overview of useful links

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/10

Every now and then I need the ASP.NET RegularExpressionValidator control to validate some user input on a web-page using .NET Regular Expressions (which are very similar to regular expressions used in other languages and frameworks).

Somehow, I have lost loads of time because many of the hits on Google show up high in the results, but do not actually help that much.

So I decided to put up a bunch of links to pages that I think are relevant, or helped me much.
This list is not definitive: please comment when you have links to better information!

Note: this list is current at the instant of the latest edit timestamp: tools might have improved (or disappeared) since then.
Opnions are mine; if you do not agree: please convince me why.

Tools

Regular Expression builder applications

  • Expresso – free .NET WinForms application to visually build and test regular expressions (free registraion required after 60 days of trial usage)
  • RegexWorkbench – free .NET WinForms application to build and test regular expressions (much more rudimentary than Expresso)

Regular Expression test applications

  • RegexLib tester – free on-line regular expresion tester where you can choose the client platform (.NET/ClientSide/SilverLight)
  • The Regulator – free .NET WinForms application to test regular expressions with built in support for RegexLib.com
  • The Regex Coach – free LISP Windows application to test regular expressions and tries to explain them in plain english
  • RegExPal – free on-line JavaScript regular expression tester (tests the client side only)
  • ReWork – free on-line JavaScript tester with samples in JavaScript/PHP/Python/Ruby
  • RegexDesigner.NET – free .NET WinForms application to test regular expressions and generate C#/VB.NET code from them (ot really a “Designer” after all and much less sophisticated than The Regulator)

Tools lists

Tools not worth looking at

  • Regulazy – too rudimentary

Sites/Documentation/Examples

Some comments on common regular expression solutions

  • RegEx for email usuaully reject valid email adresses like jeroen+info@pluimers.subdomain.info
    Dominic has some very nice info on validating email adresses
  • RegEx for a minimum number of characters usually contain \w, which is not any character!
    Better use ^(.{6,})$ than ^(\w{6,})$ if you want a minimum length of 6 characters.

Bugs

Posted in .NET, ASP.NET, Development, Encoding, JavaScript/ECMAScript, LISP, RegEx, Scripting, Software Development, Unicode, Web Development | Leave a Comment »

CodeRage 4: session “Practical XML in Delphi” chat and Q&A transcripts

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/09

Not only can you download CodeRage 4 session on materials on Practical XML in Delphi, but below you can also find the chat transcripts below.

Note the times are a bit odd: when the chat window refreshes, it sometimes uses the PST time zone, but new posts are using the local time zone.
Hence the sudden jump from 9 AM to  almost 6 PM.

VIP Room Transcript with Q&A

[5:46:28 PM] <davidi>

Q: thomasgrubb asked: “Is there an implementation for XMLDocument (for Delphi Win32) that is file-mapped, e.g., the whole doc is not loaded into memory?”
A: Not that Jeroen is aware of.
[5:46:54 PM] <davidi>

Q: thomasgrubb asked: “Is there an implementation for XMLDocument (for Delphi Win32) that is file-mapped, e.g., the whole doc is not loaded into memory?”
A: Not that Jeroen is aware of. Send Jeroen an email and he will blog about other solutions.
[5:47:20 PM] <davidi>

Q: thomasgrubb asked: “For Embarcadero Technologies: Are you going to develop a better option for validating XML on the Win32 side in the future?”
A: David I – replied – I will forward this to R&D and Product management
[5:53:14 PM] <davidi>

Q: devtux asked: “are you using any XML test generator? Please, suggest one if yes”
A: XMLSpy
[5:53:47 PM] <davidi>

Q: richz asked: “I’ve been trying for weeks to find out how to have the Win32 Delphi IDE generate code to serialize/de-serialize my class properties to an XML file. Is there anything in the IDE to do that?”
A: From Delphi 2010 on – you can use DBX support for JSON!

Public Room Transcript

[7:58:58 AM] * Christine_Ellis has set the topic to: Session Room 2 – Next Session”Practical XML in Delphi” at 8AM PDT
[8:02:15 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> Starting livemeeting
[8:03:59 AM] * Jeroen_Pluimers is wondering why LiveMeeting is always asking for email/company. Does it suffer from Korsakov’s disease?
[8:07:34 AM] <Christine_Ellis> It asks because we tell it to.
[8:08:22 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> but it never remembers, even if you start it with the same session parametes.
[8:08:41 AM] <Christine_Ellis> live meeting doesn’t use cookies and doesn’t know who you are
[8:08:47 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> ok.
[8:09:29 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> can we do a quick audio test?
[8:12:48 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> I mean: fro my current Microphone; it works with sound recorder, but wonder if Live Meeting will get it today as well.
[8:15:55 AM] * Christine_Ellis has set the topic to: Session Room 2 – “Practical XML in Delphi“
[8:35:37 AM] <Peter_Wolf> a lot of memory = usually 10 timer more than the size of XML file bytes
[8:36:27 AM] <Peter_Wolf> … the size of XML file in bytes
[8:39:14 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> @Peter: that totally depends on what you use to read that XML. The MSXML and Internet Explorer are notorous memory hogs. But .NET is much more efficient on memory usage.
[8:40:15 AM] <Peter_Wolf> i ment MSXML which is default for most users
[8:41:17 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> @Peter: yup, that’s why I mentioned that as the first one. Most of the Win32 users will use MSXML, because that is the default for Win32.
[8:43:45 AM] * Jeroen_Pluimers warns: be carefull where you press ESC in IE: it can unload your chat window.
[8:47:29 AM] <Scott_Hollows> my brain hurts
[8:48:57 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> Scott: let me know later on if I can make it more clear to you.
[8:50:27 AM] <Ryan_Ford> Will this presentation be available for download?
[8:51:05 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> @Ryan: yes it will.
[8:52:59 AM] <Ryan_Ford> Its so nice to run 8GB for development
[8:52:59 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> @Ryan: the session materials are available for download here: https://wiert.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/coderage-4-session-materials-available-for-download/ The replays will be available for download after the conference.
[8:58:56 AM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> My VIP room died.
[9:00:08 AM] <AbsaLootly> … you have to hate it when that happens…
[9:01:46 AM] <Ryan_Ford> What alternatives for MSXML are there for WIN32
[9:02:22 AM] <Peter_Wolf> it also takes forever to open really big XML files wh MSXML
[5:45:31 PM] <AbsaLootly> I saw one developer try to put an entire database in one xml file… it took several hours to load it.
[5:51:59 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> MSXML
[5:52:03 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> ADOM XML
[5:52:05 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> Xerces
[5:52:56 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> That straight from the Delphi 2010 TXMLDocument.DOMVendor property
[5:53:25 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> XMLSpy can generate test ML
[5:54:16 PM] <Rich__> Thx
[5:55:17 PM] <Jim_Ferguson> Can you briefly describe JSON?
[5:56:02 PM] <Jim_Ferguson> what tool do you use transcribe your chat?
[5:56:23 PM] <Jon> it’s called a keyboard :)

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CodeRage, CommandLine, Conferences, Database Development, Debugging, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Event, ISO-8859, ISO8859, Prism, Software Development, Source Code Management, TFS (Team Foundation System), UTF-8, UTF8, Visual Studio and tools, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

CodeRage 4: session materials are available for download« The Wiert Corner – Jeroen Pluimers’ irregular stream of Wiert stuff

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/09

My CodeRage 4 session materials are available for download:

CodeRage 4 is a free, virtual conference on Embarcadero technologies with a lot of Delphi sessions.
It is held from September 8 till 11, 2009, i.e. while I write this :-)
If you want to watch sessions live, be sure to register through LiveMeeting (the technology they use for making this all happen).

Let me know if you download, and what you are using the sample code for.

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CodeRage, CommandLine, Conferences, Database Development, Debugging, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Event, Firebird, InterBase, ISO-8859, ISO8859, Prism, Software Development, Source Code Management, SQL Server, TFS (Team Foundation System), Unicode, UTF-8, UTF8, Visual Studio and tools, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | 4 Comments »

CodeRage 4: sessions recorded; Delphi 2010 migration was a beeze; samples/slides will be uploaded soon

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/05

I just finished recording my CodeRage 4 sessions:

  • Practical XML in Delphi
  • Reliable Communication between Applications with Delphi and ActiveMQ
  • Using Unicode and Other Encodings in your Programs

CodeRage 4 is a free, virtual conference on Embarcadero technologies with a lot of Delphi sessions.
It is held from September 8 till 11, 2009, i.e. next week :-)
If you want to watch sessions live, be sure to register through LiveMeeting (the technology they use for making this all happen).

This week, I found some time do migrate all the sample projects to the release versions of Delphi Win32 2010 and Delphi Prism 2010.

Delphi Win32 2010 works like a charm: it is much faster and has a much smaller footprint than any other Galileo based IDE.
In fact, it feels almost as fast as the pre-Galileo based IDE’s.
With the added benefit that all the new features make me much more productive, not the least because it has not yet crashed on me this week once.
Crashing has been a frequent thing on me since Delphi 4 (maybe I should not even mention that number ), for most IDE’s at least a couple of times a week, so this is good.

Delphi Prism 2010 works really nice too, it is rock solid, and the language as some great features not found in other .NET languages.
But it still needs a tiny bit more polishing on the Visual Studio IDE Integration part.
There are a few things not as smoothly integrated as I’m used to in C# and VB .NET (for instance when adding assembly references; C# and VB.NET allow you to do that from multiple places in the IDE; Delphi Prism from only one).
I know it is nitpicking (the same holds for the Team Foundation System integration in the Visual Studio IDE: ever tried to add files or folders? There is only one icon that allows you to do it. Ever tried to move files or folders around? No way you can drag & drop, in fact you can move only 1 file or folder at a time, and then the folder tree leaves you at the target).

The Embarcadero folks have worked hard on developer productivity in the Delphi Win32 2010 IDE.
(Did I mention the F6 key? It is an awesome way of directly jumping into configuration dialogs a zillion levels deep.
Did I mention the Ctrl-D key? It instantly reformats your source code to your formatting settings).
So maybe it is now time to put some of that effort into the Prism side as well.

Back to my CodeRage sessions: the recordings are done, they will soon become available as downloads together with the samples/slides.

Keep watching :-)

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Database Development, Debugging, Delphi, Development, Encoding, Event, Firebird, InterBase, Java, Package Development, Prism, Software Development, Source Code Management, TFS (Team Foundation System), Unicode, Visual Studio and tools, XML, XML/XSD, XSD | Leave a Comment »

.NET – Delphi Prism – How to generate wrapper classes code from XSD file

Posted by jpluimers on 2009/09/04

I do a lot of .NET work; most in C#, but also some in Delphi Prism (which like C#, VB.NET and other languages integrate in the Visual Studio Shell).

Both Visual Studio and the .NET Framework SDK include a nifty tool called XSD.EXE.

XSD.EXE allows you you to generate the code for wrapper classes from your XSD or other schema definition file, both for regular classes (that you can use for XML Serialization) as well as for typed dataset classes.

You need to specify the Oxygene language to generate Delphi Prism code.

A sample batch-file is here:

xsd /classes /language:Oxygene /namespace:xokumClasses xokum.xsd
rename xokum.pas xokumClasses.pas

xsd /dataset /language:Oxygene /namespace:XokumDataset xokum.xsd
rename xokum.pas xokumDataset.pas

Thanks to Peter Nowotnick who posted this answer at Stackoverflow!

–jeroen

Posted in .NET, CommandLine, Delphi, Development, Pingback, Prism, Software Development, Stackoverflow, Visual Studio and tools, XML/XSD, XSD | 4 Comments »

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