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

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: http://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

[5:54:51 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> https://newsgroups.codegear.com/message.jspa?messageID=150113

[5:55:17 PM] <Jim_Ferguson> Can you briefly describe JSON?

[5:55:27 PM] <Jeroen_Pluimers> http://blogs.embarcadero.com/adrian/2009/08/19/json-types-for-server-methods-in-datasnap-2010/

[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

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

My CodeRage 4 session materials are available for download:

• 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. 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

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

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

yet another update to TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects « The Wiert Corner – Jeroen Pluimers’ irregular stream of Wiert stuff

I just found out that in my updates to TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects somehow some backslashes (\) were missing.

Oops, sorry

These backslashes are important when excluding directories: if omitted, TFS thinks you want to exclude a filename in stead of a directory name (see Folder Comparison Filters).

It might be due to the HTML pasting issue that I explained in Including formatted sourcecode in WordPress.

Anyway, here is the correct one that has the backslashes at the right places:

!*.pdb;!*.obj;!*.dll;!*.exe;!*.res;!*.resources;!*.cache;!*.ilk;!*.ncb;!obj\;!objd\;!bin\;!lib\;!*.local;!*.identcache;!*.dcu;!__history\;!*.dsk;!*.~*;!*.stat;!*.drc;!*.map;!*.csproj.user;!*.vbproj.user;!*.csproj.webinfo;!*.vbproj.webinfo;!*.suo;!*.bpl;!*.dcp;!*.log;!*.lck

(Note these all should be on one line when pasting them).

–jeroen

yet another update to TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects « The Wiert Corner – Jeroen Pluimers’ irregular stream of Wiert stuff

Here is another update for the TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects:

Exclude .bpl, .dcp, log and .lck files.

So then the search filter becomes this:

!*.pdb;!*.obj;!*.dll;!*.exe;!*.res;!*.resources;!*.cache;!*.ilk;!*.ncb;!obj;!objd;!bin;!lib;!*.local;!*.identcache;!*.dcu;!__history;!*.dsk;!*.~*;!*.stat;!*.drc;!*.map;!*.csproj.user;!*.vbproj.user;!*.csproj.webinfo;!*.vbproj.webinfo;!*.suo;!*.bpl;!*.dcp;!*.log;!*.lck

(Note: this all goes on one line; your web-browser probably wraps this over multiple lines, so you might need to undo that wrapping before pasting it in to TFS).

Have fun with it!

–jeroen

update to TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects « The Wiert Corner – Jeroen Pluimers’ irregular stream of Wiert stuff

Last month I wrote about the TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects; here is an update:

If you enable the generation of MAP files during compilation, you might not want to include them in your search filter.

Also, the .suo, .user and .webinfo extensions were missing (for an explanation of Visual Studio file extensions, see here and here), so then the search filter becomes this:

!*.pdb;!*.obj;!*.dll;!*.exe;!*.res;!*.resources;!*.cache;!*.ilk;!*.ncb;!obj;!objd;!bin;!lib;!*.local;!*.identcache;!*.dcu;!__history;!*.dsk;!*.~*;!*.stat;!*.drc;!*.map;!*.csproj.user;!*.vbproj.user;!*.csproj.webinfo;!*.vbproj.webinfo;!*.suo

Have fun with it!

–jeroen

TFS 2008 Folder Comparison Filter for both C# and Delphi projects

When using TFS (Team Foundation System) 2008 as a Version Control / Source Code Management system not only for your C#, but also for Delphi projects, this is a good filter string when using the ‘Compare Folders‘ function of TFS:

!*.pdb;!*.obj;!*.dll;!*.exe;!*.res;!*.resources;!*.cache;!*.ilk;!*.ncb;!obj\;!objd\;!bin\;!lib\;!*.local;!*.identcache;!*.dcu;!__history\;!*.dsk;!*.~*;!*.stat;!*.drc

This is the regular Folder Comparison Filter – the bold above is the addition and the link contains an explanation of the filter syntax:

!*.pdb;!*.obj;!*.dll;!*.exe;!*.res;!*.resources;!*.cache;!*.ilk;!*.ncb;!obj\;!objd\;!bin\

Hope this helps some of you in reducing the amount of clutter in the resulting comparisons

–jeroen