ECO II Conference - Toronto

The Borlander John Kaster will be here in T.O. giving us a very welcome and needed conference about ECO II. The day, June 6th, location, so far looks like the North York Library as initially planned. For more information visit the Toronto's Delphi Users Group.

I expect a good assistance to this meeting, so, see you all there.

Ad Hoc SQL vs Stored Procedures

Well, i had the pleasure to assist to a Michael Li's conference about Security using ASP.Net in Delphi 2005.

One of the topics was the famous "SQL Injection" menace. I felt bad initially cause i use Ad Hoc SQL on my everyday, is extremely versatile, and you can build great search queries at run time. More static operations like reporting, specific updates and very plain searchs on tables are usually perfect places for stored procedures.

Maybe a difference is that i use parameterized ad Hoc sql, never pure text insertion (eg. "select * from users where id = '+id.text+'"), but i must admit that for user validation procedures i use stored procs.

I think that for abstraction of tables in a program, there is nothing better than ad Hoc, I never considered appropiate to have hundreds of sps to manage every single update. Constant changing databases will prove to be a hell for the hundreds of sps that depends from that table that you just changed.

Well, after that conference, i decided to do a little research about this topic and i found a great "good and bad" discussion about it.

Check it here at the Server Side, it brings some light to both sides of the discussion.

Good to read, enjoy.


Pst. btw, I will keep using my ad hoc queries. :)

New delphi Book coming...

The new Marco Cantú's book "Mastering 2005" will be available in stores this coming June.

You can pre order it here!

Based on its content table, it promises to be a great addition to the Delphi library.

Enjoy.

Help improving Delphi!!!

Please take some of your time and fill up this survey.

Its a very well done poll, and will definitly help improving the product. Make some time and go for it!.

Microsoft feeling the pressure?

I don't hate MS, i really dont. But i support any other software company that gives a different flavor of what we already get from MS.

I love google, and they are doing great against msn search. I love Borland, and they have their ups and downs, but they havent let me down with Delphi. The last example on this, is Linux adoption by goverments.

I found this interesting article about the topic. Enjoy.

Negotiating a contract...

The first time i had a contract job, my contractor practially abused me. :P

Long nights, lots of work. Low money.

After that point, i get sharper when the time for negotiation comes. One guy in the Borland forums post a nice article that talks about the matter, and give TIPs on how to deal with this situations.

I wished i read that before. :P

Necessity in Software Design.

I found this very interesting post about what drive us to make decisions.

A the end of the post they applied it to Software design, i like specially the phrase "they have specific goals and will do only the absolute minimum necessary to achieve those goals" when talking about the users behaviour while making a decision.

Sometimes we try to provide all the possible options, and we design with this concept in mind, thinking that it will make our software more complete, at the end, offering all those options waste our development time and they may never be used.

We are moving up!!

Based on this ranking Delphi is going up in popularity, usually its ranked in 10th and 9th, but in the last months is going up.

I think it's time for those abandom Classic VB to move to Delphi where backwards compatibility matters!!.

Oh thinking about that, i found this interesting guide about migrating Visual Source Safe projects to StarTeam. A good option if you get the Architect / Enterprise version of Delphi that includes a StarTeam license.

Games made in Delphi. COOL STUFF!!

Age of Wonders is made in Delphi.

Want more?, take a look at the finalist from the Delphi Developers Gaming community competition this year.

Click here and start playing

ASP.Net security conference in the TDUG group

Hi people,

Yesterday i went to the TDUG (Toronto Delphi Users Group) meeting, we were initially expecting the visit of John Kaster but, due to out of control personal reasons, he couldn't attend and we had the "just on time" assistance of Michael Li (Management Consultant from Infocan)

Michael gave us an interesting conference about asp.net security, running off course on lovely Delphi 2005. Most of the issues brought up were already known by many, but, it was always interesting to see how all the people (me included) did a mental check of their own projects to see if we were commiting one of the security flaws that Michael was explaining to us. Usually, a simple smile, or a gesture let the rest know the insides of a typical problem in our code (some people just said, 'oh f@ck! i do that).

Anyway it was interesting, the additional info about Michael's scuba shark experiences were also great (supported by video). Finally, Borland Canada was also kind enough to give away a Borland Delphi 2005 architecht version and some cool tshirts. (i do like the tshirts, i love going with those "become a development super hero, use Delphi 2005" to some MS events, really i do :) ).

But hey! now i have a cool blue desk clock courtesy of Borland which i already have on top of my monitor. :D

Thank you guys! good stuff.

And keep up the good work TDUG group.!!

Development methodologies... Agile Development

Well, i'm a hard core developer, but lately, im getting more and more interested on how to enhance and improve the software development process (ALM, SDO anyone?).

I found a good piece of web literature that you guys may want to read whenever you have some time available, its about Agile Development.

Here is the piece.

Enjoy.

John Kaster in Toronto!

Hey people! John Kaster from Borland will be here! April 4th!

He's one of the minds behind DataSnap (Midas), he will be demoing ECO II development in Delphi.

Visit this website to get more information:

Toronto Delphi Users Group

Pst. ECO II is basicaly a way to program using UML designs that comes in Delphi 2005. From a UML design it generates DB, GUI and the interaction between.

ASPPRO.Net Readers Choice Awards

Well, after this heads up by Nick Hodges, i did my duty of letting them now their mistake.

They had a quick and good response. Delphi is on the list, go and vote now!!


Pst. They are missing Rave as reporting tool, some people emailed them plz.

Costa Rica VoIP in the news....

Well, i'm from Costa Rica, my beautiful and peaceful country...

But, yup, we do make some stone age decisions... like this one that may happen if we dont wake those ICE guys up.

VoIp may become a crime in CR

Biggest LCD TV.. so far.

Hi guys, another non Delphi related post.

This is the biggest LCD Tv made so far.

Remember its LCD, Plasma is a different technology and we do have Plasma TVs that big.

Moving time...

Gosh, i hate moving... its one of those things that you are forced to do and you hate it, but simply you have to do it.

This is the 9th time in my life that im moving, i know it sounds like a bad record, but usually its an upgrade. This time, its basically same apartment size, same facilities, same everything, simply a better deal on the long term.

I spent lots on furniture, mostly from this place IKEA. Amazing place, specially the AS-IS section, if you have the chance to go, visit it. European furniture with low prices and great quality if you know how to pick.

Some of the secrets behind the low price is that you need to assemble the furniture yourself. The packing and instructions are great, so, its just a matter of patience and a good back and you will do fine.

Tomorrow is my last day on my current apartment, i lived here for two years, it gave me amazing memories, but now its time to move on. Lets get ready for what is coming on the next one.

Talk to you soon people.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DELPHI!! 1O YEARS AND COUNTING!!!

There are thingspersonal and professional that change your life.

I must admit that Delphi changed my professional life. Programming never resulted more fun than it is thanks to it.

Thanks Borland, thanks Delphi. 10 years of joy!!

Thanks Anders Hjelsberg, Gary Whizin, and Zack Urlocker for the initial push, and now thank you to all the people that is still on board, old and new guys that keep this amazing thing going on.

Danny, Allen, everybody there... thanks. Keep the good work.

as someone says "Go Delphi Go!"

SQL Day...

Well, right now im trying to finish an Archiving application for our ever growing customers databases.

I spent hours and hours on the Query Analyzer and the Enterprise Manager, and finally i think i got it all done. Now im trying to add some reports to it, but, it seems that my good Rave is giving me problems. A "Duplicate License" on the system, i think it maybe caused due to the fact that Rave comes with Delphi, but also we bought the license version of it.

I will confirm that later, but so far, the app looks great. Another step further to more professional applications.

Simply OMG!! The most amazing animal you can imagine!!

Well, i dont think communication should be an issue for mankind if this guy can do it, so do we right?

The Amazing Parrot

Nice review!

Hey, my friend Roberto mentioned something very simple and fairly straight smart.

There is some people out there that actually are not that informed about what's new on Delphi 2005. So:

This is a good review to read.