I am over in Europe visiting with developers. Last week I was in Italy and Germany at the Delphi developer days in Piacenza (Marco Cantu) and Gunzburg (LegoLand). At the end of my CodeGear and Embarcadero update presentation, I covered some of things that could be possible in the future once the two companies come together and collaborate on the integration of products and technologies.
What might be possible for next generation development environment functionality?
- SQL “insights” and “completion” in the SQL property editor and in the code editor
- Modeling your code and database in one IDE
- Stepping through code and stepping into a stored procedure
- Profiling and optimizing a database and your program
- Refactoring database and code at the same time
What else do you need/want?
These are just a small number of possibilities. In fact, the more time CodeGear and DatabaseGear R&D and Product team members spend together, the list will grow exponentially. What else should we work on together? Taking a step back from a specific programming language, specifiy product, specific platform - what else do you think the combined group could do to help you be more successful?
I am in the UK now for meet ups Monday and Tuesday. Wednesday I will be in Amsterdam. Looking forward to your comments and suggestions.
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PDA
CF
asap
MAC OSX ?
Linux ?
(Yes, I know, I am a pain in the a**, but this time I wasn’t at the developer days so I could not ask you there..)
Tell me how DatabaseGear relates to Eco. I love the concept that Eco presents and I am just about to redo (like starting today if I can) our apps using Eco. I don’t want to redo everything and then find that CodeGear is moving away from Eco to something else and have to redo it all again.
MacOS has the endearing quality of having paying customers, so there might actually be something resembling a market for developers in that space, unlike the whole Linux thing.
I’ve certainly been interested in it. That said, I don’t have a mac, and I am doubtful I would spend 2 grand to get one to develop apps for a platform that a pithy fraction of the market uses (smaller even than it appears since buying the mac hardware to run windows is surprisingly popular), and I have doubts that enough other people would either.
Probably best to focus on the win32 world for a few years - catch up and let the lingering damage get healed from the lean years.
Once the current version of Delphi is at the stability, speed, and quality level of D1 and D2 then maybe its time to get distracted again. (I’m not saying Delphi hasn’t improved lately, I’m just saying that the IDE is huge memory hogging pig that still has alzheimer moments and still lacks that lightning fast compile that was possible on older versions of delphi and much slower versions of the hardware)
ECO has evolved over a number of years & has become very stable.CG should go all out to support the latest features by adopting .Net 3.5 asp.Already many Delphi Architect users have moved to VS + ECO.All these users are sophisticated users & are crowd pullers in their own right.for e.g Peter Morris
CG should take them back inti their fold & not let them go.Dot Net has come to stay for good & VG should not turn its back on it.
Secondly what is going to be the marketing strategy of the new entity.At least in India the resellers have no clue about the products & don’t provide any support what so ever.
Windows Mobile (NOT CF, native)
From DB Table To Class
LINQ?
Right now, the database connectivity in Delphi to Oracle is below par. It needs to support all field Oracle types. (For example XMLType has been in Oracle since version 9. (1999) They now ship 11g and Delphi still can’t query it, and will fail if you run a sql statement that has a xmltype in it) The combined team could work on getting the database feature set to support the latest database feature sets better. Being a year behind is one thing but we are now 9 years behind in this specific area. I can’t even query the field as a blob/memo field to get the data.
I have to use TOAD to get any good development done in Oracle. The Database Explorer is not usable when you have several large schemas. Most application developers live in a specific schema although many might exists (other apps) DBExplorer gives you ever thing which makes it unusable.
So I am looking forward to DatabaseGear sharing some knoweldge in how Developers use and need to use DB Tools. And that will become part of the CodeGear Side, where usablity on Database functionality could be better.
I would prefer much more work in the Delphi Help and the IDE to meet Delphi 7 quality again. Moreover a cross VCL (Win & Linux) is a must in the future (see Qt from Trolltech/Nokia).
"What might be possible for next generation development environment functionality?
* SQL “insights” and “completion” in the SQL property editor and in the code editor
* Modeling your code and database in one IDE
* Stepping through code and stepping into a stored procedure
* Profiling and optimizing a database and your program
* Refactoring database and code at the same time
What else do you need/want?"
The above statement sounds more like what codegear’s product heading to, not what customer want to see inside the product. obviously codegear’s mindset haven’t changed much after getting a new investor.
- A simplified version TDataset which can be created by just writing a plain and simple class just like in VB 6 and higher versions.
- An IDE which is not a memory Hog and should work with limited memory.
- Lots of wizards or dialog interfaces to do mundane tasks like declaring procedures/functions/properties, etc. etc. so that a developer has not to make round trip between declaration and actual coding as it is now. I have already posted in NGs regarding this fact in detail
- Perfect ActiveX importing as what is provided in Delphi 2006 is broken and is not working as Delphi 6’s is working. If I import an ActiveX in Delphi 6 I can use it properly without a hitch in both D6 and D2006 but when I import that same ActiveX in D2006 I manage to install this ActiveX in the IDE but the moment I Try to place in on the form Boom! It throws plethora of errors. This same ActiveX works if I import it in D6. Why?
- Support for compiling COFF format OBJ files in Delphi Application
- Support for using C Lib (COFF format) files directly from Delhi like is possible in Python
- Output of Delphi code into COFF format OBJ files
please look at my dream thread in non-technical NG
Stable and future-proof ORM/MDA for native code. ECO/Bold?
amhoy wrote: "The above statement sounds more like what codegear’s product heading to, not what customer want to see inside the product. obviously codegear’s mindset haven’t changed much after getting a new investor."
All of the things I mentioned would be great for all of our customers that do database based application programming. Now, if you don’t use databases, we will also have plenty of capability for you. These were just some ideas from recent meetings for additive capabiliites.
If you look at the product roadmaps you will see what we are doing to respond directly to customers.
what do you want to see inside the product?
Mac OS X, generics, standard container classes, continuation-based web framework similar to http://www.seaside.st
Nice blog post, nice thoughts, nice answers, even I don’t agree with all of the comments… , at least I *do* want to see the points outlined in your post implemented. ASIDE to what was written, have a look at and take the concepts from:
- http://www.tableausoftware.com/
(especially at http://www.tableausoftware.com/products/tour)
- http://download.psdn.com/media/audio_video/wrf/Tour_Files/start.htm
(all the presentation but especially the chapter ‘Architect’s MetaCatalog’)
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Db4o
- http://sequoia.continuent.org/HomePage
- http://www.liquibase.org/
Just my 2c & HTH,
m. Th.
I do not need such kind of shit. I need fast and relaiable Delphi Win32 IDE. Throw the .NET out of the IDE. I also need better pascal code completion and full set of realy working refactorings.
CodeGear please, please, please focus on IDE. Do not try to develop new stupid technologies.
I would like to see a better web development framework that doesn’t require the enterprise version of Delphi and Intraweb or even .net if possible. I don’t trust Atozed to not break my code in the future, so I won’t distribute apps based on their framework.
I wish I were there with you David! Sounds like a successful trip! I posted a small vignette to Robert Love’s comment above on my blog here:
http://metafrequency.blogspot.com/2008/06/video-comment-to-david-is-blog-post.html
More OO features, like a native ORM, included in all Delphi versions and compatible with legacy applications. And visual OO components (grids, reports, lists) which we can bind a object list into them, for example.
About new features, I would like first to have the quality we use to have in our Delphi IDE. Remember Delphi 7? Those were good times. Get that quality again!
From a DatabaseGear perspective I don’t know what we will have available in the near future. But I have one request…
Make all those new features available to all Delphi versions, not only for Enterprise / Architect versions.
People using Professional version want productivity too! They may not need Enterprise class solutions, but lots of features are not available in the professional version. That’s very bad.
- Windows Mobile (CF, native or Palm) - however
- ECO for Win32 or Bold returns
- Return of the tab diagram in Form Designer and Data Modules
- Live Source in C++ Builder
- Migrate data in Data Explorer
- Debug of the sps and database user defined functions in RAD Studio IDE
- LINQ
I’m very very excited with the new possibilities. I (we) trust in you! No disappoint us. Go CodeGear! Go DatabaseGear!
VCL for the Web is so good! It’s a excelent web framework and deserves our attention and congratulations. And we, deserve it continues to evolve.
Return of the Castalia and ModelMaker FREE 3rd Party Tools
- MultiPlatform … the first thing for most users. We are about 10 years late from other languages That´s the motive of the most delphi developers migrate to Visual Studio, or other languages. The freepascal/lazarus project supports a lot of platforms, include Arm support for Mobile… why CodeGear can´t do ?
- Implements of VS Design , for .NET users can deploy all .NET Components, include DevExpress Xperience.
- X64 Support - Support for 64 compiling …
Please change the packaged sales price, we don’t need all the component that might make the price so high, i want to buy feature that i used only, so that the price is reasonable and more developer could afford it.
My suggestion, give a free basic packaged like Turbo Delphi, then each feature can be bought seperately with ofcourse a reasonable price.
The JGear consept is a good example
Thanks
Iwan
Improved ECO support and more of ECO in non-architect packages. Listen to why ECO users switch to VS and solve the problems they see. You can probably google for it. You can use ECO + VS Pro at a lot lower price than RAD Studio Architect. A lot of poeple will see that as a much more attractive option. You would probably need to 1) make sure ECO code can be split into mulitple units in pascal and/or 2) include C# as a fully supported language and environment again (not just the C# compiler being "there").
Documentation. This is probably THE most important quality aspect. From the forums, this stands out as the defect in current version that the MOST people find the MOST annoying.
Stability. Apparently, Delphi 8+ has been suffering from a LOT of stability problems. That’s not very RAD, is it?
Thanks,
Kjell
what about hiring true database folks (in the database team)
we did not see a new (design-time) wizard in years, same about new components
what about fixing the tdbgrid? (broken for years) and adding good dbaware controls?
what about supporting utf8 (or at least unicode) in both dataset level and dbaware controls?
what about improving existing architecture (not with goofy dbexpress and sons) but with real life practical specialized datasets (at least for oracle, sql server, mysql and postgresql)?
what about hiring true database folks (in the database team) - again!
ps
few years back, at borcon, ramesh and daniel promissed us new wizards, to generate dbaware controls in containers (forms, frames) and datasets (already linked in master detail) in datamodules/remote-datamodules. where are these features? do you still have eningeers working fulltime in database team? is there such a team at all? we were so happy to hear that things finally got back to normal (at that borcon) and that borland will start innovating again, in database area, then boom, nothing, dead in the water… what is going on???
now seriously (VERY). there is absolutely no innovation in database area, for at least 2-3 years. nobody (but NOBODY) is using borland database stuff (datasets and/or dbaware controls) which is WHY people buy professional instead of enterprise - instead of shipping jokes (like blackfish and so one), HIRE serious database developers (with years after years of hands on experience in objects pascal, c++, vcl, real-life database projects) and send those clowns home (if any of them left) - features like database should be coming from the masses, the ones who make a dime with database and delphi, not from cleaver marketing directors and surveys!!!
come on david i, you CAN…
best regards,
a
Support OpenCL (Open Computing Language) is very perpective idea.
Info: Khronos Launches Heterogeneous Computing Initiative http://www.khronos.org/news/press/releases/khronos_launches_heterogeneous_computing_initiative/
How about something like this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FpGUI
Namespace and the possibility to have one file/one class.
Removing of the GUID to support all the functionnality of the Interface like in C#)
Interface can be separated from the base functions _addref and _releaseref.
Introduction of the interface in DB classes (IList, IEditable,Idataset, IDAtasource, Binding to others property than Text in TDBEdit e.g.).
A win32 version of ECO/Bold is asked by many people and some concepts can be supported inside the VCL (subscription in place of notifications, followers and controllers can be supported as Interface too)
Improvements on Debugger: possibility to disallow stepping in some low-level module, to define per class the value to see (e.g. a tstringlist must be show the list of strings and only the inside data if asked), to show the real classe of the object (if a var is of type TStrings and that the value inside is a tStringlist, show directly the descendants objects)
Best regards
Eddy
Brussels
Looks like feature creap to me. There is much more to development than databases. Even in database development, software developers are not always DB admins. I would like platform dependant interface layerers underneath a platform independent VCL then the IDE built out of this. I would like classes and methods added below the pas file nodes in the Project manager. I would like the Structure window to show the combined class heiarchy for all files in the project group. I would like to have the Tool Palette just as a tab alongside PM, Nodel and Data explorer so it does not consume screen space when I am not working with the form designer.
Sorry for bringing you down, guys.
How about a fast, HELPFUL "online help" ?
I still have to meet an experienced ("old school") Delphi programmer without
the Delphi7 online help at hand.
The "new" help system just sucks. I guess it is not Codegear’s fault.
After 6+ Years of D7 and 2+ Years of Delphi Win32 2007 and Rad Studio 2007
we (4+ me) want :
- online help speed (not those 20+ seconds delays on our Dual Core machines)
- inherited properties/events/functions
- code samples
We still ask ourselves : how you are going to keep (let alone : grow) your
market share when new customers do not have access to the D7 help files ?
How about including / integrating them into the shiny Rad Studio 2007 ?
Whenever I get one of these new "latest online help updates", I simply try to
find TThread.create(aSuspended : boolean) and the corresponding explanation.
I will try again next time and again and again and again and I guess you
will find a way to disappoint us until judgement day.
(I don’t want to go into depth/details : 3rd party help is even worse.
"VCL for the web" seems to be nice but is crippled to death : missing help,
missing source - it’s ridiculous to even assume that people watching
their productivity will use it deliberately : it’s mere pain that makes
them buy the license)
(Sorry for all mistakes : english is not my native language)
Driver free for FireBird, not necessit DLL extra the executable
DatatabaseGear with support GPU high perfomance modern product.
What I need is a faster and better IDE:
1. In bigger projects it takes up to several seconds to display available methods/properties after typing a dot (.): In this speed it’s no time saver anymore…
2. I’d like to see always the IDE in which function/procedure I’m currently in!
3. I’d like to have a shortcut to allign all ":=" under each other in the marked lines. Or: General customizable code autoformatting!
4. Less bugs in IDE: Often objects/functions/etc. from newly added units are underlined red although they are working perfectly. Very often: Errors are displayed in the structure window although everything compiles fine.
5. It should be possible to create default-code for every automatically created procedure (like a try..finaly statement or a function-description-area or other things).
6. You should visually see at the cursor position when the programming help ("Programmierhilfe" in german version") can’t help you because there’s an error earlier in the code. Right now you often think the selected method or property before the dot (.) or the function etc. does not exist until you realize it’s because of an error somewhere else.
7. All function and procedure names in a seperate window divided into a "recently used" and an "alphabetical" area to quickly jump to a certain code segment.
Compiler/debugger:
1. The debugger doesn’t always stop in the line where the error occurs: This really costs a lot of time!
2. Would also be very nice: An internal "jump list" with the names of the called functions (configurable number of entries) in theire temporal order. This list should also be available at runtime (for more helpful error messages whilst debugging applications).
3. The debugger shouldn’t stop if the error is handeled by a try… statement (optional).
4. Field values should be available after an error: Right now you can not directly check after an error why it happened - often step-by-step debugging necessary.
5. Automatic step-by-step debugging until an error occurs (if 1. is not possible). Btw: Single step-by-step debugging seems to be much slower in the current version than before (you can not hit F8 several times without waiting for the IDE between the strokes).
Additionally: We Professional version users need some things from the higher Versions like deploying web applications and some others. We will NOT buy the very expensive versions for that - so you have no benefit in keeping those functions away from "us". Maybe you could give us these functions for a nonrecurring fee?
I think there could be done a lot for the WIN32 coders out there to optimise there workflow and easy there debugging. Because that’s what will really bring benefit to our daily work. Not the next "blackfish" or enhanced visual components (we use thirdparty components in necessary cases already and will probably not go back to Delphi’s).
[I’m using CodeGear™ RAD Studio 2007 (Delphi for Win32) Version 11.0.2902.10471]
I don’t know whether it would be pracitcal for you guys to spend time on, but it would be cool if Delphi supported the creation of UMDF drivers.
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