We have a VCL Delphi 2005 application, and would like to use DevExpress's XtraReports components, which is for .NET. Is it possible to use it without converting the VCL Delphi application?
Perhaps by converting the components as COM objects, or creating a WinForms application, and somehow embed the form into a VCL form?
Doesn't sound too easy, but just want to know what possible solutions are available.
Yes, its possible. You need to host the CLR from your Delphi app to do it.
There are some examples on MSDN on how to do this (the examples are using C++ though, so you would need to translate)
Or you could use the Jedi jclClrHost unit from the JEDI site. (see this question for some details)
Robo, you can use the RemObjects Hydra 3.0 components, to integrate Delphi and .Net technologies using plugins.
This is a bad idea. Yes you can do this. No you should not.
First look at Developer Express "Express Printing System", and Fast Reports. The first is a document/component print solution, the best one out there, and the latter is the best database reporting component set out there, which also handles non-database (code-based) reporting/printing with great flexibility and style.
I have first-hand experience using Express Printing System to print spreadsheet documents that are based on Developer Express Spreadsheet component, and the combination is very powerful, and easy to use. Both Developer Express and Fast Reports have very active development, and good technical support.
Related
We are planning to migrate our Silverlight application which having both business and UI logic to new technology. Is there any standard procedures or tools available for silverlight migration.
We want to move to standard technology like html and supported by all windows/mac/Linux browsers. Please give us any suggestions
There is no straight-forward migration path from Silverlight to any technology, despite probably to WPF to a degree, but as you mentioned that you want to run in the browser, probably the best way today is to use Blazor, which just got its first official release, and Microsoft is heavily investing in it right now.
On top of that, the French company Userware created the OpenSilver platform, which is a Silverlight replacement based on WebAssembly and Blazor, compatible with all major browsers. They even provide professional migration services based on this approach.
There is also rich ecosystem already evolved, with a lot of third-party UI components vendors (like Telerik, DevExpress, Radzen, etc.).
At Mobilize.Net we have a migration tool that converts the client side XAML and C# to TypeScript using Angular, Kendo UI, HTML, and CSS. It supports C# constructs like generics and interfaces.
You can watch a live stream from Twitch here This is an approach most suitable for very large complex SL web apps that would be too time consuming or expensive to rewrite into a pure native approach.
I just saw nice little demo about Oracle ADF Rich components: http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/adffaces/adffaces.html.
Looks really cool, nice and easy but of course its just a demo :). I would like to ask if someone actually uses it for a production app, how they compare to popular open source alternatives like RichFaces or IceFaces etc.
How about a deployment to a different server than weblogic?
We use ADF Faces. It is quite good. They have all the basic components(input text, output text, input file, date pickers, tables, etc) and some advanced components(graphs, tree,tree tables, etc). The layout components are also good and will suffice for most use cases.
But as with any JSF component, ADF Faces Components are hard to modify. For instance, if you want to add, say, a placeholder text, on an input text then you need to resort to fragile hacks.
I would recommend ADF Faces for enterprise apps where the ability to alter and fine tune UI components is not as important as fast and low cost development.
Also, ADF Faces isn't just a component framework. It is a full ViewController framework. Check out their Task Flows and you will be amazed.
We also use ADF Framework for our current product where we migrate our existing form based product to the new framework.
The major benefit that I'd like to point out in ADF is the way they promote declarative programming. I have to admit being a strong java developer, I have the tendency to go and add my own programmatic handling, but for someone who is used to forms, they will find it easy to learn the basics.
A strong feature that I also like to point is the way they clearly defined the MVC architecture. Model = BC, Controller = TaskFlow, View = well this one is obvious. Kudos to ADF the way they designed the taskflows as you get to have a visual representation or better put, a story of your design as well as your logic.
I am not sure about using a different server as ADF along with JDeveloper gives quite a load of features which allows you to configure directly to your server and be able to test on your intergrated server as well, with this I mean more on the security side as well as authentication piece of it. So even if you are able to migrate all the libraries needed, you might still be missing out in some of the other technologies that can be easily integrated with a weblogic server. (such as webcenter, soa etc.)
I know virtually nothing about Silverlight. I'm considering creating a browser based app and really don't know if it should be built using Silverlight or ASP.NET (which I am familiar with). I'm curious as to the reasons why a developer chooses to use Silverlight.
Thanks very much.
ASP.NET and Silverlight aren't comparable.
Silverlight is a client-side framework, comparable (perhaps) only to Adobe's Flash while ASP.NET is a server-side framework.
You use those in conjuction, not one instead of the other and they're not connected in any way.
There are a few reasons you may want to consider using Silverlight:
You have a need for great looking and
interactive web applications (that
are not Ajax, jQuery, etc.).
You want to utilize your current
programming language (VB.NET, C#,
etc) skills.
You want your "web app" to be
available out-of-the browser.
There are other reasons - have a read: Top 10 Reasons to Use Silverlight. There can be a signifcant ramp you would need to make, but once made, you may prefer SL for certain things over ASP.NET and even in some cases, not really have option available to you in ASP.NET, like, for example, perspective transforms of images that can be animated from user interactively.
If you are building something that requires lots of UI interaction, and is reasonably non-static with its presentation then i would suggest Silverlight.
If you are doing (relatively) simple UI (i.e. tabular based presentation of data like clients and orders) with not too much UI trickery then i would suggest that you stick with ASP.NET.
Having done both, i find that Silverlight kicks butt when it comes to doing complex UI stuff, or you need to eliminate callbacks and postbacks to the server.
Reuse .NET code and skill on the client browser.
Achieve high performance.
Use Silverlight if you want a flash type site without using Flash. If you want to use the .NET stack Silverlight is the way to go to do what flash can do.
Silverlight was originally known as WPF/E. It is a light version of Windows Presentation Foundation, designed for the web and embedded devices.
But yes, you can think of it as Microsoft Flash.
You could also try using web standards also, sprinkled with some Jquery and Ajax, with maybe Modernizr to use html5. What do you need to do with this exactly?
Because it's the only option for third party software development on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform. (OK, also XNA, but that's for games)
Oh, and they also use it on the Web for some reason.
Having just found out that you can use Ruby or Python inside a SilverLight application..
link here
..I wonder if its possible to bypass some of the SilverLight limitations with use of these languages instead of C#.
I know that the Ruby Engine inside the SilverLight application is trimmed down, just as the .NET CLR is, so I would like to know that even without all the functionality of a full Ruby or Python Engine:
Can I still be able to do something
with the use of these dynamic
languages that I wouldn't be able to do
in C# SilverLight?
.
If we need to download something built
by the community to extend the cut
down Ruby implementation (to support
Interop calls for instance?), what's
the impact on deployment?
.
If not, if you cannot do anything
you wouldn't be able to with c#, with these engines, besides
the typical benefit of a dynamic
language, and not really circumventing
some of the restrictions of the
SilverLight's CLR, why would one
choose to use Ruby in a SilverLight
application?
One of my interest points is use of sockets, socket usage in SilverLight is improving in each version, but it can still be troublesome because of the xml authorization file required on the server side..would ruby be able to make this unnecessary?
Thanks,
Ric
I suspect you won't be able to work around that. Keep in mind that it's not the language imposing the limitations here but the runtime. TO be precise, it's Silverlight itself. Since both C# and Ruby are compiled to CIL in this case you're left with more or less the exact same capabilities (except some differences in the typing system).
I'm not sure what you're getting at. Regardless of language you are still running inside the same "sandbox", security model and limited with the same cutdown libraries in Silverlight. You can extend the bits that you feel are "limited", assuming your code doesn't violate the security model, with any language.
You might be able to do things differently using another language, but the same basic constraints still apply.
You need to make sure the files are included in the xap or use the silverlight 3 slvx system to stream the assemblies defined in C# or VB etc.
The ruby language should be a complete ruby implementation so you can use all the language features ruby offers like metaprogramming etc.
All source files need to be included in the xap to work.
If you're using ruby then you get gestalt too and you can include ruby source files in the same way as you include javascript files in an html page today.
One of the best scenario for the usage of dynamic languages in .NET is to let the users extend the application with their own code, so that's the main reason I use IronPython in my Silverlight application. It's so nice to have that available in the limited .NET runtime of Silverlight. It's really easy to integrate (although I had a hard time making C# extension methods visible to Python) and it can be very powerful for the users.
I'm wondering if there are any applications, preferably freeware, that can take a database configuration, and, with as little hassle as possible, create web forms for inserting data easily.
I'm finding it hard to express exactly what it is I'm after. Maybe I can talk a bit about what I need.
I have a configuration database that, at least usually, contains "the truth" about the servers in our system. It contains stuff like zone names, hostnames, different configuration items, etc, over multiple tables. Right now we're using simple INSERTs directly when adding new servers or other stuff, handling the keys and IDs ourselves. The crux is, they don't want us to develop a simple web form thingy to handle this, instead they want a tool that can generate the web form thingy. Did that make sense?
I'm not sure if anything like this exists or is reliable, but, I thought that if anyone knew, it's this community. Thanks!
As many have already stated, it depends on what technology you're working with:
.Net 3.5 - Dynamic Data or Subsonic's Scaffolding control
.Net 2.0 - Subsonic's Scaffolding control
PHP - CakePHP
Ruby - Rail's Scaffolding component
"with as little hassle as possible"
have you checked things like PHP/MySQL Web Database Application Code Generator 10.02 ?
or phpmyedit ?
seems to me that what everybody else proposed so far requires a fair amount of coding...
Also, have a look at phprunner. It is not free, but looking at the screenshots, it seems to fit your requirements.
ASP.NET has Dynamic Data, that I think fits your description.
There's also SubSonic. Both are free and open source.
Tried Dynamic Data?
Besides ASP.NET dynamic data, you could also have a look at SubSonic
With PHP, if you have the ability to name the tables and columns as you see fit, you could try CakePHP framework, and specifically the scaffolding feature. With scaffolding turned on, the code will create CRUD forms from the schema for you.
Here's the link for learning about SubSonic & Scaffolding http://www.subsonicproject.com/web-forms-controls/the-scaffold/
, enjoy ;)
One more link from the SubSonic forums http://monk.thelonio.us/post/Scaffold-Enhancements-in-SubSonic-21.aspx
You can try Adminer Editor
Adminer Editor is both easy-to-use and user-friendly database editing tool written in PHP. It is suitable for common users, as it provides high-level data manipulation.