April 28, 1997 ( The FOURTH Monday of April ) Delphi 3.0 First Impressions Scheduled for release this quarter, Delphi 3.0 provides many new, powerful features, enhancements, and technologies. In January we were provided a sneak preview of them, this month we will investigate them in greater depth. New features are evident throughout Delphi 3.0 including the IDE, VCL, RTL, BDE, compiler, and editor. Major enhancements improve Internet/intranet application development, database application development, and distributed computing with OLEnterprise. The following highlights some of the major 3.0 enhancements we will investigate at the April meeting: Packages Packages are special dynamic-link libraries that allow code-sharing among applications (including the IDE) reducing the size of executables and conserving system resources. The Component Library, re-engineered to take advantage of package technology, allows a specific package to be compiled without rebuilding the entire Library. Packages can also be loaded on a per-project basis so that only the packages used by the current project need to be loaded. Another benefit of packages is a one megabyte reduction in the size of the IDE. Code Insight Editor enhancements include displaying context-sensitive pop-up windows within the code editor, templates, code completion, method parameter lists, and tool-tip expression evaluation. These features are updated dynamically as you work in the IDE. Decision Support Components This new group of components facilitates data analysis for decision support. These components include DecisionCube, a multidimensional array that caches cross-tabulated data from a dataset TDecisionQuery, a special dataset object that simplifies use of Decision Cubes TDecisionSource, which represents a pivot state on data from a Decision Cube TDecisionGrid, which displays cross-tabulated data from a Decision Source TDecisionGraph, which displays Decision-Source data in dynamic graphs. Internet New components have been added to enable the creation of Internet server DLLs. New Components TSplitter allows you to divide a form into arbitrary rectangular regions that can be resized by the user at run time. TChart, TDBChart, TQRChart create custom graphs on a Delphi form. TDateTimePicker displays a list box for entering dates or times. TStaticText TLabel with a window handle. TOpenPictureDialog and TSavePictureDialog work like TOpen / TSaveDialog, except that they include a "preview" region that displays the selected graphic file before opening or saving it. TAnimate encapsulates the ANIMATE control. BDE BDE enhancements include FoxPro and Microsoft Access support. OLEnterprise with the business object broker provides an OLE/DCOM interface to any RPC or COM server. OLEnterprise allows application logic and data access to be centralized on an application server; the server becomes a one-to-many provider of distributed business objects and processes. The Object Broker distributed name service indirectly binds applications to remote objects based on object availability. Compiler Package Support Language extensions and compiler directives have been added to support packages. Interfaces Language extensions have been added to support development of COM and ActiveX objects. Application Development Unit Output Directory you can specify a directory for compiled unit files while .DLL and .EXE files are still sent to the regular Output Directory. Version Information you can include version information in your Delphi projects. Component Templates groups of components that are added to a form in a single operation.