Delphi's legacy began in 1983, when Turbo Pascal set a new standard for software engineering. The evolution of Turbo Pascal reads like a history lesson in the advancement of software development, including the introduction of such groundbreaking innovations as an integrated development environment (IDE), integrated debugging, syntax-highlighting, a powerful object-oriented programming (OOP) model, and OWL, the Object Windows Library.

With the release of Delphi 1.0 in February of 1995, Borland proved that component-based development could be applied in an object-oriented environment, permitting developers to rapidly build applications while maximizing code reuse. In more ways than one, Delphi blazed a trail that would eventually be followed the framework class library (FCL) of the Microsoft .NET Framework.

Borland Delphi 2005 represents another impressive advance in software development by Borland, making Delphi 2005 the ultimate and complete development solution for Windows. Delphi 2005 converges Delphi, C#, Microsoft .NET Framework and Win32 support for graphical user interface (GUI), Web, database, and model driven application development, and wrapped with the essential application lifecycle management (ALM) tools into a unified, highly-productive rapid application development (RAD) environment. With Delphi 2005, you have everything you need to increase Windows developer productivity, personal developer productivity, and team productivity.

Windows developer productivity. Delphi 2005's IDE makes Windows development tasks faster, easier, and better by supporting the Win32 standard of yesterday and today with the Windows-based Microsoft .NET Framework development standard of today and tomorrow. With world-class compilers and debuggers, a rich legacy of standards-based tools, and a seamless migration path between current and emerging platforms, there is no better Windows development tool on the market today.

Personal developer productivity. Delphi 2005 takes the power of Delphi to a new level, with speed and productivity enhancements throughout. With a code editor that simplifies every aspect of your programming experience, the largest collection of reusable components, powerful code-generating wizards, and much more, Delphi 2005 is the most prolific development environment available.

Team productivity. Delphi 2005 allows teams to take full control of the application lifecycle. In addition to Delphi 2005's state-of-the-art tools for software development, certain editions of Delphi 2005 also include StarTeam for team source code control, Borland Enterprise Core Objects II (ECO™ II) for model-powered development in the .NET framework, integrated Unit Testing Framework, and Borland Optimizeit Profiler for the Microsoft .NET Framework for performance-testing. In short, Delphi 2005 provides you with a complete, integrated solution for all your development and project management needs.

Borland Products = Technical Excellence

Throughout the years, Borland products have been recognized for excellence and innovation.
Here are a few of the honors received recently by the products that represent the heritage of
Delphi 2005:

● Borland Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework won Best of Show in the developer tool category at TechEd Europe, 02-July-04

●  Borland C# Builder won the Visual Studio Magazine Reader Choice Award for best developer tool 24-May-04

●  Borland Delphi 7 Studio won the Web Services Journal Readers' Choice Award for in the Best GUI for Web Services Product category, 25-February-04

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The remaining sections of this guide are organized into related topics associated with software development. Each section begins with a general overview, and then continues with a description of the new and enhanced features introduced in Delphi 2005.

Disclaimer

This reviewer's guide is based on a pre-release version Delphi 2005. Features in the shipping product may vary slightly from the descriptions found here.

Whether you are coding in Delphi or C#, writing Win32 applications or .NET managed code, building ASP.NET Web pages or traditional client applications, Delphi 2005's IDE provides you with a consistent and powerful set of development tools designed to increase your productivity.

With Delphi 2005, the IDE keeps track of what kind of application you are working with, providing you with the designers, views, and features consistent with the task at hand. For example, if you are building an ASP.NET Web application, the HTML designer allows you to design your Web pages visually, permitting you to drag-and-drop the components that you want to see on your Web page and configure them with little or no code. The following figure shows Delphi 2005 with an open ASP.NET Web application and its visual HTML designer.

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If you create a new Win32 client application, or open an existing one, the VCL (visual component library) designer kicks in, again providing you with unmatched support for designing your user interfaces.

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You can even create project groups that include two or more different kinds of projects. When you do this, the type of application that is currently active in the project group determines which designers are available, and which options you see in the supporting views. For instance, if your project group includes both an ASP.NET Web Service application and a Win32 VCL Form application, Delphi 2005 notes which of these projects is currently active, providing you with the designer and editor appropriate for each as you switch between your projects.

Delphi 2005 is more than just context-sensitive designers — it is a full multiple-language development environment. The native languages and debuggers that are included in Delphi 2005 are Delphi for Win32 development, Delphi for the Microsoft .NET Framework, and C# for the Microsoft .NET Framework.

While other IDEs support multiple languages, Delphi 2005 is unique in that it supports both multiple platforms and multiple languages transparently. For example, you can create a project group that includes a C# ASP.NET Web application, a Delphi for .NET Web Control class library, and a traditional Windows DLL (dynamic link library) written in Delphi Win32. Not only will the appropriate compiler and debugger be used for each project, based on its underlying language, but also the code editor features and Tool Palette snippets will expose the appropriate features as you navigate between the various projects.

Delphi 2005 can also support additional compilers, if you wish. For example, so long as you have the VB for .NET compiler installed on your workstation, you can create, open, edit, compile, and debug VB for .NET applications without ever leaving the Delphi 2005 IDE.

The Structure pane is a context-sensitive view that provides you with detailed information about what ever is displayed in your main view. When you are using the code editor, the Structure pane displays the classes, types, interfaces, and other symbols in the current file, as shown in the following figure. (In Delphi 7, this view was called the Code Explorer.)

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By comparison, when you are designing a VCL Form, the Structure pane displays the components that appear on your form, with the various nodes representing the containership of your controls. (In Delphi 7, this view was referred to as the Object Tree View.)

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Not only does the Structure pane provide you with valuable insight into your projects, it also serves as a convenient tool for navigating the symbols and objects that you are using. When you are editing your code, double-clicking a symbol in the Structure pane takes you to the associated line of code in the editor. When you are designing a VCL Form, clicking an object selects it in the designer, permitting you to quickly change its properties or assign event handlers.

The Structure pane is also invaluable when there are errors in your code. When Delphi 2005's new Error Insight feature identifies problems in your source files, these appear automatically, as you type, in the Structure pane, permitting you to quickly navigate to the position in the code editor where problems exist. Error Insight is described in more detail in the "The Next Generation Code Editor" section of this guide.

Some developers who used Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework wished for a "floating" VCL designer, like the one available in Delphi 7. Borland listened. For Delphi development of VCL and VCL for .NET applications, Delphi 2005 provides you with a choice between using the .NET-style embedded designer or the classic floating designer.

To enable the floating designer in Delphi 2005, select Tools | Options. Navigate to the VCL Designer node under Delphi Options, and uncheck the Embedded designer check box.

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When you work in a component-based environment like Delphi 2005, you typically make extensive use of design-time components, which are placed into the designer and configured using the Object Inspector. These components are available from the Delphi 2005 Tool Palette.

The Tool Palette is organized by component category. Which categories are displayed, and which components appear within them, is context sensitive, based on the type of project on which you are working. Furthermore, the Tool Palette permits you to controls its organization. You can change the position of a component within a Tool Palette category, as well as move a component to a different category, simply by dragging the component within the Tool Palette. You can even define your own custom categories into which you can drag your components.

Delphi 2005 includes a number of enhancements to the Tool Palette. These are discussed in the following sections.

  Enhanced Tool Palette Behavior

  New VCL for .NET Components

Delphi 2005's Object Inspector, which you use to configure objects placed on your form at design time, has also been updated. Not only does the Object Inspector permit you to configure properties and events for the objects that you have placed into the designer, but you can also use it to control file names and get information about objects that you select in the Project Manager.

For example, select a file in the Project Manager, such as an .aspx file in an ASP.NET Web application, and the file path and file name will appear in the Object Inspector, as shown in the following figure.

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The File Name property in the preceding figure is shown in an enabled font, indicating that you can edit the name of this file using the Object Inspector. Changing the file name here not only changes the name of the file displayed within the Project Manager, but since this file is a Delphi unit, the unit name changes as well. Of course, you can still rename a file the old fashioned way, by selecting File | Save As from Delphi 2005's main menu.

Other objects selectable within the Project Manager can also be viewed in the Object Inspector. For example, if you select one of the assemblies listed under the References node of a .NET project in the Project Manager, the Object Inspector displays details about that assembly, as shown in this next figure.

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Because Delphi 2005 includes both Win32 and .NET compilers for the Delphi language, it can be used to create new Win32 applications as well as further the development of your existing Win32 projects that you created in Delphi 7 and earlier. You can also use Delphi 2005 to migrate your existing Win32 applications to VCL for .NET, the 100% .NET managed-code solution that maintains component and source code compatibility between Win32 and .NET development.

The Upgrade Project Wizard is a special utility that runs the first time you open a Win32 application in Delphi 2005. Using this utility, you can choose to continue the current project as a Win32 application, or you can convert it to a .NET application.

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Once you made your choice using this wizard, Delphi 2005 will remember your selection. If you tell the Project Upgrade Wizard that you want to continue working with a Delphi project as a Win32 project, and at some later time decide to migrate it to VCL for .NET, simply delete your project's *.bdsproj file. After that, open the .dpr file in Delphi 2005. Once again, the Project Update Wizard will ask you to choose whether to continue working with the project as a Win32 project or to migrate it to VCL for .NET.

Wizards are small applets that help you to quickly create the projects, objects, and files that you use in Delphi 2005. For example, the ASP.NET Web Application Wizard creates for you the necessary web.config, global.asax, and initial .aspx file, and configures an IIS virtual directory into which these are placed, among other tasks. In short, wizards increase your productivity, getting you off to a fast start in the right direction. The following figure shows the Delphi 2005 object repository, displaying just a few of the many available wizards.

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Delphi has always provided you with a rich collection of wizards that support almost every aspect of Windows development. For Win32 development, these include the Windows 2000 Logo Wizard, the DLL Wizard, the Automation Object Wizard, the Web Service Wizard, the IntraWeb Application Wizard, the Database Form Wizard, and the Thread Wizard. These are just a few or the dozens of powerful wizards that are available.

For Delphi for .NET and C#, you will find the ASP.NET Web Application Wizard, the Windows Form Application Wizard, ASP.NET Web Service Application Wizard, the Web Control Library Wizard, and many, many more.

Delphi 2005 includes Wizards that were previously found in Delphi 7, Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework, and C# for the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition, Delphi 2005 includes a number of new and improved wizards ¾ accelerating your development efforts even more. These include the updated New Component Wizard, the new DB Web Control Library Wizard, the ECO ASP.NET Application Wizard, the ECO Web Service Application Wizard, and the Satellite Assembly Wizard, just to name a few.

Delphi 2005 makes it even easier for you to search your project files by permitting you to group search results by file. To group search results by file, check the Group results by file check box in the Find Text dialog box.

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The following figure shows what a grouped search result looks like. As you can see, each file in which the search string appears forms a base node in a tree view. Expanding the node for a given file lists the lines on which the located search string was found. You can then double-click a particular entry to go to that line of code in the code editor.

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Delphi 2005's IDE has been upgraded across the board to support UTF-8 characters in all of its wizards, windows, dialog boxes, and panes.

Delphi 2005 uses the Message List pane to list compiler errors, warnings, and hints. You can now save the contents of the Message List pane by right-clicking in the Message List pane and selecting either Copy, to copy selected messages to the Windows clipboard, or Save, to save the Message List contents to a file.

Borland's commitment to creating better software has lead to the development of a number of programs for reporting and fixing problems. One of the most recent of these is Quality Central, a Web-based application for submitting bug reports located at http://qc.borland.com.

With Delphi 2005, Borland has embedded an error reporting system directly into the IDE. This feature is called IDE Error Reporting. While Borland hopes that you never have to use it, if an exception is raised within the IDE, Delphi 2005 displays the Error dialog box. If you click the Details button, you see a detailed trace of the error.

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Clicking the Send button displays the Send Report dialog box. Hide image

Click the Next button to see the stack trace that will be submitted to Borland along with your error report. Click Next again to enter a description of what you were doing when the error occurred.

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Click Next once more to optionally provide your Borland Developer Network (BDN) logon email address and password. Submitting your report using your BDN account permits you to easily follow up on your report using Borland's Quality Central. If you want to submit the report anonymously, check the Anonymous Report check box.

Click Next one final time to submit the error report.

Do you currently have C# projects in Visual Studio .NET 2003, but need the advanced features offered by Delphi 2005? Don't worry. Importing these projects into Delphi 2005 is easy.

Simply select File | Open, and open the Visual Studio C# project file (*.csproj). The Delphi 2005 Import Visual Studio Project Wizard will ask you for the name you want to give to the imported project. From that point forward, you can use Delphi 2005's features to design, develop, compile, test, and deploy the application.

The following figure shows a C# project created in Visual Studio .NET 2003 being imported into Delphi 2005.

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While the features of Delphi 2005 make it the preferred environment for .NET development, C# projects built in Delphi 2005 can be exported to Visual Studio if you need to share the results of your work with a VS-based developer. To do this, select Tools | Export to Visual Studio from Delphi 2005’s main menu. Note that this menu item is only available when the current project in the Project Manager is a C# project.

Refactoring is the process of updating existing code to improve its readability, maintainability, and efficiency, without changing the essential behavior of the software. Common refactorings include providing more expressive names for variables, replacing duplicate code segments with a call to a common function that performs the same task, and replacing literal values with constants or resource references.

Delphi 2005 includes a number of impressive refactorings. These include symbol renaming, method extraction, variable and field declarations, and resource refactorings.

  Symbol Renaming

  Variable and Field Declarations

  Resource Refactoring

  Extract Method Refactoring

  Import Namespace (C#) and Find Unit (Delphi)

SyncEdit is a new feature in Delphi 2005 that provides support similar to symbol renaming refactoring. Unlike symbol renaming, however, SyncEdit performs localized renaming of symbols for a selected code block only. This is a powerful capability and one of the most popular of the new features with developers.

SyncEdit becomes available anytime you select a code block that includes at least two instances of the same symbol name. For example, consider the following figure, which depicts a selected code block that includes more than one reference to a local variable named DataTable1 (as well as DataSet1, DataAdapter1, Connection1, and the Create method).

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The SyncEdit icon appears in the left gutter of the editor window, indicating that synchronized changes to the selected code block are available. To enter the SyncEdit mode, you either click this icon or press Shift-Ctrl-J.

Once you enter the SyncEdit mode, the duplicate symbols are identified, and the symbol selected for synchronized editing appears highlighted (with the duplicates being displayed enclosed in boxes). If you want to edit a symbol other than the one selected by default, press the Tab key until the symbol you want to SyncEdit is selected.

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After selecting the symbol to edit, begin typing. The name of the selected symbol, and its duplicates, are updated as you type. The following figure shows the name of the DataTable being changed to CustTable. (The edit is being performed on the first instance of DataTable1, which appeared in the var declaration of this method.)

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SyncEdit is a great productivity tool when you are writing functions, procedures, and methods, in that this feature is so easy to use. There are, however, important differences between SyncEdit and symbol renaming refactorings. SyncEdit is lexical, so it works with comment lines as well as compilable code, unlike symbol renaming refactorings, which work only on actual symbol references. Likewise, symbol renaming refactoring extends its reach into descendant classes, as well as to resource files (such as VCL and VCL for .NET form files). SyncEdit only applies to the currently selected code block.

Error Insight, which makes its debut in Delphi 2005, provides you with a service that can be roughly described as spell checking and grammar checking for programmers. As you write your Delphi or C# code, the IDE actively evaluates your work, identifying the symbols, keywords, and directives that you use, looking for syntax and semantic errors that the compiler cannot resolve. When Error Insight locates an error, it identifies the problem by underscoring the offending text with red squiggly lines, similar to how Microsoft's Word identifies words not in its dictionary.

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When you pause your mouse pointer briefly over a symbol that Error Insight does not recognize, Error Insight displays a hint window with information about the identified error.

In addition to the Error Insight features available in the code editor, the problems located by Error Insight also dynamically appear in the Structure pane, under the Errors node, and disappear as they are corrected. The following figure shows the Structure pane with a number of identified errors.

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In the example shown in the preceding figures, adding the Borland.Vcl.Registry unit (for the TRegistry class) and Borland.Vcl.Windows (for the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE constant) to this unit's uses clause allows Error Insight to see the various symbols that it identified as problems. Once these two units are added to the uses clause, both the Structure pane and the code editor are updated, indicating that no problems are detected in this code.

You can configure Error Insight from the Code Insight node of the Options dialog box. Display this dialog box by select Tools | Options from Delphi 2005's main menu.

Another new Code Insight feature appearing in Delphi 2005 is Help Insight. Help Insight provides you with information about the classes, interfaces, methods, properties, and fields that appear in your code, without you ever having to leave the code editor.

To access Help Insight, briefly pause your mouse pointer over a symbol in the code editor. After a moment, a hint window appears, displaying information about the symbol.

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In many instances, Help Insight includes one or more links within the hint window. Clicking one of these links may drill down into the help, displaying an additional hint window with information about the link you clicked. Alternatively, clicking a link may take you to the line of code where the clicked symbol is defined.

Help Insight is also available from the windows displayed by Code Insight, including the Class Completion and Argument Value List windows. When a Code Insight window is active, select an item in the Code Insight window to show the Help Insight for that item. For example, in the following figure Help Insight is displaying information about the BeginTransaction method of a SqlConnection object. This help became available after BeginTransaction was selected in the Code Completion window.

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You can configure Help Insight from the Code Insight node of the Options dialog box.

One of the more exciting additions to the Delphi 2005 code editor is the History Manager. The History Manager, which you display by clicking the History tab when a source file is active in the code editor, permits you to view changes to your source files over time, to view comments about specific versions of your source code, as well as to view the differences between the various saved versions of your files and to easily revert to any backup state or checkin.

By default, the History Manager transparently maintains local copies of your source files in a folder named __history under your project directory each time you save your changes. This feature is called local file backup, and you use the Options dialog box to configure how many versions of your local backup to keep. Delphi 2005 maintains the last 10 saved versions of each source file, by default. Depending on your available hard disk space, you may want to increase the number of backups that Delphi 2005 maintains.

If you are using Borland’s StarTeam version control server, the History Manager maintains StarTeam checkins as well. Using this feature, you can not only view changes that you have made to the source files, but also compare your changes with those implemented by other developers working on the StarTeam-managed project. StarTeam also permits you to track changes even after you have changed a file's name. In short, the History Manager provides you with a convenient and powerful interface to the robust StarTeam project asset management system.

It's worth noting that the History Manager also works with the DFM files of VCL and VCL for .NET applications. DFM files are used in those applications to persist information about the properties of the objects that appear on your forms, data modules, and frames. As a result, the History Manager permits you to view, manage, and restore changes made to your form designs using the same tools as those used on Delphi code files.

There are three panes available within the History Manager. These panes are named Content, Info, and Diff. Each of these panes is described in the following sections.

  The Content Pane

  The Info Pane

  The Diff Pane

Code navigation is a feature of Delphi 2005 that permits you to easily move between sections of your code. For example, by pressing Ctrl-Shift-UpArrow (or Control-Shift-DownArrow), you can move effortlessly between a method name in a Delphi class declaration to the associated implementation of that method.

Delphi 2005 introduces a small but valuable enhancement to code navigation in Delphi code, permitting you to move between your interface and implementation section uses clauses, as well as between your unit's initialization and finalization sections, using Ctrl-Shift-UpArrow.

Code navigation is not necessary in C# projects, as the associated modules in C# do not have a two-part structure, as is the case with Delphi units.

Delphi 2005 introduces a new feature that permits you to quickly comment and uncomment a selected code block. To comment one or more consecutive lines of code, select the code in the code editor, right-click, and then select Toggle Comment from the displayed context menu (or press Ctrl-/). When you do this, Delphi 2005 places the single line comment characters (//) at the start of each of the lines in the selected block.

To uncomment one or more consecutive lines, select those lines and press Ctrl-/, or right-click and select Toggle Comment. Delphi 2005 will respond by removing the single-line comment characters from each selected line in the block. The single-line comment characters do not have to be in the first column of the code editor for Delphi 2005 to remove them.

Bookmarks are special tags that you place within a source file to enhance your navigation within that file. You place a bookmark by press Ctrl-Shift, followed by a single digit, from 0 to 9. Once placed, the bookmark appears in the left gutter of the code editor using a glyph that represents the digit.

Once a bookmark has been placed, you can quickly navigate to that bookmark within the code editor by pressing the Ctrl key followed by the digit used to place the bookmark. For example, if you have previously placed a bookmark using Ctrl-Shift-1, and subsequently navigate to a different area of your code file, you can instantly return to the bookmarked line in your source code by pressing Ctrl-1.

Delphi 2005 now supports persistent bookmarks. If persistent bookmarks are enabled, a placed bookmark will remain in the source code until you specifically remove it. This means that you can place a bookmark in one editing session, and that bookmark will still be there the next time you open that source code file in Delphi 2005.

In order to enable persistent bookmarks, check the Project desktop check box under the Autosave options group on the Environment Options page of the Options dialog box. You display the Options dialog box by selecting Tools | Options from Delphi 2005's main menu.

Janeva is Borland's middleware solution for using J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) Enterprise JavaBeans and CORBA (common object request broker architecture) objects from your Delphi 2005 applications. With Janeva, you can leverage your existing enterprise-level objects, calling them from your Web-enabled or workstation client .NET applications.

To enable access to a J2EE or CORBA object from your Delphi 2005 application, select the Project menu on Delphi 2005's main menu, or right-click the current project in the Project Manager, and select either Add J2EE Reference or Add CORBA Reference.

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Use the displayed dialog box to select the Java .jar or .ear file, or the CORBA IDL (interface definition language) file. If you select a Java archive, for example, Delphi 2005 then permits you to choose which of the contained Enterprise JavaBeans you want to use, as shown in the following figure.

Selecting OK generates a proxy class that you use to make calls to the Java server at runtime.

You can now choose how Delphi 2005 will encode your source files. Your options include ANSI, Binary, UTF8, and so on.

To set the file encoding for the current source file in the editor, right-click in the editor and select File Format from the context menu. Select the encoding you want to use from the displayed menu.

Being able to select the source file encoding is particularly valuable when you are writing source files using non-US locales. For example, source files encoded using UTF-8 will correctly maintain the identity of the individual characters even when opened in a different locale. By comparison, special characters in a source file may change if the source file is encoded in ANSI and then opened with a different ANSI codepage.

Delphi provides extensive support for interoperability between Win32 and .NET applications, including COM interop through runtime callable wrappers (RCWs) and platform invoke (PInvoke). With Delphi 2005, this support has been advanced through the support for virtual library interfaces (VLI). Virtual library interfaces permit you to call routines in Win32 DLLs from your .NET applications much more easily than the mechanism provided by .NET's PInvoke.

Normally, managed code in the .NET framework can call routines in unmanaged libraries through the .NET platform invoke service, or PInvoke. With PInvoke, you import the exported routines of an unmanaged DLL by using the [DLLImport] attribute to identify the DLL in which the function is located, as well as other characteristics of the exported function.

There are several drawbacks to using PInvoke. First, using the [DLLImport] attribute you cannot resolve the DLL name or location (path) at runtime. Second, if the specified routine in the DLL cannot be loaded, for whatever reason, a runtime exception is raised.

Third, the [DLLImport] attribute is somewhat verbose and repetitive, especially when you have many routines that you are importing from a single DLL.

Consider the following two functions, which are implemented and exported from a Win32 DLL created using Win32 Delphi:

function ConvertCtoF(CentValue: Integer): Integer; stdcall;
function ConvertFtoC(FahrValue: Integer): Integer; stdcall;

A unit that imports these routines using PInvoke has, at a minimum, an implementation block that looks something like the following (assuming that these routines were exported from a DLL named Win32DLL.dll):

function ConvertCtoF; external;
[DllImport('Win32DLL.dll', CharSet = CharSet.Auto,
  EntryPoint = 'ConvertCtoF')]
function ConvertFtoC; external; 
[DllImport('Win32DLL.dll', CharSet = CharSet.Auto,
  EntryPoint = 'ConvertFtoC')]

With virtual library interfaces, importing routines from an unmanaged DLL is easier, is less prone to raising exceptions, and permits your code to resolve the name and/or location of the DLL at runtime. There are three steps to importing one or more routines from an unmanaged DLL using virtual library interfaces. These are:

Adding the Borland.Vcl.Win32 namespace to your uses clause

Creating an interface declaration where each method in the interface maps to one of the routines exported from the DLL

Calling the Supports function from the Borland.Vcl.Win32 unit, passing to it the name of the DLL (including an optional path if the DLL is not located in a location where Windows will find it), the Interface you created in the preceding step, and a variable of that interface type

If the Supports function determines that the methods of your interface map to functions exported from the named DLL, the variable you pass in the third parameter of the call to Supports will point to an object that implements the interface you passed in the second parameter. You can then use this object reference to execute the unmanaged routines of the DLL.

If one or more of the methods of the interface are not exported by the named DLL, or the named DLL does not exist or is somehow compromised, Supports returns a Boolean false without raising an exception.

Here is a sample interface that declares the two exported functions of the unmanaged DLL example used earlier in this section:

type
IWin32DLLInt = interface
  function ConvertCtoF(CentValue: Integer): Integer;
  function ConvertFtoC(FahrValue: Integer): Integer;
end;

If Win32DLL.dll is located in the mylib subdirectory of the application's executable, the following code returns an implementation of IMyWin32DLL, after which one of the methods (ConvertCtoF) of the returned object is executed:

var
  MyDLL: String;
  MyWin32DLL: IWin32DLLInt;
begin
MyDLL := ExtractFilePath(Application.ExeName) + 
  '\mylib\Win32DLL.dll' ;
if not Supports(MyDLL, IWin32DLLInt, MyWin32DLL) then
  MessageBox.Show(self, 'Could not load Win32DLL.dll')
else
  NewInt := MyWin32DLL.ConvertCtoF(100);

The VCL for .NET assemblies now support partially trusted callers. A partially trusted caller is an application that does not reside on the same workstation as a managed assembly that it calls.

For example, an .exe being executed from a network share or from a URL is a partially trusted caller. By default, the .NET security model prevents a partially trusted caller from invoking unmanaged code, such as that in the Windows API, unless that caller includes the appropriate declarations and checks.

The Delphi 2005 assemblies of the VCL for .NET now include the additional security declarations and checks that permit the VCL for .NET to be called from a partially trusted caller without violating .NET security.

Several new features have been added to both of Delphi 2005’s Delphi compilers. These most significant of these include the new for…in loop and Unicode support. These new compiler features are described in the following sections.

  The For…In Loop

var
  Row: DataRow; 
begin
//…
for Row in MyDataTable.Rows do
  ListBox1.Items.Add(Row[0].ToString);

  Support for Unicode and UTF8 Formats

Borland's Delphi for .NET compiler made its first debut with the release of Delphi 8 for the Microsoft .NET Framework. In addition to the updates listed in the preceding section, this compiler has received a number of updates that apply specifically to .NET applications. These include a revision to how namespaces are created and managed, forward-declared record types, and support for weak packaging in VCL for .NET applications. The updates to the Delphi for .NET compiler are described in the following sections.

  Delphi Code and Namespaces

  Support for Weak Packaging in VCL for .NET Applications

  Forward Declared Record Types