1. BDE Broken? Recent Microsoft Betas may be the culprit

We encountered a situation in which programs that use Borland's BDE suddenly stopped working on some of our machines. The really helpful error message was "Operation not applicable!" (The error code is 10756)

Posted By Wes Peterson, Post #100433, KB Topic: Borland Database Engine

2. Borland Database Engine 5.202

Download BDE 5.202 (includes a small BDE Information utility for testing the installation).

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #100537, KB Topic: Borland Database Engine

3. How to check what BDE version is installed.

Q. I've updated my BDE from version 5.01 to version 5.2.0.2 but the About BDE Administrator dialog still shows version 5.01?

A. Your update may have taken. Updates typically just replace the DLLs the BDE uses so you may have the latest installed.

Version Information
To see what version of the BDE engine you "actually" have installed, you need to look at the Version Information from within the BDE Administrator. Select Object | Version Information... to see the DLL version numbers

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #101246, KB Topic: Borland Database Engine

4. Installing BDE using Merge Modules

The new and "approved" way to install the BDE is by way of mege modules. This is quite a bit different than the traditional ways of using a pre-made program, or incorporating BDE Cab files (from, say, your Delphi installation). Caveat: This is new news for me, and I don't claim to know or understand everything there is to know on this topic but I do have some helpful findings for you.

Posted By Wes Peterson, Post #101469, KB Topic: Borland Database Engine

5. Uninstalling the BDE

It's rare, but sometimes it may be necessary to remove the BDE from a machine. Not for the faint of heart, and with serious possible consequences, we explain how to manually uninstall the BDE. This is intended for developers or power users.

Posted By Wes Peterson, Post #101473, KB Topic: Borland Database Engine

6. Web, Desktop, or Hybrid: Which is the best choice?

The web has "grown up" to the point that many people now feel that it is THE way to deploy virtually everything. However, it is still primarily a document-based interface. Others believe that desktop applications are superior because they can utilize all the power of an operating system. This needn't be a debate because understanding the advantages and disadvantages of each can make it quite simple to identify the ideal deployment technology. There is also "a third way": utilize a web service to serve up data for your desktop application.

Posted By Wes Peterson, Post #100985, KB Topic: Coding & OO

7. Which Development Tool would YOU use?

Maybe I'm cynical, but as a developer meeting with a prospective client to gather requirements, I always wait for that one "gotcha" that turns a simple, straightforward project into a potential daymare. 

Posted By Bryan Valencia, Post #102171, KB Topic: Coding & OO

8. Regex

Console application shows some common uses of Regular Expressions (REGEX) to match and recursively replace text in strings.

Posted By Bryan Valencia, Post #101321, KB Topic: General .Net Concepts

9. Storing your .NET Application Settings

Storing settings and configuration information for your .NET application can be achieved in a number of ways including using the app.config file and the ConfigurationManager class, using the registry, and in your own custom configuration file.

Posted By Adam Lum, Post #100891, KB Topic: General .Net Concepts

10. Is Native Code Irrelevant?

With Microsoft heavily evangelizing .NET, and Sun continuing to improve Java, many a developer and customer are torn between targeting native machine code or a just-in-time compiler.

Here we take a quick look at that particular state of the union...

Posted By Wes Peterson, Post #102027, KB Topic: General Coding Concepts

11. Aggregation

Aggregations indicate a whole-part relationship, and are known as "has-a" or "is part of" relationships. An Aggregation relationship is indicated by a line with a hollow diamond.

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #101263, KB Topic: Object Orientation (OO)

12. An Introduction to Object Orientation

Overview and introduction to object orientation. When you analyze, design, and code in an OO way, you "think" about objects and their interaction. This type of thinking is more like real life where you naturally think about how "this object" relates to "that object". Classes represent the "design" of an existing object. The values or properties of an existing object is it's current state. When designing classes, OO supports many features like inheritance (like real-life where you inherit your parents characteristics), encapsulation (hiding data), and polymorphism (the ability of one thing to act like another or in different ways).

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #100137, KB Topic: Object Orientation (OO)

13. Inheritance

The concept of a class makes it possible to define subclasses that share some or all of the main class characteristics. This is called inheritance. Inheritance also allows you to reuse code more efficiently. In a class tree, inheritance is used to design classes vertically. (You can use Interfaces to design classes horizontally within a class tree.) With inheritance, you are defining an "is-a" relationship (i.e. a chow is-a dog). Analysts using UML call this generalization where you generalize specific classes into general parent classes.

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #100813, KB Topic: Object Orientation (OO)

  To/From Code Guide: Inheritance... vs. Other Languages

14. OO/UML: Aggregation versus Composition

Our most popular article in the history of our online community! Explains the "is a", "has a", "uses a", and "looks like" relationships (updated May 2007). "Is a" is inheritance, "looks like" is interfaces, "has a" is aggregation, and "uses a" is composition.

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #100035, KB Topic: Object Orientation (OO)

15. Static Class / Static Member

A static member is a member you can have access to without instantiating the class into an object. For example, you can read and write static properties and call static methods without ever creating the class. Static members are also called class members (class methods, class properties, etc.) since they belong to the class and not to a specific object. A static class is a class that contains only static members. In the UML, these classes are described as utility classes.

Posted By Mike Prestwood, Post #101477, KB Topic: Object Orientation (OO)

  To/From Code Guide: Static Class / Stati... vs. Other Languages

16. Control Structures, and Recursion

Control Flow in a Computer Program: Sequential, Conditional, Iteration.  Also has an introduction to Recursion.

Posted By Sam.H, Post #102724, KB Topic: Programming

17. Defensive Programming

Defensive programming practice.

Posted By Sam.H, Post #102725, KB Topic: Programming

18. Opening up Outlook

Long a proprietary data store format, Microsoft is opening up the Outlook PST file format with the release of a couple new products.

Posted By Wes Peterson, Post #102189, KB Topic: Programming

19. Regular Expressions Cheat Sheet

A collection of regular expressions that validate and parse common user data.

Posted By Bryan Valencia, Post #101300, KB Topic: Programming

20. Three Reasons I Like to Use Text Files to Store Data in My Software Applications

This article discusses three reasons I like to use fixed width text files in my C, C++ and C# application programs.

Posted By NE Ohio Computer Guy, Post #102848, KB Topic: Programming