INNOVA Solutions

An Alternative Delphi Web Application Framework

Presentation by Roger Connell at ADUG Melbourne November 2013.

Abstract

The presentation was an attempt to explain and describe the Object Framework used to implement a WEB front end for ADUG member interactions.

In the ADUG member management system this code is entwined with the Object Db based business objects. That and the scale of the project make it difficult to demonstrate the WEB framework which Roger believes offers a potential Delphi based Web development tool certainly for himself and possibly for others.

The approach becomes much more viable with the availability of Indy's TIdCustomHTTPServer. This enabled a server based implementation allowing easy step though debugging of most aspects of the code before deploying as a standalone exe.

To Demonstrate the framework a new Delphi Project Group was developed revolving arround a simple Web Log Analyser which removes the dependency on Innova Solution's Object Db framework and offers three projects with the same Business Objects looking at a series of Apache Log Files.

A standard VCL form Analyser
A server to provide a browser based implementation of the same data using HTML Forms on a specified IP Port (eg 8080).
A console executable (CGI Executeable) which will serve the same HTML reports via any WEB Server (cgi-bin directory).

The aim was to make the project simple and publish all code so that the framework can be examined in a working context. Unfortunately it is more complex than anticipated and the initial learning curve to make use of the framework is significant.

Roger believes that this initial start up effort is justified in the interest of on going maintenance but others must make up their own mind.

The supplied code includes source for the "Framework".

Slides

Zip File of Powerpoint Presentation

DownLoad Source

Zip File of all project source files

Online Documentation

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