Richard has just completed an interesting contract with the Commonwealth Department of Health and Ageing. The role has been using Delphi 2007, 7 and 5, Paradox, BDE, Access, ADO, MS Visual SourceSafe and Inno Setup.
The next few weeks will see some new features going into HireSolutions, then a short break in Bali, then back to study for a little while to gain Microsoft Certification, hopefully a MCPD (Microsoft Certified Professional Developer) at Enterprise Applications Developer level. Time, and interesting contracts depending.
Richard has been doing contract software development for the Department of Health and Ageing, an Australian Commonwealth Government Department, since March 2007. The role has been using Delphi 5, 7 and 2007, Paradox, BDE, Access, ADO, MS Visual SourceSafe and Inno Setup.
One of the interesting things about this role has been the range of projects and products and the sheer size of some of the datasets. The government and corporate restrictions have also meant for some interesting constraints.
One side effect of the government contracting, is that Granite Solutions is now a registered company and also offers Contractor Payroll Services.
HireSolutions gets dressed up! HireSolutions was originally written for the ski hire industry, but quickly the potential for other markets was seen by us and our customers. After some small modifications HireSolutions is now being trialled for use in the Mens Formalwear Hire market. Many of the requirements are identical, particularly handling groups of people and booking and charging for "packages" or "suits / outfits". This broader customer base should mean more features, and therefore a better product for all!
HireSolutions is international!!! HireSolutions is now being used by Ski Hire Shops in Australia, New Zealand and Japan (used by Australian staff)
Borland Developer Network: Publishes an article / tutorial by Richard Walker on how to use report writing tools in your ECO application.
Borland Release "Borland Developer Studio 2006": and has a quote from Richard Walker in the press release
BDN Radio: Borland broadcasts 24 hours of continuous talks about the soon to be released Borland Developer Studio 2006, including a 20 minute slot by Richard Walker. (5:20pm)
ECO Workshop: Richard will be running a hands-on workshop for the Australia Delphi Users Group. The goal of the day is to explain the core components of ECO, then design a model and implement a working application using ECO and the range of elements available. For more details see the ADUG site
BuilderAU magazine published an article discussing Model Driven Development. Richard is interviewed by the writer about ECO, using it to write HireSolutions and his experiences with Model Driven Development. Read the article here
ADUG Sydney: Richard did a talk to the Sydney chapter of the Australia Delphi Users Group showing how Delphi 2005, ECO and the .NET framework were used to implement HireSolutions. It was a high-level discussion showing how these technologies can be used to develop commercial software.
I participated in Borland's BDN 24 hour web broadcast today. I was talking about HireSolutions and the tools and techniques I used to create it. Details of the event and downloads of the recordings are available here. The HireSolutions product is one of the first commercial applications anywhere in the world to use Borland ECO, Delphi 2005 and the Microsoft .NET framework. It was an honour to be asked to talk along side such a line up of well respected and famous developers. Thanks for all the kind feedback received from those who listened in.
ComputerWorld publishes a press release that discusses Granite Solutions, HireSolutions and the successful use of Borland Delphi and ECO to implement a commercial application using these technologies. Granite Solutions is one of the first companies to release an application using ECO.
HireSolutions has been a real hit! There are 13 stores using the software. The stores range from small suburban shops, to large specialty ski retailers through to dedicated volume ski hires. Some stores are using the multi-user version, with 2, 3 and 4 terminal configurations in use so far. The feedback from the stores has been execellent and is helping to shape a truly amazing product. I've already had international inquiries.
Granite Solutions has booked a stand at the Snow Industries trade show for October, so that the rest of the industry can see the software in action.
ADUG Canberra: Richard did a talk to the Canberra chapter of the Australia Delphi Users Group showing how Delphi 2005, ECO and the .NET framework were used to implement HireSolutions. It was a high-level discussion showing how these technologies can be used to develop commercial software.
There has been an excellent response to the news of HireSolutions, our new Snow & Sports Hire Software. I've had plenty of enthusiastic phone calls in response to the brochure that we posted out. Thank you all for looking and taking an interest. I'm adding a few extra features now for a release on the 15th April. I can send out a trial version on CD. Let me know if you haven't already ordered one. There interest has been so strong that I may travel around and demonstrate the software.
See the products link for more details on the software.
Granite Solutions has been busy at work creating a new product. HireSolutions is a an application to manage a ski hire fleet. It handles bookings, stock availability, binding release calculations, pickups, returns, overdue returns, sized stock, non-inventory stock, group hires (unlimited members), packages, multiple payments, deposits and more.
The finishing touches are being added now for a release early this Australian autumn. Stay tuned...
Richard will be presenting to at ADUG's meeting in Canberra.
We shall explore what ECO (Enterprise Core Objects) and MDA (Model Driven Architecture) are, and how they can be of use by creating a small application. Richard will show how using tools like ECO for software design and development can improve the quality of software systems.
Topics include:- What is ECO?- What is MDA?- How they can help? A bit of a discussion on design and process...- Limitations- Then we will create a small app using ECO, creating a model, generating a DB schema, hooking the data into the app.Aimed as an introduction based on my own trials and tribulations with ECO.
Richard Walker presented a talk at ADUG's Sydney meeting (Australian Delphi User Group) titled "Reducing Code Duplication Using OO Techniques".
The talk included some examples of improving a RAD business application by introducing objects, inheritance, custom components and datamodules to improve the code, remove duplication and allow reuse. Before and after examples.
See the articles section for downloads.