Andy's Delphi Skills

Andy Bulka
Programmer
abulka@netspace.net.au
12 Melview Drive, Wyndham Vale 3024,
Victoria, Australia.

Phone: +61

Delphi Skills

The main Delphi project that I have been involved in is the Reason! Project. Funded by the University of Melbourne, it is an educational reasoning analysis and flowcharting tool. It took three years to develop three versions of this software. My role was that of chief architect and sole programmer, working with a team comprising a content expert, graphic artist, server script programmer as well as various educational experts and tutors. Reason!Able is now a complete and commercial software package www.goreason.com, used officially in courses by students and staff at the University of Melbourne, and has been sold to the top ten secondary schools in Australia.

A rich GUI , COM and Internet technologies and was used in this project . The diagramming component, for example was a sophisticated COM component which was modified in Visual C++ to customise it to word wrap and to do other display enhancements. Subsequent work on Reason!Able and various server software allowed Reason!Able software usage logs to be periodically transmitted to a server via http, ftp and email.

I am a specialist in creating shipping products with rich GUI's and smart business logic.

Delphi Skills Matrix

Skill	Description
Delphi COM	Extensive use of interfaces in complex 3rd party diagramming Active X
	Extended an existing Delphi aplication by turning it into a COM server
	Imported various type libraries, built type libraries via VC++
	Embedded Internet Explorer into Delphi & Toolbook, used both Delphi code and Toolbook script to control it.
	Familiar with the best COM books (Eric Harmon, C. Calvert, Cantu etc.)
Delphi WEB	Used Webbroker and Page producer etc.
	Installed various servers
	Built a Kylix (Delphi for Linux) cgi application to analyse text databases and produce HTML reports
	Used Indy internet components to create an ‘upload wizard’ which uploads user log data to a server via http, ftp, email or floppy. Used by hundreds of students on a daily basis.
Delphi General	Use of delphi packages, created various components e.g. persistence components, custom GUI widgets, Model View Controller component etc.
	Expert at ModelMaker / UML for round trip Delphi reverse engineering and code generation.
	Have built an entire Delphi application using 10 design patterns
	Built three persistence frameworks. One uses an external persistence brokers for a choice of saving to DB or file. Another is a simple persistence framework that simply saves to DB. Another is based on the built in Delphi component streaming technology.
	Database familiarity is mainly Paradox tables and standard Delphi DB objects and methods. SQL server experience with Interbase and MySQL.
	Familiar with a wide range of components and component packs e.g. Raize, LMD, ABC, Orpheus etc.). e.g. Have extensively used a HTML-lite component + many others.
	Five years Delphi experience.
	Have given three well regarded presentations to the Australian Delphi User Group www.adug.org.au

Python Skills

Four years of Python experience:

	Two and a half years writing a commercial computer game in python, using pyGame and wxwindows, pyUI. Team leader, architect and lead programmer.
	Built server software in python that accepts uploads from both web pages and stand alone software.
	Server software that analyzes and collates uploaded statistical data and generates various detailed reports.
	Extensive use of unit testing (pyUnit) for robust code delivery
	Built python software that parses other web pages and integrates data into larger reports.
	Built Stockmarket simulator, Elevator simulator using design patterns and OO designs.
	My conference papers on design patterns use examples written in python e.g. Transofrmation Interface & Relationship Manager.
	Integrated python with Delphi. Amongst other things, this allows rich GUI's in Delphi to front business logic built in python.
	Moderately familiar with Zope and also with other python based web application frameworks (e.g. webware)

Flash 5 Skills

Two years of experience. Familiar with flash 5 scripting (actionscript) and the use of XML to drive flash applications.

Toolbook & Multimedia Skills – Available on request

Seven years of experience in programming Openscript, designing educational and training Toolbook software. Consulting and training courses also available. Visit www.atug.com my Toolbook website.