Additional and External Delphi Tools

In addition to the IDE, when you install Delphi you get other, external tools. Some of them, such as the Database Desktop, the Package Collection Editor (PCE.exe), and the Image Editor (ImagEdit.exe), are available from the Tools menu in the IDE. In addition, the Enterprise edition has a link to the SQL Monitor (SqlMon.exe). Other tools that are not directly accessible from the IDE include many command-line utilities you can find in the Delphi bin directory. For example, these tools include a command-line Delphi compiler (DCC32.exe), a Borland resource compiler (BRC32.exe and BRCC32.exe), and an executable viewer (TDump.exe).

Finally, some of the sample programs that ship with Delphi are actually useful tools that you can compile and keep at hand. I'll discuss some of these tools in the book, as needed. Here are a few of the useful and higher-level tools, most of which are available in the \Delphi7\bin folder and in the Tools menu:

Web App Debugger  (WebAppDbg.exe) The debugging web server introduced in Delphi 6. It is used to keep track of the requests sent to your applications and to debug them. This debugger was rewritten in Delphi 7: It is now a CLX application and its connectivity is based on sockets. I'll discuss this tool in Chapter 20.

XML Mapper  (XmlMapper.exe) A tool for creating XML transformations to be applied to the format produced by the ClientDataSet component. You'll find more on this topic in Chapter 22.

External Translation Manager  (etm60.exe) The stand-alone version of the Integrated Translation Manager. This external tool can be given to external translators and was available for the first time in Delphi 6.

Borland Registry Cleanup Utility  (D7RegClean.exe) A tool that helps you remove all the Registry entries that Delphi 7 adds to a computer.

TeamSource  An advanced version-control system provided with Delphi, starting with version 5. The tool is very similar to its past incarnation and is installed separately from Delphi. Delphi 7 ships with version 1.01 of Team Source, the same version available after applying an available patch to the Delphi 6 version.

WinSight  (Ws32.exe) A Windows "message spy" program available in the bin directory.

Database Explorer  A tool that can be activated from the Delphi IDE or as a stand-alone tool, using the DBExplor.exe program of the bin directory. Because it is meant for the BDE, the Database Explorer is not used much nowadays.

OpenHelp  (oh.exe) The tool you can use to manage the structure of Delphi's own Help files, integrating third-party files into the help system.

Convert  (Convert.exe) A command-line tool you can use to convert DFM files into the equivalent textual description and vice versa.

Turbo Grep  (Grep.exe) A command-line search utility, which is much faster than the embedded Find In Files mechanism but not as easy to use.

Turbo Register Server  (TRegSvr.exe) A tool you can use to register ActiveX libraries and COM servers. The source code for this tool is available under \Demos\ActiveX\TRegSvr.

Resource Explorer  A powerful resource viewer (but not a full-blown resource editor) you can find under \Demos\ResXplor.

Resource Workshop  An old 16-bit resource editor that can also manage Win32 resource files. The Delphi installation CD includes a separate installation for Resource Workshop. It was formerly included in Borland C++ and Pascal compilers for Windows and was much better than the standard Microsoft resource editors then available. Although its user interface hasn't been updated and it doesn't handle long filenames, this tool can still be very useful for building custom or special resources. It also lets you explore the resources of existing executable files.