What's Next?

After the detailed description of forms and secondary forms in the previous chapters, I have focused on the architecture of applications, discussing both how Delphi's Application object works and how you can structure applications with multiple forms.

In particular, I've discussed MDI, visual form inheritance, and frames. Toward the end of the chapter I also discussed custom architectures, with form inheritance and interfaces. Now we can move forward to another key element of non-trivial Delphi applications: building custom components to use in your programs. I could write a book about this topic, so the description won't be exhaustive; but I'll offer a comprehensive overview.

Another element associated with the architecture of Delphi applications is the use of packages, which I'll introduce as a technology related to components but which really goes further. You can structure the code of a large application in multiple packages containing forms and other units. The development of programs based on multiple executable files, libraries, and packages, is discussed in Chapter 10.

After this step, I will begin delving into Delphi database programming, another key element of the Borland development environment and for many developers, the prime focus.