Is Delphi 6 suitable for use with ComponentWorks?

[Ed Roberts]

In addition, is ComponentWorks a current product (compared to MeasurementStudio for Visual C++, for example).
I am familiar with Delphi, and find Visual C++ user-hostile, so I would prefer to use the former if I can.

[Filipe A.]

Ed;

ComponentWorks is part of Measurement Studio. I'm not familiar with Delphi, however, since ComponentWorks is pretty much a set of ActiveX objects, if Delphi can handle those, I believe you can use CW with it.

Hope this helps.
Filipe A.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

[SteveP]

Ed,

I use ComponentWorks 6 with Delphi 6 for data acquisition. It's Help is written with C in mind and all of the properties and methods mentioned in the help do not seem to be available in Delphi so it can be hard to determine how to go about doing something. But I've found that using Delphi's code completion (type part of a procedure's name and end it with the "." character and Delphi will show you all the possible available procedures with that partial name) to show what is possible.

Events ("OnProgress") are available when a pre-defined number of data points or all points have been acquired. So you do not have to poll to tell when data is available. Nice.

Data is returned as OleVariant. Conversion to Delphi's dynamic array is slow. Perhaps this has
been speeded up in Delphi 7. I've not been able to find enough info on Delphi's DynArrayFromVariant procedure to get that to work to hopefully speed this up.

I've found Delphi much easier to understand and faster to compile than C, less restrictive than Visual Basic. I use its TChart Pro for graphics. I like its more detailed control, more user interface design control and many more available events than LabVIEW has.

Steve