Delphi Active Commercial Components

Question

Similar to the Delphi FOSS component question, a commercial component directory will also be a valuable searchable resource. I invite you to contribute your expierience with your favourite commercial components and also share with us your experiences with commercial components that doesn't make the grade as well. Then there is the question of price/performance or better price/features. Often commercial component pricing is sky high - indicate where you think it is good value or expensive.

If you can, please distinguish Delphi Win32 vs Delphi.NET components - and mention those that have support for D2009

Please don't forget your links!

Answer 1

I get a lot done with the full DeveloperExpress suite http://www.devexpress.com/Products/VCL/ and the Direct Oracle Access components http://www.allroundautomations.nl/doa.html.

The only drawback to the DevloperExpress components is that there is not a one to one mapping between the Delphi components and the .NET components. It makes it harder to port applications.

Answer 2

ReportBuilder, from Digital-Metaphors, is awesome.

It's not cheap, and many people might question why you would buy a tool like this when Delphi comes with some kind of reporting solution in the box. The point is that this is a seriously well thought-out tool with lots of industry support. It's extremely powerful and as with anything like this, once you get to grips with it you can be very productive with it. I can add a lot of value to my applications with just a day or two of 'report builder' time in the project, and the results are of a really high quality, so your clients feel like they're getting a lot of bang for their end-user 'buck'. Linking reports together, PDF and email support, end-user design/layout tools, archiving... and pretty good technical support too. :-)

If it sounds like I'm a fan, well I am. But I'm not a shill for them - I pay for my RB personally, and it isn't cheap!

And a +1 for the DevExpress suite too, which in my opinion offers some really good controls and is good value for money.

Answer 3

LMD Innovative have a good range, well supported and with C++Builder compatibility. Their IDE-Tools pack is particularly powerful.

RemObjects have some impressive stuff as well, including the RO SDK remoting framework.

A couple of other smaller components/addons that have proved very useful for me are the MadExcept exception-handling tool, and Axolot's XLSReadWrite2 which allows you to read/write Excel spreadheets without requiring Excel to be installed. Don't expect amazing support on these, as they are single-developer outfits, as far as I know.

The only bad experience I've had with commercial Delphi components was the Shell Plus shell extension components. The product was usable for the first application I needed it for, but support/enhancements/etc were effectively non-existent, and I don't plan to try and use it again.

Answer 4

Raize Components is a good component package full of useful controls and Raize CodeSite is a good logger. TMS Software also have some nice components.

Answer 5

In addition to the DevExpress components and ReportBuilder already mentioned, there is also the TMS Components. http://www.tmssoftware.com/site/

Madexcept also comes into the essential category for exception handling. http://www.madshi.net/

Answer 6

Have a look at Hans Lohningers SDL Suite of science and engineering-related components here. There are some cool charting components there.

Answer 7

MadExcept from madshi.net is a terribly useful exception call stack / system state reporter that's been invaluable to me for tracking down errors in the field or while developing. It also has a useful library of other units (madcrypt, madzip) that work well.

Ofttimes it's enough just to get the call stack to figure out what went wrong.

There is a beta build that supports Delphi 2009 on the downloadable partner ISO.

Answer 8

SvCom by Aldyn Software. Delphi 2009 support is not out there (author is not very fast in releasing new versions).

Svcom will help you write and debug Windows services. I'm using it a lot.

Answer 9

I use FastReports for a lot of my reports. In the Delphi world, its big competitor is ReportBuilder, but it seems more like its competitor in the larger world Crystal. I used to work in a VB shop where Crystal was the standard way of producing reports. With FastReports I get many features I would have loved to have had in Crystal, from integrated event handling and user defined functions to faster execution and lighter impact on computer resources. FastReports also has an excellent and active forum.

Answer 10

XLSReadWrite II gives you fast and full access to xls and xlsx files without Excel. I use it all the time for reports and export/import data.

http://www.axolot.com/components/xlsrwii20.htm

No D2009 version available yet.

Answer 11

TeeChart - no D2009 yet.

TeeChart Pro provides complete, quick and easy to use charting for Business, Real-Time, Financial and Scientific applications.

http://www.steema.com/

Answer 12

Lists of components that are compatible with Delphi 2009 can be found in the (updated automatically) Developer Network article at: http://dn.codegear.com/article/38459

You can also use the CodeGear Technology Partner directory search web app at: http://video.codegear.com/ctp/partnercentral.exe/default

Answer 13

IMO the Products of RemObjects are very cool and professional. Especially the Multi-Tier Framework DataAbstract.

I also like the InstantObjects OPF.

In our Company we use FastReport, DeveloperExpress, Indy, JCL, JVCL and some other Components.

Answer 14

EurekaLog

is a complete bug resolution tool for Delphi and C++Builder developers that gives your application the power to catch every exception and memory leak, directly on the end user PC, generating a detailed log of the call stack (with file, class, method and line number), optionally sending you a copy of each log entry via email or the Web.

Is is able to send the bugreport file directly to Mantis/FogBugz or BugZilla.

See it here: link text

Answer 15

For database Applications Devart (formerly crlab)components are the best, http://www.devart.com

They have Direct access components for most major databases, and you can connect to DB without requiring the DB client library to be installed on client machine, this is very important feature for database like oracle which has a huge client installation (around 200MB).

NextGrid from Bergsoft, they have nice looking, fast and light Grid, http://www.bergsoft.net

Answer 16

Commercial components I'm using:

TMS Component Pack (previously mentioned) for TWebUpdate (auto-update a program)

VideoLab/AudioLab (www.mitov.com) for audio and video playback

SmartFlash (www.almdev.com) for embedding Flash files in a program

TVideoGrabber (www.datastead.com) for video playback, video streaming and TV tuning

Answer 17

In addition to the excellent recommendations already made, I'd add AppControls to the list. They make a number of handy little "off the beaten path" controls that are useful for application fit-and-finish work: http://www.appcontrols.com/

Answer 18

1. SecureBlackBox make some great
   components for SSL, SFTP, PKey and
   such that come with full source code.
2. Addin-Express for writing Office Plugins.
3. Gnostice with excellent eDocEngine for making electronic documents.