How to use the Oleander Demo Application

To use the Oleander demo application, you have to install Oleander on your system, compile the Oleander components into the VCL and then build the demo application using OleanderDemo.dpr. More installation details. To run the application you will need to have the Borland BDE installed and the DBDEMOS alias defined, pointing to the database delivered with Delphi.

The idea behind the demo was to show you the possibilities of Oleander using either TTable or TQuery. With the Mastapp demos we have reproduced reports that look exactly like the ones generated with ReportSmith and delivered with the Delphi Mastapp demo application. The Fishfacts demo shows how to print memos and graphics.

The demo documents installed in the \doc subdirectory are all WinWord 7 documents, but will load into WinWord 8 without problems. Don’t save them with WinWord 8 though, as this changes the file format and makes the files unloadable for WinWord 7.

If you start the Oleander demo application you will see a dialog with four buttons and the Oleander logo. Each button starts a separate demo part and the close button ends the Oleander demo:

Oleander Demo

The demo dialogs

In general, the demo dialogs look all the same, with some minor differences stated in the sections below. You have to fill in some parameters and then start the print.

Fishfacts Demo

At the top you will see a navigator you can use to navigate in the result set that will be printed. This result set is shown in a grid below the navigator as the dataset delivers it. There are no special optical enhancements. You will be able to select individual records though, as the multiselect option of the grid is enabled and the Oleander components will receive the selected bookmarks.

Below the grid are two listboxes. The left shows the identifiers Oleander has found in the document it will print. The right shows the identifiers it would be able to handle. The left listbox is always a subset of the right one. The information shown in the listboxes are easily available from the Oleander components.

In the middle of the third part of the dialog, below the listboxes are the "OLE server", the "Document" and the "Print to" comboboxes.

The checkboxes in the options group give you additional control over the printing process.

The three buttons to the left start the print process, abort it and close the demo dialog.

You will have to abort the preview mode too, before you can close the dialog as Oleander wants to free the OLE automation object.

The best order to start the demo is to select the OLE server, then select the document, perhaps switch some options or select a different printer.

Mastapp Table Demo

The Oleander Mastapp Table Demo tries to show how to print reports as used in the Borland Mastapp demo application. Borland used Reportsmith to create the reports. You will see that you can create reports that look virtually the same with simple WinWord techniques.

This demo prints all reports using TTable dataset components. You can see how to link different datasets using Mastersource and Masterfields properties. How lookup and calculated fields are used and how to controll grouping withing the documents with the group controlling datasets.

As there are no indices available in the Borland demo database that would lead to the same order as used within the Borland Mastapp demos, Oleander uses the indices given.

The picture below shows the actual WinWord output.

Customer List

Mastapp Query Demo

Order History

The Oleander Mastapp Query demo prints the same reports as the Table demo, but uses single queries to get the result sets. The dialog is enhanced with a "History from" and "to" entry field, to determine the resultset for the Order History report. These fields are available to Oleander to be printed. With Queries ordering as wished is no problem. You can see how to name the grouping identifiers using the group controlling fields.

The picture below shows the actual WinWord output.

Invoice

Fishfacts Demo

The Oleander Fishfacts demo uses simple documents with tables and prints memo and graphics.