RTollison

1) We are not changing cobol vendors as we have over 5K cobol programs and over 1200 clients. 2) We already changing over to C# development 3) This changeover process takes time. 4) Windows is updating/changing version 10 5) ACTIVEX controls that we use in our cobol programs are from 2000 era a) We have already ran into some minor issues related to the ACTIVEX controls and Windows 10 and we got a workaround going 6) I would like to reproduce the ACTIVEX control using Delphi 10.2 in hopes of it not having the same issues as the current ACTIVEX does (the control was invisible until we turned DEP off, workaround) 7) We have purchased all of the devexpress vcl library with hopes of it helping to create a new ACTIVEX to replace the old one. (A BIGGER job than it first seemed) 8 ) I have imported the old REGISTERED ACTIVEX library and created a unit *_TLB.pas and was hoping i could use it in the creation of a new ACTIVEX control with ALL the same names/features. (NO REWRITING of cobol programs) 9) Apparently no easy way to create new ACTIVEX ridl from the *_TLB.pas unit created from the import.

by using the "Import Component" i can get the *_tlb.pas file and was wondering if i can use that in ANY way to help with the creation of an updated activex project?

i have purchased the activex of the devexpress quantum grid. when needing to get an updated version of the activex grid control, i found out they no longer support activex components. so i purchased the dev express component suit for everything VCL. We use the activex grid inside of acucorp acucobol. we have looked at other activex grid components on the market but that would mean we would have to change all our cobol programs to use the new activex grid component. at this point i am having some issues with registering/using the activex grid with windows 10. i get it to work correctly with use of an admin registering the component. i am concerned about it with regards to any new updates to win 10 that might cause it to not work. i was hoping ("wishing") it would be an easy process to use something/anything from the old activex to create a new activex component with the updated vcl components. after doing some reading of an old book "Delphi Programming with COM and ACTIVEX" i finally got it thru my thick skull that skipping to the part about creating activex controls chapter is not the way to go. I am finally understanding that you have to learn how to create the vcl component with all the whistle and bells before trying to create the activex component. so now i am reading from the beginning (how to create vcl components) and maybe i can get a better understanding of creating and activex component.

i have a project that i am in the beginning stages of. I have a dll that can do Merge Fields for RTF documents (devexpress). now i am working on getting data to the dll in question. My calling program will have to send the merge data in an XML format, format not determined just yet. in my dll what would be a good simple way to load the data up into whatever so i can run the merge function of the richeditcontroller. needs a datasource and a dataset. how to get the xml information into a dataset/datasource object? Just looking for ideas/pitfalls/whatever in getting xml data into dataset, anything is on the table since i haven't started yet.

no cobol doesn't have native support for that, i would have to create a dll for the communications. i am ok with creating the xml and experimenting/adjusting as needed. Funny part is where i saw a forum on here talking about the death of Cobol by some specific time frame. My employer has been using it since 1985 and we have over 1,200+ customers who use it and are happy with the applications.

I am having to create the xml file using cobol program. I am creating the file to do mail merge in the dll. so far by using the same values in the xml file it seems to be working but I am testing on a small number of records < 20 just concerned if it goes to 2000 or so

Thanks for pointer, but is there any documentation as to what all the table/column header fields mean. MinimumCapacity="50" Name="FDMemTable1" how do i know what is variable and its meaning versus a fixed value and possibly its meaning?