Valient's IT Notes

Windows 64bit Delphi 2007/2009 Debugger Fix / Workaround with "Assertion failure" error

If one run Delphi 2007 or Delphi 2009 on Windows 64bit and met the Assertion failure when hit F2 or exit out of the program, this strange error dialog occurs:


bds.exe - bordbk105N.dll
Assertion failure: "(!"SetThreadContext failed")" in ..\win32src\thread32.cpp at line ...
Continue execution?

If Press No or ESC key will close the whole IDE.
Pressing Yes may prompt for the same dialog.

There was an unofficial hotfix at CodeCentral - ID: 27521, RAD Studio 2007 Debugger Fix for Windows 7 that now is unavailable.

Further is a temporary solution for this problem.
Using any hex editor, for example, mh-nexus, an open source version.
1. Close Delphi
2. Make a backup of the library bordbk105N.dll (version should be 105.11.1.12533) for Delphi 2007, bordbk120N.dll (version should be 120.903.17.15115) for Delphi 2009
For Delphi 2007 the location is "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\CodeGear\RAD Studio\5.0\bin\bordbk105N.dll",
for Delphi 2009
the location is "%ProgramFiles(x86)%\CodeGear\RAD Studio\6.0\bin\bordbk120N.dll"
3. Open the library file in hex editor
4. Look for hex string in the file
01 00 48 74 47 80 3d
There is only one(!) HEX 01 00 48 74 47 80 3D
5. Change to
01 00 48 EB 47 80 3d
74 is replaced with EB
6. Save
7. Restart Delphi and the error message should be gone. That’s all. Now the debugger runs on Windows 64bit.

Or try find the in the internet the ready-to-use patcher Delphi_2007_2009_WOW64_Debugger_Fix.zip (Delphi_2007_2009_WOW64_Debugger_Fix.exe)

Oracle SQL. The first difficulties that users overcome

How to find out the Oracle version

The Oracle version can be found by requesting select version from v$instance; in SQL Plus

ORACLE_HOME

ORACLE_HOME environment variable is set to the path one level above the bin directory where SQL Plus executable file is located.

"No TNS entries found" Error message

In order to remove this message set TNS_ADMIN environment variable to the path where the file tnsnames.ora is located.
TNS stands for Transparent Network Substrate is a proprietary Oracle computer-networking technology, supports homogeneous peer-to-peer connectivity on top of other networking technologies such as TCP/IP, SDP and named pipes © Wikipedia.

"No valid Oracle clients found"

This error occurs when one try to connect an Oracle database, through a Client like Toad for Oracle. To solve add the folder where Oracle client is located to the Path variable.

Starting with Oracle 10g, along with the exp, imp utilities, appeared two new Data Pump utilities: expdp and impdp respectively.
They are also located in the bin directory of the Oracle home folder.
The old export and import utilities are client-side oriented, while the new ones are server-side oriented. Although the old and new utilities are similar in usage, the results are completely different. This means that a dump exported with exp cannot be imported with impdp.

Default directory for the dmp file

If the directory is not specified, Oracle tries to seek the dmp file in the default directory, which is something like that
«drive letter»:\app\«user name»\admin\oratest\dpdump or
«drive letter»:\app\«user name»\product\21c\admin\xe\dpdump in newer versions of Oracle

How to view already available directories for Data Pump

This request select directory_name, directory_path from dba_directories; in SQL Plus shows available directories.

TBytesStream class for Delphi 2007

TBytesStream class was added in Delphi 2009, so I define it manually for CodeGear Delphi 2007.


type
  TBytesStream = class(TMemoryStream)
  private
    FBytes: TBytes;
    FCapacity: Longint;
    FSize: Longint;
  protected
    function Realloc(var NewCapacity: Longint): Pointer; override;
  public
    constructor Create(const ABytes: TBytes); overload;
    property Bytes: TBytes read FBytes;
  end;

Full unit published on Github

ZEOS Library 8.0.0 does not support Delphi 2007 and older

A file ZBase64.pas appeared in the ZEOS Library 8.0.0 in folder with path "src\core\" that can not be compiled.
The class TBytesStream in ZBase64.pas was added in Delphi 2009.

SqlitePass support for the Rad Studio Delphi 2007

This my addition gives the support for Rad Studio Delphi 2007 to SqlitePass and quite possible to Delphi 2005, 2006.
The most significant processing has been made to the file SqlitePassDbo.inc
Published on Github