Ordinarily, a VCL/CLX programmer takes a group of unrelated components and ‘glues’ them together into a single cohesive whole by interconnecting them via event handlers. For example, whenever a TTimer component ‘fires’, this typically invokes an OnTimer handler which might then be used to move the position of a progress bar. Clicking a button invokes an OnClick handler which might then clear a list box.

That’s all good and well, but wouldn’t it be cool if you could do something similar without writing any code at all? OpenWire enables you to make a step in that direction, but there is a major caveat involved. OpenWire is an open-source architecture for VCL and CLX components, and introduces the concept of input and output pins, as would be familiar to any electronics engineer.

The basic idea is that you can link disparate components together by connecting the output pin of one component to the input pin of another. This is a concept that has been around for a few years. For example, the highly respected Multimedia tools component suite from Swift Software lets you not only join assorted audio components together on Delphi’s design-time form, but you can also see those connections at design-time through visual linkups on the form.

This is what OpenWire is supposed to do, eventually. As it stands, the concept is very powerful, enabling each component to implement multiple input (sink) pins and output (source) pins. The architecture lends itself well to audio or video processing, or indeed any system where something has to pass through transformations. The concept is general enough to represent a manufacturing process, for example.

However, OpenWire currently lacks the graphical editor that enables you to see the links between interconnected components on the design-time form. In other words, it lacks the functionality built into the Swift components. It’s not clear whether other developers will have to pay to get the editor (the website refers to it as a forthcoming ‘product’) and without significant third-party support, We’re not convinced that OpenWire is going to fly. On the positive side, you can build the OpenWire technology into your own commercial components without restriction.

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