Utility Functions

MessageBeep

Plays the PC's default notification sound.

Declaration: procedure MessageBeep

OutputDebugString

Writes a string to the debug output.

Declaration: procedure OutputDebugString(const Message: string);

RecordCount

Returns the number of records in the specified data source.

Declaration: function RecordCount(const PipeLineName: string): Integer;

Note: This function must be called after data sources have been opened; otherwise it will return 0.

ShowMessage

Displays a message box with an OK button. The Msg parameter is the message string that appears in the message box.

Declaration: procedure ShowMessage(const Msg: string);

ShowMessage() can be useful for debugging your code. You can put messages in to find out what value variables have, when code is being run and when it's not, and many other things. Just remember that ShowMessage needs a string, so you can't pass it a number without converting it first:

ShowMessage('The value of x is: ' + IntToStr(x));